Smug. Very smug.
Next year, Porsche will introduce its Cayenne S Hybrid SUV to the US market. This past week I had a chance to meet the chief engineer and experience both the Cayenne S Hybrid and the European market Cayenne Diesel.
The V6 Clean Diesel makes up the overwhelming majority of European Cayenne sales, but it’s unlikely the Diesel Cayenne will arrive in the US anytime soon. With characteristic Teutonic reasoning, German carmakers think Americans should do what they are told and buy lots of German-made Clean Diesels. Cars in Context agrees with the argument if not the arrogance, as Clean Diesels are clean enough to be 50-state legal, and deliver exceptionally (and consistently) high fuel economy, particularly when paired with a mechanically efficient dual-clutch transmission. Please reference the VW Jetta TDI piece posted farther down this blog.
But thanks to the success of the Toyota Prius, a car that in time will take a prominent place in US cultural history for its impact on our society, the Germans have lost the marketing and PR battle, and wily Porsche has decided to adapt rather than fight. Porsche has always built products they can sell at a profit, a philosophy that goes back to the cash-strapped days in the shed at Gmund, Austria, at the close of World War II, and the first decade after the war when long-term survival of Porsche as anything other than an engineering firm was not certain. If Americans want hybrids, Porsche will make a hybrid that fits the Porsche brand.
The Smug Cloud
With all due deference to the wit and wisdom of the creators of “South Park,” you’ll find a thick cloud of Smug in places like Malibu, Santa Monica and other fashionable cities across the Sun Belt where people flaunt their Green credentials by driving a hybrid. I know this type all too well, as my dear brother and his wife, both practicing attorneys, own a luxurious hybrid SUV that so perfectly fits their upper-middle-class pseudo-Marxist and very, very smug viewpoint. They radiate smugness whenever driving around in their hybrid SUV—the Smug gets particularly thick when they’re near Berkeley or have crossed the bridge into “The City.” They’re saving the planet, don’t you know?
Jokes aside, fact is, Toyota won, the Germans lost, and no amount of PR over Audi Diesel victories at Le Mans is going to significantly change the situation anytime soon, though hope springs eternal for greater application of Diesel. A fact Porsche is wisely acknowledging. Beyond that, Toyota hybrids not only got to market early, but they perform very well, and keep getting better.
Worse yet, the ideologically driven Green Marxists at the California Air Resources Board are dead-set against Diesel technology, CARB loves hybrids and electrics, and President Obama has in great part handed California the right to dictate automotive emissions policy for the rest of the nation. (http://www.killcarb.org/). Looking at this landscape, Porsche is wisely developing hybrids.
The Good Dr. Leiters
Porsche’s Cayenne Hybrid is a typically smart Porsche solution, one worthy of the Porsche name. At a Porsche tech seminar held last week, I met with the chief engineer, Michael Leiters, who had a cobby prototype available for demo rides. You can find a copy of his presentation here.
Leiters has developed a parallel full-hybrid system that fits the logic of existing Porsche powertrains. Porsche places the 38 kW electric motor between a 333 hp supercharged gas engine and an 8-speed automatic transmission. There’s a clutch between the engine and 38 kW electric motor that engages and disengages the gas engine in 300 milliseconds, allowing the gas engine to shut down to enhance fuel mileage. Cayenne S Hybrid’s gas engine has the expected start-stop function in traffic, a technology that cuts down on emissions produced in urban stop-and-go traffic.
Early in his presentation, Leiters addressed the issue of batteries, stating that lithium-ion could not deliver the needed power, and that they generate too much heat—they are prone to catching fire now and then in laptops—so the Cayenne Hybrid has a conventional nickel metal hydride battery pack (NiMH), just like you’ll find in a Prius and for much the same reason. They’re proven, reliable and deliver the needed juice for a Porsche driving experience. Tesla and firms like Quantum Technologies may be playing with lithium-ion battery packs with water-cooling jackets, but this approach is not yet feasible for serious production vehicles.
As in any thoroughly developed hybrid, whenever you hit the brakes the electric motor reverses polarity to act like a generator, capturing the kinetic energy and converting it into electricity that goes to the battery. That’s regenerative braking. Speed that’s built up is not wasted, but instead captured and put in the bank (the battery pack) for later use. Think of it as recycled speed.
Sailing
The clutch linking the gas engine and motor makes this a full hybrid system, able to alternate between gas and electric power, or combine them. That clutch between the engine and electric motor of the Cayenne Hybrid also allows a brilliant and uniquely Porsche twist: “sailing.” What does that mean? At highway speeds up to 86 mph, if you back off the throttle, the gas engine will fall idle and you can “sail” for awhile with the electric motor as the sole provider of motive power, thus pumping up your average miles per gallon. How far you can “sail” is not fully defined, as highway speeds would eat up the energy stored in the battery pretty quickly. We assume that when the battery reaches a certain level of charge, the gas motor is reengaged. This is a very cool Porsche technology and I look forward to a bit of sailing in the coming year.
As you’ll see in the PowerPoint posted above, the Cayenne Hybrid will deliver V8 performance, which is why it’s called a Cayenne S Hybrid. Fuel mileage will be somewhat less than in the Lexus 450h, which Porsche acknowledges as the gold standard of hybrid SUVs.
A hybrid Panamera is being developed in concert with the Cayenne S Hybrid, as the Porsche hybrid system is made of readily packaged modules. Porsche believes that it must be a responsible citizen manufacturing vehicles with a greener footprint. So long as it allows the more hot-blooded among us to own powerful gasoline-engine 911s and Boxsters, I’m OK with that.
Best of all, the residents of Malibu, Santa Monica, the Bay area, and other such boroughs can own a Porsche with HYBRID scrawled across its flanks, thus proving their Ed Begley Save The Planet credentials.
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