400 Mile day trip through the Colorado mountains - power/battery consumption info for Taycan 4S

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thecoloradokid

thecoloradokid

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Do you guys have Innodrive over there? Innodrive automatically does this as well as far as I know.
Gogs: I do have the Innodrive and adaptive cruise control package on my Taycan. I will have to do a little more research on whether Innodrive assists with braking recuperation.
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Mind you, I have yet to try the "auto recuperation" mode on the Taycan, so I am not sure if it works similarly to me turning it on and off manually via the steering wheel button. I will experiment with that next weekend.
It works very well if you follow other cars downhill in a queue. It Recuperates more energy that way the the normal setting. However if you do not have a car in front of you there is no recuperation at all! It is quite easy to turn on and off by just holding that button for a bit longer. Try it out, it is quite clever. And if you follow other cars in InnoDrive it will also work very well.
 

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... Mind you, I have yet to try the "auto recuperation" mode on the Taycan, so I am not sure if it works similarly to me turning it on and off manually via the steering wheel button. I will experiment with that next weekend.
I hear it's great to use the auto Regen mode But realize that it only means that it will do strong regeneration if there is a vehicle in front of you. The Taycan does not have a mode similar to a Tesla with strong region or a Bolt EV in L mode; however, the brake pedal does region up to 265 KW and I have switched my driving habits on my Bolt EV as well to not use L mode as it often gave more of a roller coaster feel unless you are very careful to feather the accelerator. For those folks that do have sport Chrono you can set up the individual mode with a default of Auto Regen as I hear that when you turn on the car it always defaults back to off. But understand that off does not mean there is no regen when braking, that always happens except at very slow speeds or extreme breaking when it has to engage the friction brakes.
 
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Since regen isn't 100% efficient, only using it when you need to slow down more than drag allows is ultimately more efficient than braking via regen and then accerating and braking and accelerating, etc.

That said, I do like L mode in the Bolt, just because it feels more like having a manual transmission and a high compression engine, like the RS4 or R8 I miss. :p
 

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I have to put out some thoughts regarding the brake regeneration as I think that topic is quite interesting.

I must say that I find it highly unlikely that it would be possible to get better results with the automatic regeneration mode compared to driving with the no regen mode and simply braking when needed.

The reasoning for this is the following. First of all, any brake regeneration is always less efficient than just letting it roll. This is important to understand. Of course if you need to slow down faster than the natural drag allows, then brake regeneration is a very good thing.

However, there is a key difference with the Taycan and all other electric cars (so far) which makes all the difference.

Due to the highly efficient 800V system Taycan's brake regeneration is actually way more powerful than with any other EVs. What this means in practise is that you can manually brake much harder while still regenerating fairly efficiently. It will take a pretty hard brake to go to the actual brakes.

What this means in practise is that while in other EVs you can benefit a lot from auto regen as the car can't regen from any hard brakes, with the Taycan you benefit much much less in comparison as your manual brakes, even a bit harder ones, will still regenerate strongly.

Feel free to poke holes in this theory but this is the conclusion I've reached thus far. No regen mode + manual brakes is no less efficient and might in fact be more efficient in many cases due to maximizing the roll. UNLESS you would need to do such heavy braking that goes beyond the regen capability, and that you would avoid such braking with the auto regen. Then the auto regen is more efficient.
 


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No regen mode + manual brakes is no less efficient and might in fact be more efficient in many cases due to maximizing the roll. UNLESS you would need to do such heavy braking that goes beyond the regen capability, and that you would avoid such braking with the auto regen. Then the auto regen is more efficient.
You may be technically correct, but there are two things that bother me about using the brake pedal to decelerate.
  1. Often I do NOT want to loudly announce my deceleration with a bright red light strip that runs the entire width of the car, plus a high mounted brake light.
  2. I do NOT want to ride the brakes on long descents, even if the brake pedal is activating regen rather than overheating the brakes. I drive a mix of cars, and this habit would not translate well.
 

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You may be technically correct, but there are two things that bother me about using the brake pedal to decelerate.
  1. Often I do NOT want to loudly announce my deceleration with a bright red light strip that runs the entire width of the car, plus a high mounted brake light.
  2. I do NOT want to ride the brakes on long descents, even if the brake pedal is activating regen rather than overheating the brakes. I drive a mix of cars, and this habit would not translate well.
I understand each of these points. For number 1, I would turn regen on. For number 2, I would set a cruise control speed coming down a hill and the Taycan would use regen to manage it.
 

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I understand each of these points. For number 1, I would turn regen on. For number 2, I would set a cruise control speed coming down a hill and the Taycan would use regen to manage it.
I understand each of these points. For number 1, I would turn regen on. For number 2, I would set a cruise control speed coming down a hill and the Taycan would use regen to manage it.
For cars that support one pedal driving the brake lights activate once the deceleration exceeds some threshold. Doesn’t matter if you press the pedal or not. That said, I am a huge fan of one pedal driving myself having it in my iPace. Personally, I think it allows for more control of the car.
 


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Often I do NOT want to loudly announce my deceleration with a bright red light strip that runs the entire width of the car, plus a high mounted brake light.
Just as an FYI, when you lift on the accelerator on a Tesla, the brake lights turn on if the deceleration is over a certain rate... it seems quite likely the Taycan does the same thing (although its non-brake regen is quite low when turned on).

(Edit - sorry, @fe007 - I didn't see your post before I wrote this.)
 
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thecoloradokid

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I appreciate everyone's view on the regen/recoup concept with the new Taycan. I guess it will be up to the individual driver, and where you happen to live in the world. I live next to a very mountainous region, so I will have significant battery consumption while going up hill, and will continue to experiment on how to maximize recapturing energy to the battery while going down hill. I am not a fan of cruise control coming down a steep mountain pass with traffic, so I think I will continue to manually use the regen button when coming down hill. That process served me well on my drive on Saturday from Glenwood Springs, Colorado to Denver. As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of elevation loss, and I used regen as often as I could, so I achieved some very strong kWh performance. I have attached that picture again showing the results. This weekend's experiment will be to charge the car to 100% and see if I can make the same drive in reverse - the 160 miles at a fair speed and a predominantly uphill drive without having to stop to charge.
Porsche Taycan 400 Mile day trip through the Colorado mountains - power/battery consumption info for Taycan 4S IMG_9613


Porsche Taycan 400 Mile day trip through the Colorado mountains - power/battery consumption info for Taycan 4S IMG_9613
 
 




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