Cutaway of Taycan rear motor at Porsche Museum

[JRNJTAYCAN]

I hope you took the time for the factory tour while you were there.

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[Donlam]

I was at the Porsche Museum at Zuffenhausen today where they have a cutaway rear Taycan motor that I thought folks would be interested to see. Unfortunately it was in a display case with lighting pointing directly at it – so it was very reflective.

They also had a battery cell in the display.

Very informative photos. Thanks for sharing.

 

[tigerbalm]

911 Factory Tour

The lockers at the Porsche Museum – are now touch card activated – you no longer need some coins to retrieve a key. We put our bags, phones, wallets, etc into a spare locker. The lockers now have USB-C cables and wireless charging pads inside them – so you’ll come back to a charged phone. The tours are strictly no camera – to protect privacy of workers, cars, order numbers, etc.

After the intro talk in the Porsche Museum foyer – we walk across the roundabout and in through the entrance turnstiles at Werk II. From there it is a quick stroll to the 911 Factory entrance – where we take an elevator to the second floor.

The building age is in-between the original 1930s/1950s factories and the ultra modern Taycan assembly building – probably from the late 1970s.

On entering the assembly floor – you are immediately greeted with a busy scene. You can see the assembly line in the middle of the space – driverless automated parts trucks are whizzing around towing trailers. It is not noisy – but there is hardly anywhere to stand that you won’t soon be in someone’s or something’s way. Porsche must really allow for these tours – because we can see how they are tricky to accommodate here.

We walk to the start of the assembly line – where the painted bodies have come in from the paint shop – across the bridge – on the other side of the road. The bodies are lowered by a robot down from a rack and placed onto a stand that will hold the body as it makes its way through the entire assembly process.

A bar code stuck on the back of the body is read – and from that all the parts to be placed onto the car – across the 100+ stations of the build – are co-ordinated. Six hours from this point – a completed 911 will emerge two floors below us.

One of the first things to happen to the body – is the doors are removed and sent one floor below – where they'll be reunited with the nearly finished car in a few hours.

Trying to keep out of the way of the various automated parts trucks – we walk along the line. They beep at you if you get in their way!

First stop is actually a side assembly line – where the 911 dashboard’s are fully assembled from parts.

Every 911 dashboard is created here – all models – left and right hand drive. We watch a dashboard for the new S/T model being completed. There looked to be about 10 stops on this mini assembly line. The dashboards starts as a box of parts and a metal frame brought to the start by a parts robot.

Each station on the 911 assembly (including the dashboard assembly line) gets 3 minutes to complete about 1 minute and 10 seconds of work – giving workers plenty of time to finish their task and have a little reset before the line moves on one position. The guide explained that this means they are less stressed – can give more attention to quality and detail and have a little time to solves an issue if it arrises.

The guide explains that 99% of the employee's who work on the assembly line stay with the company for their entire working lives. If those stats are true – it does indicate that pay and conditions at the company must be pretty good. They get 20% discount on any Porsche they wish to purchase – with the rule that they can't sell (flip it on) for at least 10 months.

A dashboard goes from box of parts to completed in around 36 minutes and it then immediately gets installed in the appropriate 911 – with the main assembly line being right beside the last station of the dashboard line. We found it remarkable that the dashboards being installed into cars didn’t exist half an hour beforehand!

We leave the dashboards behind us and continue down the line – reaching where the windscreens, sunroofs and rear-windows are hand installed. A robot here puts the adhesive on the glass – but they are manually installed by humans onto the cars. The Targa rear windows – don’t go near the robot as they are manually screwed onto the vehicle – with no adhesive involved.

We see frunks, boot liners, etc being installed. At each station – there is a Porsche branded touchscreen – a little bit like an old-fashioned iMac. The screen displays : (a) the model that is now at that station, (b) the configuration of the car that is relevant to the station, (c) the country the car is being shipped to, (d) the time left before the line will move the car to the next staton. Nothing else about the customer is visible.

The line stops every hour for five minutes to allow staff a break – toilet, snacks, catch up on phone, etc.

We walk down the stairs to the first floor and see a similar line – this time with the bodies moving in the opposite direction. Middle of the way through this assembly line – the bodies are lifted up by a roof robot and are sent down another line 90 degrees to the one we’re following. This is where all the underbody installing happens – including the marriage of the body and the drivetrain.

Unfortunately, we’re not able to follow this line – on this tour – because there are unreleased 911 prototypes on the line. Instead, we continue along our line – where the almost finished car’s are returned from the underbody process.

