Porsche Taycan Turbo S, the alleged Tesla Killer, is slower than its cheaper version, the Taycan Turbo. This fascinating discovery was made by Brooks from Drag Times, who is a drag racing expert and has plenty of experience in racing.
However, the reason for the Turbo S being slower than the Turbo isn’t exactly what you think. See when the Porsche Taycan Turbo S was being advertised as the “Tesla Killer” which it didn’t turn out to be, the Porsche Engineers claimed the Taycan to have a “repeatable performance” irrespective of the SoC (State of Charge) of the battery.
Performance decrease due to low charge levels is something that even the latest and greatest Tesla Model S P100D Raven suffers from. However, Porsche is adamant that their Porsche Taycan is immune to this problem and stays ready to pounce even on a low charge.
As you’re about to see, Porsche was clearly lying. Either that or they made a cheaper version of the Taycan faster than the top-spec Turbo S variant. Here’s what you need to know.
Tesla Killer Porsche Taycan Turbo S Loses To Cheaper Variant
Brooks borrowed the Porsche Taycan at 57% charge from Champion Porsche, a dealership in Florida. Brooks had brought his VBOX and his draggy, both speed, time and acceleration measuring devices.
He first had a go in the top-spec Porsche Taycan Turbo S at 57% SoC. Prior to the race, he enquired the showroom executive whether the low charge will affect the performance or not. To this, the executive replied, “No.”
With this assumption, Brooks went ahead and tested the Porsche Taycan Turbo S for a quarter-mile run. He ran the Porsche Taycan twice and noted the result, which seemed fine at first glance.
There was a lower-spec Porsche Taycan available for a test ride and this one was at above 90% SoC. So Brooks tested it out as well and this is where the results started showing some discrepancy.
The Porsche Taycan Turbo (the lower-spec model) ran from 0 to 60 mph in 2.86 seconds and finished the quarter-mile in 10.97 seconds at a speed of 127 mph.
While the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, the top variant, had a 0 to 60 mph timing of 2.67 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 10.88 seconds at 124.52 mph.
We can see that the Porsche Taycan Turbo had a greater top speed than the Turbo S during the test. Upon looking closely, Brooks realized that the lower-spec Taycan Turbo was faster than the Turbo S at a 60 to 130 mph sprint by 0.72 seconds.
The Taycan Turbo was also faster than the Turbo S from a 100-200 kmph run. The Taycan Turbo scored a timing of 7.23 seconds while the Turbo S was slower at 7.82 seconds.
The conclusion says that the Taycan Turbo is faster than Taycan Turbo S, at least in this particular scenario. However, it is not possible because the Turbo S makes 750 HP, which is 90 HP more than the Turbo variant.
The only plausible explanation is that the SoC matters in electric cars. Porsche’s claim of no performance degradation at lower charge levels seems to not apply in this particular case.
This is bad considering these aren’t the prototypes but road-ready production models.
Brooks also brought up another interesting point. Before the Porsche Taycan launch, a team of auto-journalists and Porsche engineers did a 200 kmph sprint 30 times without seeing any drop in performance.
Each quarter-mile run causes the battery to drop 2%, according to Brooks. So if doing a sprint thirty times would bring the charge levels down to 40-50% which is the same SoC range at which Brooks tested the road ready Taycan Turbo S and saw the performance degradation.
Porsche Taycan: A Worthy Competitor To Tesla Model S P100D?
There are both good and bad revelations here. Performance degradation at lower SoC means that the Turbo S still has the potential to go quarter-mile faster than 10.88 seconds when charged at 100%.
Brooks estimates that when completely charged, the Taycan Turbo S can do a quarter-mile between 10.5-10.6 seconds.
The current fastest Tesla Model S quarter-mile timing is 10.51 seconds. So it’s neck-to-neck between the Model S and the Taycan Turbo S.
Brooks said that he’d love to take both these cars to a drag strip very soon. So keep watching this space for more.
