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Tesla Model S vs the Porsche Taycan How do they stack up against each other?

Week 103.0 — 14th October '19

Believe it or not, EVs are the future. Tesla kickstarted the revolution and now everyone is trying to catch up. The most surprising thing to me is that everyone else is trying to eclipse Tesla in one area rather taking them head on.

The likes of Honda are dipping their toes and along with Nissan, Renault and VW they all seem to be tackling range anxiety. Sadly none of the above have taken Tesla up on being able to use the Supercharger network.

BMW, Mercedes and Audi are all on the plugin hybrid or mild hybrid train at the moment. The latter championed by Toyota as the immediate future.

Almost all of the above has some optional intelligence built in to cars, whether that's lane detection or the ability to predict collisions or automatically park.

The last aspect Tesla that is being attacked is performance, and that's where Porsche come in with the Taycan

I really like the Taycan but the Tesla Roadster is better looking (but less practical) but of the two being discussed here, I prefer the looks of the current Tesla Model S. A car that also has plenty of aftermarket options.

Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan compared

Taking the most powerful models of each available, this is how they stack up today.

Stat Tesla Model S Performance Porsche Taycan Turbo S
Range up to 400miles up to 256miles
Battery size 95kWh 93.4kWh
Doors 5 5
0-60mph 2.4s 2.8s
Top speed 155mph 161mph
Full Autonomy In development Unknown
Powertrain Dual motors Dual motors
Other HEPA air filter
Sentry mode
Dog mode
Ability to repeatedly use launch control
Charge from 5-80% in 22.5 minutes
Base Price £92,300 £138,826

When I compare these figures, it's the Tesla that makes more sense, pound for pound, but there's always going to be the allure of the Porsche brand, but right now a Porsche Panamera E-Hybrid would probably be a better comparison for the Tesla. Nowhere near as green, but arguably more desirable and cheaper, starting at just under £84,000.

Where are our autonomous vehicles?

Circling round back to the fact that Tesla are pulling themselves into different directions and making progress in each of them, the bit that's really missing is autonomy.

Fully Charged have covered the topic, but no one is as vocal or as proud of their autonomous future as Tesla and it really should be the future of where we want cars to go.

Penn's Sunday School podcast recently had Gary Marcus as a guest where they had a good discussion covering why autonomy is difficult and how a machine may not be able to get it right all the time because of the lack of nuance, but this is the kind of moonshot we want, not just better range or faster charging.

Update

A little late getting this update posted, but a couple of days ago, Porsche posted a photo of the Taycan 4S. What I didn't appreciate at the time was that brings the cost down from close to £140,000 to 'just' £83,367. That's cheaper than the Model S and inline with the hybrid Panamera.

Range and performance suffer, 20% less for the former and an additional second on the 0-60 time.

If I was buying, it just got a lot harder to choose.

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Notable

Quick links and commentary on interesting articles, videos and more throughout the week.

  1. 103.1 – Monday
    1. Teach them all the things swiss-miss.com
    2. This is what happens when you re-upload a YouTube video 1000 times Marques Brownlee on youtube.com
    3. The person who is doing it swiss-miss.com
    4. Misremembered landscapes and nearly forgotten memories kottke.org
    5. 'Onward' trailer Pixar on youtube.com
    6. Elizabeth Warren declares open season on Facebook's false ad policy axios.com
  2. 103.2 – Tuesday
    1. "Disney's Jungle Cruise" Trailer The Rock on youtube.com
  3. 103.3 – Wednesday
    1. Cosmic dinner Earth tray (Asia) Seletti on shop.gessato.com
    2. Neptune @wired on instagram.com
    3. New warning about SUVs' climate toll axios.com
    4. The most important pieces of code in the history of computing kottke.org
    5. The UK is set to give up the best deal any EU member state has ever had newstatesman.com
    6. Banksy™ Rug shop.grossdomesticproduct.com
  4. 103.4 – Thursday
    1. Polaroid Lab @polaroidoriginals on instagram.com
    2. Coca-Cola Tic Tacs theawesomer.com
    3. 25 Fun facts about food from Gastropod kottke.org
    4. Good Samaritan tracks down owner of lost wallet by sending message through 1p online bank transfers standard.co.uk
    5. Electric cars travel three times as far as fossil-fuel counterparts for same price independent.co.uk
    6. Beautiful drone-lit landscapes by Reuben Wu kottke.org
    7. Volvo XC40 Recharge theawesomer.com
  5. 103.5 – Friday
    1. Engineering with Origami Veritasium on youtube.com
    2. Samsung Galaxy S10 fingerprint sensor can be circumvented with $3 screen protector daringfireball.net
  6. 103.6 – Saturday
    1. The future of staying fit @wearesparklin on instagram.com
    2. Analogue Pocket   $199 analogue.co
    3. Ye Olde Mad-Lib Pub Crawl Generator pudding.cool
    4. The argument against a People's Vote... @paddyashdown on twitter.com
    5. Thor's Hammer keyring   £4.95 $ amazon.co.uk
    6. Year Zero: The making of Ronaldo fourfourtwo.com
    7. "Rattlesnake" trailer Netflix on youtube.com
  7. 103.7 – Sunday
    1. Actually insane (painting prices on to car) r/NotTheNoah on reddit.com
    2. Be Kind theoatmeal.com
    3. Counterfeiting Microsoft Windows restore CDs landed Me in prison for a year VICE on youtube.com
    4. Gun Shop: 2,328 guns at 24 guns per second kottke.org
    5. We're taking more photos than ever — but do we still treasure them? artsy.net
    6. How to capture scientific images of the Moon skyatnightmagazine.com

Jump to notable items for Week #102, Week #104 , view the notable archive or my favourites.

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