From this vantage point – we can see about thirty 911s on the line at the same time. Almost every imaginable model and variant is there: Turbo’s, Turbo S, GT3’s, regular Carrera’s and even a 911 Dakar!

We see the wheels & tyres being put onto each car. The Dakar’s chunky tyres being very noticeable on the parts trailer. The guide explains that buyers can choose their wheels but have no control of tyre brands (a pet peeve of our!).

We see the doors – now fully installed with equipment – being installed back on to the car.

We get close to the end of the line – where some final checks are performed in a light tunnel. Worryingly the tool benches here have plenty of wooden mallets on them! Nearby we watch the side assembly line building out the doors – adding windows, speakers, door openers, etc.

The car’s from here will drop down to the ground floor – where they will undergo water, wind and rolling road testing.

Porsche build 300 x 911's – 24 hours a day across three shifts. The night shift being new – and a reaction to the build up of orders post COVID and the chip/parts shortage. During the night shift – each station gives six minutes for the one minute of work to being done. Meaning it's moving at a even more relaxed pace – and they produce only 50% of the car's of a daytime shift.

And that is the end of the tour of the assembly building!

We then walk over to the upholstery factory – where we see raw leather being scanned and marked for imperfections. Then sent to an automated cutting machine – using 3000 bar of water pressure – to mark out the pieces. And finally where the workers use sewing machines to manually make each leather part that goes into every 911 interior.

As we are walking back to the entrance – we quickly stop off in the engine assembly building and look at flat-6 cylinder engines being assembled and cold tested. Every none-GT engine is cold tested – meaning they are not started with fuel. GT3/GT4 engines are hot tested in one of seven dedicated test bays – and they are fired up.

That concludes our 911 tour.

Our second visit to the Taycan factory is next.

 

[Scandinavian]

Nice report of an exciting factory tour! Thanks

 

[bsclywilly]

Re: Lucid vs Taycan motor, I was initially really impressed with Lucid’s engineering and the compactness of their motor. But after running into a couple Lucid engineers at a track day, I learned that their motors are severely undercooled, a result of that compact size and can actually hit thermal limits in less than half a lap (on a hot day albeit), and we’ll before the battery gets up to temp. Definitely not as capable as the Taycan and may go to show how over-designed the Taycan is for most of us. The Sapphire adding the third motor was mainly to address their motor deficiency.

 

[Teufel Hund]

911 Factory Tour

The lockers at the Porsche Museum – are now touch card activated – you no longer need some coins to retrieve a key. We put our bags, phones, wallets, etc into a spare locker. The lockers now have USB-C cables and wireless charging pads inside them – so you’ll come back to a charged phone. The tours are strictly no camera – to protect privacy of workers, cars, order numbers, etc.

After the intro talk in the Porsche Museum foyer – we walk across the roundabout and in through the entrance turnstiles at Werk II. From there it is a quick stroll to the 911 Factory entrance – where we take an elevator to the second floor.

The building age is in-between the original 1930s/1950s factories and the ultra modern Taycan assembly building – probably from the late 1970s.

On entering the assembly floor – you are immediately greeted with a busy scene. You can see the assembly line in the middle of the space – driverless automated parts trucks are whizzing around towing trailers. It is not noisy – but there is hardly anywhere to stand that you won’t soon be in someone’s or something’s way. Porsche must really allow for these tours – because we can see how they are tricky to accommodate here.

We walk to the start of the assembly line – where the painted bodies have come in from the paint shop – across the bridge – on the other side of the road. The bodies are lowered by a robot down from a rack and placed onto a stand that will hold the body as it makes its way through the entire assembly process.

A bar code stuck on the back of the body is read – and from that all the parts to be placed onto the car – across the 100+ stations of the build – are co-ordinated. Six hours from this point – a completed 911 will emerge two floors below us.

One of the first things to happen to the body – is the doors are removed and sent one floor below – where they'll be reunited with the nearly finished car in a few hours.

Trying to keep out of the way of the various automated parts trucks – we walk along the line. They beep at you if you get in their way!

First stop is actually a side assembly line – where the 911 dashboard’s are fully assembled from parts.

Every 911 dashboard is created here – all models – left and right hand drive. We watch a dashboard for the new S/T model being completed. There looked to be about 10 stops on this mini assembly line. The dashboards starts as a box of parts and a metal frame brought to the start by a parts robot.

