TOP GEAR: Porsche Mission R review

[Arno]

SPECS: Twin e-motors, 1spd auto, 4WD, 1073 bhp (429 bhp for the front axle + 644 bhp for the rear), 0-62mph in 2.5sec, top speed 187mph, weight 1500kg - and a regeneration of whole 800 kWh !

After the video, also check out this Top Gear article: https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/porsche/first-drive




Suddenly my Turbo S does not seem that fast anymore

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[Tay Tay]

Finally someone driving it faster than 60 mph.
The car is shorter than I thought - more like Cayman than 911. Looking forward to the electric Cayman now.
At first I thought the sound was cool, it quickly got annoying though.
Not sold on the carbon fiber rollcage, doesn't carbon fiber shatter?

 

[mikeva]

to me -- at 78 years old and 63 years of driving cars - this is absolutely fantastic! I know it is a concept car.... but man what a concept car.


Maybe Porsche will have it at the Rolex 24 in their marketing area -- probably too much to hope for.

 

[f1eng]

doesn't carbon fiber shatter?

No.
I, personally, have total contempt for carbon fibre as a shiny interior trim material but as a structural material and properly made it is better than any metal for the car structure. I have been using it for just over 40 years.
Sadly too expensive for most car structures though.

 

[f1eng]

Wow the reduction gears are about all you hear!

 

[Tay Tay]

No.
I, personally, have total contempt for carbon fibre as a shiny interior trim material but as a structural material and properly made it is better than any metal for the car structure. I have been using it for just over 40 years.
Sadly too expensive for most car structures though.

But when it reaches its limit it does this instead of deform like steel, right?

 

[f1eng]

But when it reaches its limit it does this instead of deform like steel, right?

Well that depends!
Mild steel, which is the least strong, does plastically deflect a great deal, absorbing energy as it does so and is ideal for inexpensive crash structures.
The stronger steel alloys have less plactic deflection before failure and absorb far less energy because of this. That means they may be better (if expensive) for strengthening a car structure in certain areas they are less suitable for crash structure.
The physical shape of a component also influences the way in which energy is absorbed and redirected and also makes it possible to control the collapse propagation to absorb energy in a controlled way in time and distance.

Composites, including carbon fibre ones are also extremely dependant on the actual fibre and resin chosen, as well as shape. There are several grades of raw fibre, some less strong but more resilient and some stiffer but more brittle. This is also true of the resin systems with temperature sensitivity brought into the mix as well, as with most polymers there is a range of good working temperature where too high it starts to fail due to chemical deterioration and at the low temperature end it goes past what gets called the "glass transition" temperature and goes brittle.

IME a Formula 1 chassis will have low modulus fibres and a reasonably resilient but temperature resistant resin in order to cope with engine and coolant temperature and pass the impact tests.
The wings, where stiffness is paramount (it is pretty well impossible to make them as stiff as you want due to their shape and the huge loads) will be full of high modulus unidirectional carbon layers tailored in complex shapes to deal with load cases (and to make sure the deflection that inevitably will take place is in a direction to improve performance or stability).

So "carbon fibre" is not really an adequate phrase in itself!

If the frame in your photo above failed in normal use I would say it is a poor design, however in mitigation, I would say that it is such a fashionable material it is used for sales reasons at price and engineering points where IMHO, metal would be a better choice but maybe wouldn't sell.

So it very much depends on good engineering, whether metal or composite in terms of actual material choice and the exact design of the component.
A well engineered crash structure in carbon fibre will meet the requirements at a much lower weight but much higher price than any metal one.

The "best" material for crash structures in road cars is mild steel because it absorbe energy extremely well and is very inexpensive. Unfortunately it is heavy and one of the main reasons cars have got so heavy over the last 50 years (along with the plethora of electric motors cars have in them nowadays, some hardly ever used).

Sorry to go on so long but I have a big bias against carbon fibre being used inappropriately, which is horrifically common, but total confidence in its capability when properly used which I learned over the decades.
I used my first carbon fibre parts, a front wing mounting, in 1977 on the Hesketh 308E and learned a great deal about it over the next decades as my knowledge and the materials themselves advanced.

I like to see carbon fibre when used appropriately in cars, like visible parts of the chassis structure in a McLaren sports car or the Porsche 918 or even the tailgate of a Toyota Prius PHEV.
I despise its use for fashion or cosmetic trim, but that is just me being pedantic.

