Trying to decide which battery for our 4S build.

ericj320

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We are just a few weeks away from the freeze date for our 4S build and just down to a last few decisions. Battery size probably being the biggest of those remaining choices, I was hoping for some help understanding the overwhelming consensus here for the PB+. We are heavily leaning towards the standard battery and struggle with justifying the need to pay $5500 to upgrade it to the PB+. We have almost never taken either of our Macan S‘s on a road trip that would even come close to pushing the limits of the PB. In part because we have another vehicle that is more suited for road trips (hopefully next year that vehicle will become the F150 Lightning), and my wife has a strict “no eating in the Porsche” rule, and road trips with kids almost certainly involve eating in the car. Not to mention real road trips for us involve way more gear than a Taycan, or any Porsche for that matter, could hold.

I understand people’s comments regarding resale value, but I’m also struggling to understand that argument, as it’s $5500 less initial cost, I’d expect it to get less in resale. First, I feel for the most part, trying to configure a car for what the next owner might want can be a bit of a fool’s errand. Sure, there are some features every car needs, but $5500 for 30 miles more range and 50ish more HP seems excessive to me since we don’t need it. Doesn’t it become a bad choice only when in resale you get more then $5500 less than vehicles with the PB+? There‘s little data on Taycans to get a sense of what resale value is, or will be, especially with used car values where there are now. Of course there is no guarantee, but Porsche projects values at the end of a lease to only be $2912 difference, if you figure the max residual for a PB+ vs PB. Also, looking at Teslas, in my research I’m seeing just a couple of thousand difference between their 70kwh and 85/90kwh variants. Again, not proof of anything, but just more circumstantial evidence to lead me to believe that one shouldn’t expect to get $5500+ more in resale over the standard battery. And would actually need to be slightly more if you figure in finance costs of that additional $5500.

What am I missing? Again, we are absolutely certain we would be more the satisfied with the PB for our use and needs, our only holdup has been all the recommendations based on resale value alone. I’ll add, my SA seems ambivalent on the issue. In general he sees value in it, but tends to agree that value won’t equate to improved use for us, or a significant enough ROI to justify it on resale alone if we don’t need it

Thanks for any thoughts on my points, your opinion on those points are welcome and appreciated!
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JimBob

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If doing anything more than local trips, EV's can be range challenged in really hot or cold temps. The bigger battery is the safer choice.
 

fullmetalbaal

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If you know you are only ever going to use the car in your neighborhood, skip it.

But the Taycan is a great road trip car if you're going with little gear, quick day trips etc.

In that case, IMHO you really need the bigger battery:

Depending on temperature, velocity, etc. you are going to see a total range of ~200 on the PB+ and 175 on the other one. But then you have to subtract 10% on the top end (since you typically won't charge that high) and probably ~50 miles on the lower end (safety buffer in case the EA station is full/broken, and also you don't want to deplete the battery below 10% either).

So: PB+ is at 130 miles of actual driving, 105 or so for the normal battery.
Now it's closer to a 20-30% boost and crucially still allows ~2 hrs of driving between stops, which is for many people an acceptable rhythm.
 

Kingske

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I would give up on most other options before not taking the bigger battery. Even for driving around town range is a great feature. Not to mention resale value.
 

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OP, I honestly don't think you would ever need it if you don't plan to take it on road trips, and it sounds like you already have a good road trip car. For day to day city driving/commute, the regular battery is plenty.

It it my number one must have feature, but I enjoy EV road trips and the extra range has saved my bacon. For my day to day though, the extra range is never needed.

Just remember though that battery range does decrease over time, and if you plan of keeping this car for a long time, it could become a factor.
 


dflohr

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If you search this forum, you'll find lots of discussion on the battery choice. Both pros and cons.

My RWD has standard battery. No regrets. 280 mi range at 100% charge. Very little estimated difference in arrival time on infrequent 500 mi road trips. No benefit on our 20-30 mi daily driving. The increase in resale value of the big battery will have to be proven over time.
 

