Aurelia Butler

From the May 2023 issue of Car and Driver.WHAT IT ISAside from the follow-up to one of Porsche’s best models, it will be Porsche’s first electric sports car. Not a big deal, right?WHY IT MATTERSAn established Porsche model going electric will send shock waves through the industry. The 911 may be Porsche’s gold standard, but the 718 is a high-visibility car, and its success or failure could dictate the market direction of electric sports cars.PLATFORMThis will be the first Porsche on the Volkswagen Group’s PPE platform. That means almost nothing will carry over from the current 718. Chassis balance will remain, well, balanced because the battery will occupy most of the space aft of the firewall where the engine is today, to ensure that the current car’s mid-engine handling will remain intact. A 900-volt electrical architecture will ensure the fastest DC charging.POWERTRAINPorsche is targeting a curb weight of 3650 pounds. At that weight, the car won’t need massive energy capacity to deliver strong acceleration. Expect the base model to have a single motor with at least 450 horsepower driving the rear wheels. Later, a second motor driving the front wheels will bring all-wheel drive to the 718, and eventually, there will be a model with upward of 1000 horses.COMPETITIONLate-model used Boxsters and Caymans; Tesla Roadster (if that ever gets off the ground); Lotus Emira.WHAT MIGHT GO WRONGGetting the emotion right will make or break the 718 EV. If the car is too clinical, as many EVs are, the enthusiasm to own one will wane. There is a good chance no one wants their toy car to be an EV. At least not yet.ESTIMATED ARRIVAL AND PRICEExpect to see the 718 EV early next year, with a fall 2024 on-sale date. The Porsche hierarchy will remain, but the 718 EV will cost about $15K more than the current base 718. Look for pricing to start near $80,000 and, as usual, near-endless factory options.More Cars Worth Waiting ForExecutive EditorK.C. Colwell is Car and Driver’s executive editor, who covers new cars and technology with a keen eye for automotive nonsense and with what he considers to be great car sense, which is a humblebrag. On his first day at C/D in 2004, he was given the keys to a Porsche 911 by someone who didn’t even know if he had a driver’s license. He also is one of the drivers who set fast laps at C/D’s annual Lightning Lap track test. More

Toyota published two teaser photos to Instagram this week showing off details of the upcoming 2024 Tacoma TRD Pro, giving us an idea of what sorts of updates to expect from the refresh of the popular mid-size pickup. The first image is a close-up shot of a rear wheel sporting a rugged black-painted design with a TRD badge, wrapped in a capable all-terrain tire. What’s most interesting about this photo is the brake setup that lies beyond the wheel. It’s a disc brake, the first for a Tacoma TRD Pro. Before this, the TRD Pro had to make do with drums in the rear. No longer, it seems. The next image gives us a close-up look at the Tacoma TRD Pro’s front suspension setup. Specifically, we can see a Fox QS3 coil-over with Toyota’s signature red spring. The QS3 design currently isn’t used in any production car, according to Fox’s website. Right now, you can only buy them for off-road vehicles like side-by-sides. This could mean a big improvement over the current TRD Pro’s setup for 2024. Toyota has yet to release a date for the 2024 Toyota Tacoma’s reveal, though considering the constant teasing it’s been doing this past month, we expect a full premiere within the month. Road & Track staff writer with a taste for high-mileage, rusted-out projects and amateur endurance racing. More

SAE International has just published a paper co-authored by Car and Driver’s testing director, Dave VanderWerp, showing that, in our testing, EVs are far worse at matching EPA estimates than gas-powered vehicles.The paper compares EPA fuel-economy and range estimates to the results of C/D’s real-world highway tests, with EVs failing to meet the EPA’s range figures on average.The authors propose solutions like more standardized testing procedures and the inclusion of both city and highway range figures on new vehicles’ Monroney price stickers.A new paper published by SAE International uses Car and Driver’s real-world highway test data to show that electric vehicles underperform on real-world efficiency and range relative to the EPA figures by a much greater margin than internal-combustion vehicles. While the latter typically meet or exceed the EPA-estimated highway fuel economy numbers, EVs tend to fall considerably short of the range number on the window sticker. The paper, written by Car and Driver’s testing director, Dave VanderWerp, and Gregory Pannone, was presented this week at SAE International’s annual WCX conference. It points to a need for revised testing and labeling standards for EVs moving forward. “Basically we’ve taken a look at how vehicles perform relative to the values on the window sticker, looking at the difference between what the label says and what we actually see in our real-world highway test,” explained VanderWerp. “We see a big difference in that gap between gas-powered vehicles and the performance of EVs. The real question is: When first-time customers are buying EVs, are they going to be pleasantly surprised or disappointed by the range?”On Car and Driver’s 75-mph highway test, more than 350 internal-combustion vehicles averaged 4.0 percent better fuel economy than what was stated on their labels. But the average range for an EV was 12.5 percent worse than the price sticker numbers.Lucid MotorsOne reason the paper suggests for why EVs fail to match expectations is how the range is calculated. While separate city and highway range figures are computed behind closed doors, only a combined number is presented to consumers. The combined rating is weighted 55 percent in favor of the city figure, where EVs typically perform better. This inflates the range estimates, making it harder to match in real-world highway driving. The paper proposes publishing both city and highway range figures—as with fuel-economy estimates for gas-powered vehicles—to give shoppers a more holistic sense of a vehicle’s abilities.More on Electric RangeThe way the tests are conducted also skews the reported range figure. Unlike Car and Driver’s real-world test—carried out at a constant 75 mph—the EPA’s cycle is variable, with the speed increasing and decreasing over the course of the test. While this is detrimental to the results for gas vehicles, which tend to be most efficient at a steady rpm, the ability to regenerate energy under braking leads to higher range results for EVs, which are shifted even higher by the slight bias towards the city results in the combined rating. The EPA’s highway cycle is conducted at significantly lower speeds than Car and Driver’s 75-mph test, with the initial EPA results then multiplied by a reduction factor to simulate the effect of higher speeds. Automakers can chose between running a two-cycle test—where the data is multiplied by a standard 0.7 adjustment factor—or carrying out a five-cycle test in an attempt to earn a smaller reduction factor, making the label figure higher. That means range figures aren’t perfectly comparable across different vehicles.Porsche”There’s a balance,” explained VanderWerp. “The marketing team wants to tout a big range number, but to customers you want to be conservative.” This leads to different approaches from various brands. The German automakers—BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche—typically provide a relatively conservative range figure, allowing us to meet or even at times exceed the range numbers in Car and Driver’s real-world tests. Tesla, meanwhile, pursues an impressive figure for its window stickers, and ends up returning real-world results that are on average two times as far off the label value as most EVs. A range discrepancy between EVs from different companies might not be as extreme as the numbers would suggest. “400 miles of stated range for a Tesla and 300 miles for a Porsche is pretty much the same number at real highway speeds,” VanderWerp said.The paper recommends that the EPA shift the reduction factor closer to 0.6, which would result in range estimates that closely correlate with the results of the real-world efficiency test. But having the same test procedure for all cars is also crucial. “Every automaker could aggressively use the five-cycle test and get a better reduction factor, but then more people end up being disappointed in the numbers,” VanderWerp said. “They should all be tested the same, and it should be closer to the real world than it is now.” The paper can be found in full at SAE’s website.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More