BTW if a car has to have some non structural decorative trim inside I prefer wood

 

[Tay Tay]

@f1eng thanks for taking the time to write that. I'll be honest, I'm still going to let others be the guinea pigs for this. They also mentioned in the video it was still illegal anyway.
For the cost of carbon fiber trim pieces, I wish they made them replace some structural components and actually save some weight.

 

[TycanNewHampshire]

Personally, I want one However, no one has to worry about being a guinea pig as they say often in the video "it is just a concept", not to mention that noise would drive me nuts, even for the 35min it can run on the track. Hoping that 3M Peltor helmet does what Peltor does best, act as noise muffs!

However, I love the look of the entire car, especially the front, door, hood, spoiler, diffuser, rear light bar that flashes "E" when charging, exposed hardware/engine/suspension, hahaha, like I said....the entire car (well except for those tires and wheels that the driver raved about).

To think, he is excited about them being higher profile tires, while all along F1 is moving to lower profile next year....Ironic isn't it? The actual tires aren't bad, but those wheels, yuck! I will take the .0018 increase in coefficient of drag, for something that doesn't look like a frisbee was stuck on the outside of alloys with thick Velcro.....perhaps that is why 3M sponsored it (hook and loop version)?

I am excited about a few things, regardless if this concept becomes a vehicle or not:
1. their move to 900kW battery
2. Their regen technology to push electrons back in at 800kW
3. the speed of recharge at 350kW (not sure from the video if this is sustained or max?)
4. movement away from 'skateboard' battery, to offer better options for weight distribution and performance handling characteristics and keep the driver lower to the ground.

All four will have practical uses in the next generation of Porsche EV that we can all benefit from.

I am not excited about 1000+ HP that drains the battery in under 40 min, only able to go 0-60 in 2.5 when Nikola's stolen legacy Plaid Suit can practically do this in 2.3sec and is a production vehicle. When you are Porsche and throw up 1000+ of EV HP, I would expect that you can figure out how to get this down to a 2-second car....otherwise, what is the point of being Porsche and having a cool name like Ferdinand when you can just go a couple of countries over in Croatia and have a name like Nikola, or now a days, a name like Mate (Ma-tay) Rimac (rhee-mas), also from Croatia . Yet somehow the credit goes to a South African named Elon (E-lawn) Musk (male fragrance that went out of style after people stopped using aftershave) who was originally designing a fast, eco-way of mowing his lawn and permeating the air with an artificial smell of the male, US common fisher cat while marking his territory to mow quickly and ward off pesky rodents in a non-pesticide and non-lethal/trapping manner.
Well by now, we know Nikola got swindled by Rockafeller and Edison, even after proving the concept at the Worlds Fair, Mate continues to make sick cars and partner with Bugatti and we know E-Lawn has still not perfected the electric lawn mower + pest repellent combo as of yet, so he has taken his failures of concept to the consumer car market, revamped his rodent-electrocution machine into charging stations and then wanted to get rid of the rodents further than his neighbors back yard, but his solution was overkill. After killing the rodent, so he repurposed that solution into a rocket to take his other failures up into orbit and drop them off to the Croatians that will meet him their as they continue on to the secret exo-planet colony project that they and the other Bohemian Club members are already members of, while E-Lawn tries to get his invite by building the rocket shuttles to privately bring up all the missing Lagavulin 16 that has been missing from our supply chain .

Well if you got this far.....by now, you know I am on to something! Can't wait for the production version!

 

[f1eng]

For the cost of carbon fiber trim pieces, I wish they made them replace some structural components and actually save some weight.

They did use carbon fibre "technically" on the 918 but since structural CF is so much more expensive to manufacture in quantity than metal it doesn't get used often in less expensive higher volume cars.

Since it has a sporty image though it sells well as trim so they may as well cash in on the fashion, I suppose.

 

[HarryB]

Loved watching this even though the sound brought on a migraine

 

[f1eng]

Loved watching this even though the sound brought on a migraine

Indeed, at least the scream of straight cut gears is partially masked by the un-silenced engine in an IC engined racing car.

 

[mutanthands]

Whenever I see the Mission R, I can’t help but think of a Pokeball!

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