Porsche and the strange names department

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Porsche Taycan.
Porsche Taycan.

Porsche has done it again – another name that makes no sense. After the Macan, we are now going to get the Taycan. (What’s next? The Tincan?)

Taycan is Porsche’s first battery electric vehicle (BEV) and will go into production next year badged as the Taycan, ahead of an arrival in the world markets in 2020.

The announcement was made on the 70th anniversary of the first Porsche sports car – the 356 ‘No. 1’ Roadster – being registered.

Oliver Blume, the Porsche AG chairman of the executive board said, “Our new electric sports car is strong and dependable. It’s a vehicle that can consistently cover long distances and that epitomizes freedom.”

Porsche is doing more than throwing its hat in the EV ring, it has also confirmed that it will double its investment in electro-mobility, to more than €6 billion by 2022.

Of the additional €3 billion, €500 million will be spent on developing additional Taycan variants, while about €1 billion is set to be used for the electrification and hybridization of the existing Porsche model line-up.

The four-door Taycan has two permanently-excited synchronous motors that produce a combined power output of more than 440 kW.

Thanks to its instant thrust, the all-wheel-drive Taycan is claimed to sprint from standstill to 100 km/h in less than 3.5 seconds while on the way to 200 km/h in less than 12 seconds.

Under NEDC standards, the four-seat Taycan is projected to have a maximum driving range of more than 500 km, while its 800 volt electrical system can recoup 100 km in just four minutes when using fast charging. (The 800 volt system would worry me a lot more than how far can it go?)

Much has been said about ‘range anxiety’ with pure EV’s, forgetting that vehicles with ICE (internal combustion engines) also have a finite range, depending upon how large the fuel tank is, but no great publicity has been given to that simple fact.