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I Ordered a Taycan

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A few data points from Car and driver. Tested: 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid Is Absurdly Quick but Also Has a Few Key Flaws

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I think the Taycan is a great looking car. But it's fundamentally flawed. It's too heavy, it has poor interior packaging (I know there is someone in this thread harping on about rear legroom being bigger than a Model S, but measurements show this not to be the case, not even close), and it's very expensive for what it is. The problem with the Taycan lies in the fact that it's actually based on the Panamera. I know the Porsche marketing department have tried to claim the car is a bespoke chassis, but it's simply not true. The Taycan chassis is called a J1 (shared with the Audi E-tron sedan), which is not a bespoke ground up EV chassis, but a derivative of the VW group MSB chassis which underpins the Panamera and Bentley GT/Flying spur. That's why the Taycan has a transmission tunnel (evident by the hump in the floor), despite having no driveshaft. The tunnel is necessitated by the fact that it's a structural component of the platform. Ground up EVs have flat rear floors. It's part of the reason why the Taycan is about 300kg heavier than it should be, and while the Taycan does get over rated range, it still falls significantly short of the Model S which is larger and faster.
 
I realize this thread is predominantly Taycan v Model S, but for USA drivers, I'd also consider Lucid Air. If "luxury performance" was my desired car, I would probably get a Lucid Air. Faster than Taycan (speed, charging, range), more 2nd row interior room than most cars. I was really looking forward to the Taycan Cross Turismo, but it's more money than I care to spend on a car. I like the idea of raised suspension on the Taycan CT for occasional gravel road driving. Lucid Air - wow those compact, high output motors are pretty cool. But I keep coming back to the Model S as my most likely next car out of the three. It has the right mix (for me) of tech, performance, and aesthetics. Like the Porsche 911--pretty much unchanged look since its inception, the understated elegance of the Model S is hard to beat.
 
Interesting. I'm under 6' and in my 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018 Model S'es when I set my seat to the way I drive, I cannot sit straight behind, but no problems with the Taycan. The new refreshed S must have a lot more room, or you like to sit close to the steering wheel and/or high. Still not enough of a reason for me to get it. If Tesla starts selling it with a regular, stalked steering wheel and proper brakes, I might reconsider, given the long wait times for the Taycan.


I have been able to lay down the seats in the all my Model S (pre yoke versions) - the headrest touches the driver seat on the way down, but it makes it. Darn, I wish we had this conversation before, I would have checked this on the Taycan (I did put the seats down to see the room, but that was before I drove it so don't remember the front seat positions).


What year was the Taycan? I also HATED the 2 speed transmission in a couple of Taycans I've driven before, but when test driving the 22 Taycan Turbo CT, I did not even notice it shifting (and I did floor it a few times in Sport Plus mode testing highway speeds acceleration where the previous Taycans jolted unpleasantly but the new one was butter smooth like Tesla). Not sure what Porsche did, but the shift jolt was not present in my fairly spirited drive (in Sport Plus mode). That and they fixed the hill hold, which in first year Taycans was just horrible.


I know some people are really into it. Personally I can drive either, but from an engineering point of view I prefer the Taycan blended braking better. First, it's up to 260KW regen, vs. Tesla only ~60KW - the engineer in me likes it better. From a user point of view, the blended braking offers the same feeling regardless of outside temperature battery state of charge. It is a bit of a pet peeve of mine when it's cold outside or the car is charged to high SoC, the one-pedal driving braking is significantly reduces or non-existent, which makes the car feel different for the first few miles of driving. Last but not least, coasting requires precision accelerator pedal control with one-pedal driving. Not impossible, but obviously requires more effort and I bet you will never get it perfect so that you don't end up unnecessarily braking when intending to just coast.

Side note, Taycan does have regen setting where it can regen when you pull the foot of the pedal, but it's very weak, so no Tesla one-pedal driving. I hear Mercedes EQS has both, blended brakes and one-pedal driving, and you can choose which one you like. I test drove it once, but forgot to test that feature.


