Does weight not matter?

[MissionE]

Under any other circumstances, weight is never a good idea in a car. But with electrics, it seems a paradox.

The Turbo S weighs over 5000lbs. But its extra weight is in motors, so it’s turning that weight into power capital,...therefore compensating the extra weight with performance.

The Rwd model, on the other hand, [with only rear motors] is technically lighter, but much less powerful.
Thoughts?

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[Dlurker20]

Under any other circumstances, weight is never a good idea in a car. But with electrics, it seems a paradox.

The Turbo S weighs over 5000lbs. But its extra weight is in motors, so it’s turning that weight into power capital,...therefore compensating the extra weight with performance.

The Rwd model, on the other hand, [with only rear motors] is technically lighter, but much less powerful.
Thoughts?

Weight matters a lot in terms of power and efficiency. What you’re seeing isn’t just weight, but weight of components that negatively impact weight but positively affect the performance. Efficiency is the big loser here.

 

[daveo4EV]

weight always matters, but weight in an EV is better positioned so that it helps in some ways - all in all weight however negatively affects performance and stamina…just look to the size of the Taycan’s brakes to learn all you need to know...​

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however a low center of gravity cover’s a lot of sins and the Taycan is the lowest CG in Porsche’s fleet…​

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EV motors per-pound are more powerful than ICE motor’s - very very dense power - if battery weight comes down - which it should over time - I believe in 5-10 years most EV’s will have similar or more power than ICE vehicles, and start to be lighter than ICE vehicles and then things will get really really interesting.​

 

[SwissTaycan]

I would say weight (or mass) is always bad! I also thought most of the weight of an EV is in the batteries. I think an engineer could explain this a lot better and there are so many facets to this:

Acceleratation: From remembering some basic physics: E = 1/2mv2 (Energy = 1/2 x mass x velocity squared) means it takes more energy to accelerate (and as daveo4EV says above) also lots more energy to slow down the heavier you are. So cut the size (mass of the battery) on a Turbo S and the acceleration would be mind boggling. Oh but then your range would also be greatly reduced to be impractical.

Handling: I don’t remember the formula for this ;-) but mass is also I think part of this as is CoG. So the trick EVs have used is to put the batteries in the lowest possible place in the car and why the CoG is soooo low (i.e. lower than on a 911).

So in designing an EV (or ICE) it is all a trade off of so many factors but mass/weight is a critical one! Totally agree with daveo4EV that once batteries become ”denser” and offer more kW per pound/kilo that will be a game changer!

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