Each station on the 911 assembly (including the dashboard assembly line) gets 3 minutes to complete about 1 minute and 10 seconds of work – giving workers plenty of time to finish their task and have a little reset before the line moves on one position. The guide explained that this means they are less stressed – can give more attention to quality and detail and have a little time to solves an issue if it arrises.

The guide explains that 99% of the employee's who work on the assembly line stay with the company for their entire working lives. If those stats are true – it does indicate that pay and conditions at the company must be pretty good. They get 20% discount on any Porsche they wish to purchase – with the rule that they can't sell (flip it on) for at least 10 months.

A dashboard goes from box of parts to completed in around 36 minutes and it then immediately gets installed in the appropriate 911 – with the main assembly line being right beside the last station of the dashboard line. I found it remarkable that the dashboards being installed into cars didn’t exist half and hour beforehand!

We leave the dashboards behind us and continue down the line – reaching where the windscreens, sunroofs and rear-windows are hand installed. A robot here puts the adhesive on the glass – but they are manually installed by humans onto the cars. The Targa rear windows – don’t go near the robot as they are manually screwed onto the vehicle – with no adhesive involved.

We see frunks, boot liners, etc being installed. At each station – there is a Porsche branded touchscreen – a little bit like an old-fashioned iMac. The screen displays : (a) the model that is now at that station, (b) the configuration of the car that is relevant to the station, (c) the country the car is being shipped to, (d) the time left before the line will move the car to the next staton. Nothing else about the customer is visible.

The line stops every hour for five minutes to allow staff a break – toilet, snacks, catch up on phone, etc.

We walk down the stairs to the first floor and see a similar line – this time with the bodies moving in the opposite direction. Middle of the way through this assembly line – the bodies are lifted up by a roof robot and are sent down another line 90 degrees to the one we’re following. This is where all the underbody installing happens – including the marriage of the body and the drivetrain.

Unfortunately, we’re not able to follow this line – on this tour – because there are unreleased 911 prototypes on the line. Instead, we continue along our line – where the almost finished car’s are returned from the underbody process.

From this vantage point – we can see about thirty 911s on the line at the same time. Almost every imaginable model and variant is there: Turbo’s, Turbo S, GT3’s, regular Carrera’s and even a 911 Dakar!

We see the wheels & tyres being put onto each car. The Dakar’s chunky tyres being very noticeable on the parts trailer. The guide explains that buyers can choose their wheels but have no control of tyre brands (a pet peeve of our!).

We see the doors – now fully installed with equipment – being installed back on to the car.

We get close to the end of the line – where some final checks are performed in a light tunnel. Worryingly the tool benches here have plenty of wooden mallets on them! Nearby we watch the side assembly line building out the doors – adding windows, speakers, door openers, etc.

The car’s from here will drop down to the ground floor – where they will undergo water, wind and rolling road testing.

Porsche build 300 x 911's – 24 hours a day across three shifts. The night shift being new – and a reaction to the build up of orders post COVID and the chip/parts shortage. During the night shift – each station gives six minutes for the one minute of work to being done. Meaning it's moving at a even more relaxed pace – and they produce only 50% of the car's of a daytime shift.

And that is the end of the tour of the assembly building!

We then walk over to the upholstery factory – where we see raw leather being scanned and marked for imperfections. Then sent to an automated cutting machine – using 3000 bar of water pressure – to mark out the pieces. And finally where the workers use sewing machines to manually make each leather part that goes into every 911 interior.

As we are walking back to the entrance – we quickly stop off in the engine assembly building and look at flat-6 cylinder engines being assembled and cold tested. Every none-GT engine is cold tested – meaning they are not started with fuel. GT3/GT4 engines are hot tested in one of seven dedicated test bays – and they are fired up.

That concludes our 911 tour.

Our second visit to the Taycan factory is next.

What an awesome description of the tour! Thanks so much for taking the time to write that all out. Definitely makes me want to visit the factory.

 

[tigerbalm]

718 & Hybrid 911

One fact I forgot to mention about the 911 assembly line – is that it was exclusively 911's on the line at the moment. With the petrol 718's being built in another VW facility.

The 911 line has now been fully retooled to handle the upcoming all-electric 718 – and when that goes to manufacturing they'll go down the same line intermingled with 911's.

There was a very explicit mention that the line has been also updated to handle hybrid 911. While we know that the 992 has "space" in the PDK for a electric motor – it seems they are very comfortable to talk about the matching factory upgrades at this stage.

 

[tigerbalm]

Taycan Factory Tour

This is our second visit to the Taycan factory – having originally driven there on our 2022 road trip around the alps.