Absolutely! There is no beating the Plaid in straight line acceleration. I would love it if Porsche offered a 1000hp version of the Taycan (without Launch Mode though, as I have no interest in drag racing, hence I have no interest in Taycan Turbo S as the extra power over the Turbo is only for Launch Mode). Maybe by the time they manage to build me one there will be a new more powerful version (probably not, but who knows, at least the matrix headlights will be enabled by then almost for sure).
I have my S seat all the way down and then moved back. I always want to be lower…

For the Taycan Turbo S it was an earlier model. It’s not a bad car at all. Some aspects are stunning, - fit and finish, its presence on the road, the silence its trunk closes with (versus the ugly sounds the S trunk makes when it closes, - not to mention the door handles that always sound like they’re broken).

I had put up a mini review here a while ago:


Since then the the turn signals are fantastic on the S as they were updated in software. No more accidental touches, automatic switching off, no fussing with stalks - it’s my preferred way to signal except when you’re on a roundabout or have to signal one way and then immediately the other while the yoke isn’t straight.
 
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I realize this thread is predominantly Taycan v Model S, but for USA drivers, I'd also consider Lucid Air. ...But I keep coming back to the Model S as my most likely next car out of the three. It has the right mix (for me) of tech, performance, and aesthetics. Like the Porsche 911--pretty much unchanged look since its inception, the understated elegance of the Model S is hard to beat.

Personally, I wonder about Lucid's long term viability as an independent entity, its Saudi investors' deep pockets notwithstanding...

The Air definitely has some intriguing tech, but I don't love the way it looks and my personal preference favors Tesla's "sportier" overall design and demeanor.

Anyone in a position to consider $100K+ vehicles should count themselves very fortunate - I know I do.
 
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Sorry for the back and forth but to reiterate my earlier point, regarding “handling. In the big scheme of things Taycans and MS are similar. I also have a Mac, and an Atom, for proper driving on the road, and the track, respectively. Taycans, Teslas, fat SUVs really don’t “handle” - they are just too heavy period - tires protest loudly and give at every properly taken curve. Think Titanic.

But the Tesla makes for a great commuter, efficient and effortlessly powerful when you need it to be, with lots of room in the back for the trip to the home depot store or road trip, and lots of entertainment options. Think Titanic here too.
I agree with you that a car built for track use will handle better than Model S and Taycan. EV's are simply very heavy (as you say, Titanic but mostly due to weight rather than size). For me, Model S or Taycan is a compromise, a car which I can take to the track once or twice a year, drive spiritedly when road conditions allow, commute daily, haul a family to a restaurant from time to time, bring a large cart of stuff from a store every week, and occasionally bring some larger items from a home improvement store. Between the two, Model S with sport+ suspension and Taycan with PDCC and rear wheel steering, the Taycan handles better, both at speed and in the mall parking lot.
 
The plaid looks really nice on paper, doesn't it. Watching that video though you find out things which don't appear on the graph, such as the brakes overheated and smoked during their 70-0 test, or that the yoke is still very much form over function type design.

That is what I grew to dislike about Tesla, great numbers on paper, but a ton of real life caveats. Tesla will play the numbers to the extreme, like comparing 0-60 times with and without rollout to make their top end cars look better than their lower end, or spec "motor hp" even if the battery and electronics would blow up (literally, the pyro fuse) before the motors reached two thirds of the advertised motor hp (hence the onboard software would never allow it). In almost a decade of driving Model S's, I have yet to reach the rated range on a full charge for any of them, even when I drove it in a very boring way using ACC set at speed limit +5mph. Tesla designs things so they came make claims on paper, gaming the system, whether by using wordsmithing tricks, or designing the car to be able to achieve the metric in a very limited scenario, but hey, compares great on paper.
 
