How I Almost Crushed a $ 100,000 Porsche Taycan into a Wall

In August, Porsche invited reporters to the Hockenheimring to watch Chris Harris get behind the wheel of a Porsche Taycan to attempt the world record for the longest drift in an electric car. Subsequently, Porsche gave reporters a chance to drift the EV around the wet skid pad, and although I had no experience of drifting outside of Jeeps in mud and snow, I was not going. never refuse this opportunity. The result of this YOLO attitude was a virtual crash.

I had just taken a train from Nürnberg to Hockenheim at Porsche’s expense. The car manufacturer had sent my boss a fairly encrypted email a few weeks before asking him if our European correspondent (it was me at the time since I was temporarily hanging out in Germany to take care of a glorious diesel manual minivan) wanted to “cover a variant of Taycan in Germany”. What that meant, I didn’t know. All I knew was I was supposed to be in Hockenheim on August 26 to check out and apparently drive the rear-wheel drive Taycan.

After arriving at the hotel (again, full disclosure: Porsche paid for it), I joined a few other automotive journalists in a van heading for the Hockenheimring. There I met the former Jalopnik writer, the host of Top Gear, and Mensch’s much-loved car. Chris Harris for the first time. We discussed some of our concerns about the speed at which the world is rushing into electric cars, and we talked about the unstable state of the automotive media industry.

But Harris wasn’t there to chat with a nerdy writer from Jalopnik, he was at the Hockeheimring trying to set the world record for the longest electric car drift, and I had been invited to just watch:

Shown in the Top Gear clip above, Harris set the world record at 19 laps. Soon after, a Porsche test driver named Dennis Retera jumped into the Taycan and pulled it off more than 200 turns around the fin circle> 650 feet. Retera spent nearly an hour in a counter-turn, traveling over 26 miles at an average speed of just under 30 mph, for Porsche.

But Harris shouldn’t feel bad about doing only a tenth of a lap more than Retera, not only because the Porsche driving instructor has a lot more experience drifting the Taycan than likely anyone. which on earth, but also because here’s what happened when I gave the Porsche EV to Drift. sedan a crack (the big event really starts around 2:40 a.m.):

At the start of the Top Gear video above, Harris explains how intuitive accelerator pedal calibration is, but later, as he completes his last lap, he says “starting to get a little bit of wrong now with the accelerator ”. I’m not sure what Harris means here, but I’m mentioning it because I clearly had trouble modulating the Taycan’s “throttle” around the skidpad.

Without the sounds and vibrations of the motor, there was not much to guide the entry of my right foot. When I rocked into the pedal to pop the tail out, I really had no idea how much of the pedal input matches the rear wheel torque. With more time I would definitely have an idea, but especially without an engine singing next to those squeaky tires, I found myself stabbing the pedal and waiting to see what the rear wheels would do.

What they did, especially when I dropped the pedal to the ground to cause oversteer, was at once and violently send the car around. With my right foot stupidly on the ground, the Taycan didn’t deliver a smooth wave of torque, it delivered a hammer – just watch how, in the video, the car’s tail instantly comes off, causing chaos total.

The video shows the rear passing the nose of the car twice, with one of those loss of control that involves me sliding off the track straight towards a barrier. As soon as I lost it, I pressed the brake pedal with all my strength to regain control of the car, as I knew there was a wall nearby. The noise of squealing tires gave way to a thud of dirt hitting the underbody, the car leaned hard on the driver’s side, then landed on all four wheels.

Fortunately, a soft spot of dirt had washed away the vehicle’s momentum, bringing the over 4,500-pound machine to rest about six feet from the wall.

I gave the car a little bit of throttle to keep driving, but the vehicle didn’t move. I put the electronic gearshift mounted on the car’s dashboard into reverse, hit the pedal, and the car lurched a little. But he got stuck. A few attempts to switch the car between reverse and drive did not yield any positive results, so Porsche sent in a Cayenne to pull the vehicle off the ground.

Sure, I can talk about pedal calibration all day long, but the reality is the main reason I almost crashed is because, frankly, I lack skill. Give me an all-wheel drive car, open parking and lots of snow, and I can drift all day, but a rear-wheel drive car on a big wet skate? I am terrible. A total amateur.

I will say I’m amazed that Porsche lets journalists with unknown driving experience try to drift ~ 100,000 USD, 400 EV horsepower around a track surrounded by something other than soft pillows (to be honest there was an instructor in the car with me). It could have gone wrong, but I’m happy with the experience, even though I looked a little silly at the end.

Read my full review of the Taycan and my extremely thorough diving in car technology. It’s an impressive machine that deserves a more impressive rider.