Jhenson29

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PB+ was the one and only option I left off the initial build and had the dealer add later. I don’t regret it.

I can’t say that I’ve ever 100% needed it, but it makes me feel better to know it’s there and I believe I would have regretted it had I not added it.

I think if you’re confident you don’t need it, won’t miss it, and are only adding it for resale, I would leave it off. Expecting to recoup that much in resale for it is probably a gamble.

But, if like me, you have any doubt at all for your personal use, I would add it.
 

02bluesuperroo

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If you think about what it costs on a similar ICE car to add a clean, safe 50 HP it doesn’t really seem THAT expensive. Not to mention the extra range. If you just drive around town, it’s still more days you can go between charges. It’s better for the battery to charge it less often instead of filling it up every night.
 


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It sounds like you've thought of most of the pros and cons. I am in a similar situation with a separate road trip ICE vehicle (carrying dog, eating, luggage, etc.), and the T4S was supposed to be just my daily driver.

However, I found that I love driving this car so much, I was willing to compromise to take it on some short road trips after all. That's when I was very relieved to have gone for the PB+.

Depending on where you live, you may want to consult PlugShare and see where the fast DC chargers are. For me, I have to drive a fairly lengthy (200 miles) to get to the next EA charger depending on which direction I am headed. Therefore, that extra range became critical to avoid range anxiety. With my PB+ battery, I am usually doing the 200 mile leg with about 29-30% remaining, but I expect that to get much worse once the season turns colder.
 

Claude Balls

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My dealer stated in a normal second hand market you recover about 50% of the £4,000 cost of PBP at sale. Therefore, is £2,000 actual cost worth an extra 30 mile and 50 BHP. Personally, the 30 miles extra is neither here or there as I would never need it locally and almost on all long distances I would need to stop anyway. It's the £4,000 initial outlay which hurts!!
 
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ericj320

ericj320

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Wow, this forum is awesome. You all have given me great points, that I either hadn’t considered or hadn’t given nearly enough weight to. Honestly, it’s not the cost of the upgrade, but more so the dislike in paying for something we felt we may never need or use. And while we don’t feel we need it for range alone, it doesn’t mean we may never need it, just would we need it enough to offset its cost.

However, some of the comments here have certainly given us some things to consider, not only in range but power and how we’d use it that has kind of moved us back to the middle, or maybe even more now in favor of getting the PB+. I asked my wife, what was her reason for wanting the 4S over the PB+ RWD, and her answer was performance. And so, as bluesperroo pointed out, the $/HP to go from the 4S PB to the 4S PB+ is a much cheaper jump in $/HP than going from the RWD PB+ to the 4S PB, and it’s by a fairly large margin, essentially $259/HP to $103/HP. And that would be with a range improvement instead of a range loss. I now feel like I was thinking about this choice way too heavily on range alone, the power increase is not insignificant and has to be accounted for in the equation.

Sabreliner had a good point as well. We hadn’t considered how much we might enjoy driving this vehicle, and it very well could change our habits and we wouldn’t want the battery to limit that. The PB+ would have it’s limits as well, but at least we’d know we did all we could within the capability of the current version to mitigate that.

I stand by the argument against resale alone being reason enough, but you all helped me see there’s way more to it than range and resale value.

I know this has been a long couple of posts, so thank you all for taking the time to read through them, giving your input both for and against, and allowing me to work through my thoughts to help us reach the right decision for us.
 

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First off, will your wife also marry me? I too have a NO FOOD in the Porsche policy that my wife gives endless grief for.

As to the main point of your question about the battery upgrade, I would definitely recommend going with the larger battery. Here's why:

First and foremost, the Taycan is an absolute blast to drive and I imagine that the country roads in Tennesee would encourage and motivate you to take the Taycan out for random excursions to simply experience the Taycan in the manner it wants to be driven.

