New Porsche batteries coming with 800 mile range

[Jhenson29]

The Touring version comes with a similar 93kwh

It’s still not “similar” because Lucid’s usable portion is much larger.

But even with that noted, these numbers contradict my earlier claim and suggest a larger portion coming from other than the increased energy capacity. I’ll review more later though. Thanks.

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[Jhenson29]

The Touring version comes with a similar 93kwh battery and has around 200kg (440lb) less weight goes 80 miles more and is more spacious inside. Too bad it looks so uninspiring and ride quality is not good, for a startup is excellent, reason why I have high expectations from next Porsche EVs.

Coming back to this briefly, I went back through the conversation to see how we got here. The original statement I took issue with was the idea that efficiency improvements will lead to drastic gains. I guess we may define drastic differently, but my first thought when I read that was how much energy it takes to keep the car in motion vs how much energy is available, and what those gains are relative to say, just doubling the battery energy (without increasing weight; as my thought was major future gains come from increased energy when batteries are lighter).

Referencing the below post so I don’t have to rerun the numbers:

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/range-at-high-speeds.12617/#post-187397

We have 13.3kWh/100 miles just for drag at 70mph. That’s not going to change with reduced weight. They may improve cd or frontal area, but…how much, and at what expense?

So, if we could use 100% of the battery energy just to overcome drag and didn’t have to worry about drivetrain losses, rolling resistance, or other misc (like AC), our upper bound for range on 83.7 kWh is 629 miles, which is completely unrealistic given all the things I ignored. However, we could get about the same range if we doubled battery capacity without increasing weight.

So, that was my back of the napkin math that sourced my incredulousness that sparked my reply, expect I hadn’t even done that much math at the time; just thinking in generalities as outlined in the first paragraph.

So, I will continue to stand behind my statement that drastic gains are more likely to come from increased energy capacity vs efficiencies.

Now, in the short term, sure efficiency may play a larger roll because batteries are limited by weight and cost. And sure, if you have a car with similar energy and higher efficiency, then its gains will be mostly from efficiency. But, as battery weight and cost decreases, adding energy will yield much higher results compared to efficiencies.