I think the Taycan is a great looking car. But it's fundamentally flawed. It's too heavy, it has poor interior packaging (I know there is someone in this thread harping on about rear legroom being bigger than a Model S, but measurements show this not to be the case, not even close), and it's very expensive for what it is. The problem with the Taycan lies in the fact that it's actually based on the Panamera. I know the Porsche marketing department have tried to claim the car is a bespoke chassis, but it's simply not true. The Taycan chassis is called a J1 (shared with the Audi E-tron sedan), which is not a bespoke ground up EV chassis, but a derivative of the VW group MSB chassis which underpins the Panamera and Bentley GT/Flying spur. That's why the Taycan has a transmission tunnel (evident by the hump in the floor), despite having no driveshaft. The tunnel is necessitated by the fact that it's a structural component of the platform. Ground up EVs have flat rear floors. It's part of the reason why the Taycan is about 300kg heavier than it should be, and while the Taycan does get over rated range, it still falls significantly short of the Model S which is larger and faster.
The more legroom is due to battery design which allows the passengers to sit lower. See post #166 by @doc5339 for some more details. By the way, since Lucid is doing a similar thing with the battery, are you saying Lucid was based on some previous ICE design and not a ground up EV?
 
The plaid looks really nice on paper, doesn't it. Watching that video though you find out things which don't appear on the graph, such as the brakes overheated and smoked during their 70-0 test, or that the yoke is still very much form over function type design.

That is what I grew to dislike about Tesla, great numbers on paper, but a ton of real life caveats. Tesla will play the numbers to the extreme, like comparing 0-60 times with and without rollout to make their top end cars look better than their lower end, or spec "motor hp" even if the battery and electronics would blow up (literally, the pyro fuse) before the motors reached two thirds of the advertised motor hp (hence the onboard software would never allow it). In almost a decade of driving Model S's, I have yet to reach the rated range on a full charge for any of them, even when I drove it in a very boring way using ACC set at speed limit +5mph. Tesla designs things so they came make claims on paper, gaming the system, whether by using wordsmithing tricks, or designing the car to be able to achieve the metric in a very limited scenario, but hey, compares great on paper.
Different strokes. After having driven the Taycan Turbo S a few times, I wouldn’t have one even if the price were the same as the Plaid. Not fast enough, not spacious enough, not practical enough, way too many buttons and screens giving me anxiety. Lots of great things going for it, but just not for me…
 
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Different strokes. After having driven the Taycan Turbo S a few times, I wouldn’t have one even if the price were the same as the Plaid. Not fast enough, not spacious enough, not practical enough, way too many buttons and screens giving me anxiety. Lots of great things going for it, but just not for me…
I absolutely get it, different people like/want/need different things. I get more anxiety when all the touch controls get slower and slower almost every update, or the MCU reboots itself while driving (happens to both our cars, MCU1 and MCU2, with the instrument cluster going on the latter at the same time). At least the physical buttons/stalks continue to work when the MCU craps our and their speed is not affected by the software updates. I wonder how people will feel when their touch blinkers have a 2 second delay to actually work, like touch controls in 5+ year old Model S's today.
 
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Different strokes. After having driven the Taycan Turbo S a few times, I wouldn’t have one even if the price were the same as the Plaid. Not fast enough, not spacious enough, not practical enough, way too many buttons and screens giving me anxiety. Lots of great things going for it, but just not for me…
Agree. Buttons, switches, and knobs....must be a German car. No thanks!
 
Agree. Buttons, switches, and knobs....must be a German car. No thanks!
I'm sure some people would prefer a steering yoke on a touch screen too, or perhaps using their phones as a steering wheel, or two touch screen levers "tank drive" style for higher maneuverability. All kinds of possibilities and all kids of preferences out there. Having been driving Teslas with ever deteriorating (in terms of reliability and performance) and changing touch controls, I'll take a physical knob which always works and never moves to a different touch location (e.g. opposite end of the screen), morphs to a different control (big clear color button, to tiny little monochrome button), or gets pushed under additional layers of menus (like the defrost buttons in latest MCU2 software). But I totally understand that some people love changes. There might even be people who would prefer the buttons to be randomized every time they come into the car.