We wrote up our experiences then in three parts:

• Taycan Factory Tour: Introduction
• Taycan Factory Tour: Assembly Line
• Taycan Factory Tour: Paint Shop

The factory won’t have changed that much in a year – so we won’t repeat the full tour description here.

We start the tour in the same place as the 911 factory tour earlier in the morning – and sit through the same introductions and descriptions of the Porsche sculpture in the roundabout! We walk through the same Werk II turnstiles as we did earlier in the morning – and walk over to the Taycan assembly building – the newest in the entire Porsche complex at Zuffenhausen.

To the right of the factory – and linked by a short bridge – is a multi-story parking complex – where complex Taycan’s are stored before being shipped off to their destination countries and dealerships. On top of car park is a staff canteen that is dedicated to the Taycan workforce – with the 911 factory having its own eating facilities.

As we’re heading in the door of the assembly plant – we see the 911 Dakar – that we witnessed coming down the end of the 911 assembly line earlier (and its wheels being put on) driving past on its way to a waiting transport. It was very cool to see the car now fully completed and on the road. Porsche’s leave the factory in “transport mode” where they are limited to 30 km/h – until the mode is removed by a Porsche dealership as part of the PDI (pre-delivery inspection) process. However, 1% of all Porsche’s manufactured are randomly selected for a short road-test – and the transport mode is temporarily removed for those cars.

We head up to the second floor of the assembly building and into the into the mini warehouse area where parts from suppliers are held before being delivered to various stations on the assembly line.

Unlike the 911 dashboard – the Taycan's arrive fully assembled from the supplier and they sit here on a shelf until the matching car nears the installing station.

There is a surprisingly amount of right-hand side (UK, Ireland, Australia, etc) dashboards in the queue. We didn't see any blackberry units from our quick scan of the shelves.

Looking around to take in our surroundings – this is a very different space to the 911 facility. The ceilings are a few stories high and the line snakes up and down the massive floor a number of times before dropping down to the lower level.

The corridors between the lines are also many times wider – allowing for plenty of space to walk alongside the ubiquitous autonomous parts trucks whizzing around.

One of our first stops is to watch an ABB robot adjusting the camber on fully assembled rear axels – lifting them up and tweaking them with ease.

While we got a good look at the rear motor in the museum – this is the first time we get a proper glance at the front motor, inverter and axel assembly. While it's not as large as the rear – the front motor still looks like a hefty unit.

Looking at the rotor's – most are cast iron variants – with a few white surface coated brakes (PSCB). While standing there we keep an eye out for any yellow carbon ceramic units – but see none.

Turning around are standing really close to the car bodies moving along. Unlike the 911 line – that is running along rails – the Taycan "line" is made up of robots that the body sits on – and they follow a trail of QR code's that are stuck to the floor.

If they want to change the line – they just need to lay down a new set of stickers on the floor.

As the line snakes up and down the floor - the "cars" drive themselves across the floor to the start of the next line – with us walking between them. They comfortably detect humans walking and stop to let you pass. They are manufactured by Siemens and you can see various racks of Siemens gear dotted around the floor.

The last time we were here the line spent most of its time stopped – due to parts shortages. This time – the line never stops moving – with probably about 90 cars being worked on.

Porsche assemble 200 Taycan's every day across two shifts – 100 less than the 911 factory but also no night shift.

We walk to the ABB robot that is placing the glass on the car. Again, unlike our last visit, today they are busy at work – putting the glue on the glass edges, activating it, installing it and cleaning itself.

Unlike the 911s – where the glass is manually installed – it is all automatic on Taycan as part of what Porsche call Manufacturing Process 4.0

We continue along the line – the rest of which is the same as our previous trip. We stop at what is probably the most "dramatic" stop in the process: the "marriage" of the drive train with the Taycan body.

In a now familiar theme – this is completely automatic and performed by robots on Taycan. It happens surprisingly quickly – probably less than a minute and the two are joined together and 56 bolts are torqued to their exact specifications.

We missed this on the 911 line due to prototypes being present – but it is mostly performed manually there with humans tightening all the bolts.

We also stop at the robot that places the glass roof onto the Taycan. The guide explained that 90% of Taycan customers request a glass roof. We’ve never been fans of the glass option – optioning metal roofs on both of our Taycan’s and were interested to see if glass is not installed, the robot instead installs sound deadening material that looked a lot like cardboard.

And that was the end of the tour – before it headed off to the paint factory for a demonstration that was identical to our last visit. It was interesting to see that while the 911 has its own paint shop – all PTS 911’s go through the Taycan one.

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