Secondly, the Taycan is a fantastic road trip car, again because it's so wildly entertaining to drive. My wife loves road tripping in our 4S (except when I refuse to allow her to eat in the car). The EA plug and charge works perfectly for us and allows my wife to get her blood sugar balanced while the vehicle is charging therefore allowing me to enforce the no food policy with minimal hassle.

Finally, I agree with the sentiment regarding resale. The extra money you spend on the battery will greatly enhance the marketability of the Taycan as most people looking at an EV are obsessed with range.
 

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We are just a few weeks away from the freeze date for our 4S build and just down to a last few decisions. Battery size probably being the biggest of those remaining choices, I was hoping for some help understanding the overwhelming consensus here for the PB+. We are heavily leaning towards the standard battery and struggle with justifying the need to pay $5500 to upgrade it to the PB+. We have almost never taken either of our Macan S‘s on a road trip that would even come close to pushing the limits of the PB. In part because we have another vehicle that is more suited for road trips (hopefully next year that vehicle will become the F150 Lightning), and my wife has a strict “no eating in the Porsche” rule, and road trips with kids almost certainly involve eating in the car. Not to mention real road trips for us involve way more gear than a Taycan, or any Porsche for that matter, could hold.

I understand people’s comments regarding resale value, but I’m also struggling to understand that argument, as it’s $5500 less initial cost, I’d expect it to get less in resale. First, I feel for the most part, trying to configure a car for what the next owner might want can be a bit of a fool’s errand. Sure, there are some features every car needs, but $5500 for 30 miles more range and 50ish more HP seems excessive to me since we don’t need it. Doesn’t it become a bad choice only when in resale you get more then $5500 less than vehicles with the PB+? There‘s little data on Taycans to get a sense of what resale value is, or will be, especially with used car values where there are now. Of course there is no guarantee, but Porsche projects values at the end of a lease to only be $2912 difference, if you figure the max residual for a PB+ vs PB. Also, looking at Teslas, in my research I’m seeing just a couple of thousand difference between their 70kwh and 85/90kwh variants. Again, not proof of anything, but just more circumstantial evidence to lead me to believe that one shouldn’t expect to get $5500+ more in resale over the standard battery. And would actually need to be slightly more if you figure in finance costs of that additional $5500.

What am I missing? Again, we are absolutely certain we would be more the satisfied with the PB for our use and needs, our only holdup has been all the recommendations based on resale value alone. I’ll add, my SA seems ambivalent on the issue. In general he sees value in it, but tends to agree that value won’t equate to improved use for us, or a significant enough ROI to justify it on resale alone if we don’t need it

Thanks for any thoughts on my points, your opinion on those points are welcome and appreciated!
No EV owner has ever said "my vehicle has too much range."
 

DACSarasota

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My dealer stated in a normal second hand market you recover about 50% of the £4,000 cost of PBP at sale. Therefore, is £2,000 actual cost worth an extra 30 mile and 50 BHP. Personally, the 30 miles extra is neither here or there as I would never need it locally and almost on all long distances I would need to stop anyway. It's the £4,000 initial outlay which hurts!!
That is actually a pretty interesting argument and way to look at it. Down the road, you surely will recoup at least some of the costs, so if you can afford it now, it may be worth optioning.

I plan to keep my Taycan for a long time, so it is hard to make decisions today on a "not needed but maybe nice to have in limited circumstances" feature, based on uncertain resale value down the road.
 

maddie

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I was in a similar situation and asked on the forum. My SA didn’t see much value in the larger battery especially as i live in the city. But the responses helped me decide to get the PB+. The deciding factor was not the 30+ mile range or resale value, but rather the power it adds to the 4S, maximizing its potential. Most of us, opted for 4S over RWD, for performance, so why not maximize it. Also depends what else you option in the car. From what I can understand, if you cross $20k in options, you should really consider adding the PB+

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...w-o-performance-battery-plus.6428/#post-91915
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