Re: 918 latest news
The price is too high for me reginos but having seen the car first hand now and hearing more about the tech involved it's understandable why it costs as much as it does. Apparently the development cars that are being driven pretty hard in the US just now are achieving the equivalent of 63 miles per gallon which is astonishing. If driven in a more conservative fashion it is possible to break through the 90 MPG barrier. The green lobby are going to be left scratching their heads by this car.
The battery tech has also moved forward significantly and the batteries will have a 7 year warranty. A quick charge of the batteries can be achieved in 30 minutes with a special charging unit and I think they said it can be done in 2 hours with an ordinary power connection. Because of the size and power of the batteries Porsche use on this car, it means they are able to re-charge them very quickly whilst driving. The development mule was certainly recharging it's batteries extremely well during the two laps I had in the car with something like a 10% recharged achieved in that short space of time. If this is the power train of the future than I have to say I can't wait to see it filter down to the regular sports cars as they improve the packaging and miniaturise certain components.
One of the interesting things I was told is that as with the Mclaren 12C it seems that Porsche may well keep rolling out further developments with the 918 with owners able to take their car to their service centre for continuous improvements and possibly power upgrades. The service interval is also an incredible 2 years or 20k miles like the rest of the sports car range so it seems real lessons were learned from the Carrera GT which is a costly car to maintain.