Can a Hybrid 911 Possibly be Great to Drive? - TheSmokingTire

Matt Farah here from the Andalusian coast of Spain, and I have flown halfway around the world to answer one basic question. Can a hybrid 911 be cool? Maybe it can, maybe it can't. And in this video, we're gonna drive two different cars. This is an all-wheel drive convertible in Carmine red, and then I've got a rear-wheel drive coupe waiting for me at the Ascari Circuit. We're gonna get to try both out, but there's a lot to cover. So let's get in the car and hit the bricks. All right, so before we even go anywhere, the easiest way to demonstrate the changes to this is just to turn it on, because it doesn't have a starter motor anymore. It actually doesn't have an alternator either. It also doesn't have a traditional air conditioner. It has an electric air conditioner, all of which run through the new 400-volt hybrid. So there's actually no belt drive on the car, and because there's no starter motor, it doesn't start so much as just be on. So listen. So it just, it doesn't crank. It just fires without cranking. That's really interesting to me, and it makes the start-stop a lot better. There's two electric motors. There's one in the PDK gearbox, and there's another one inside the turbocharger, and I say the turbocharger because this new 3.6-liter engine only has one. It's the first time in 30 years. 1994 was the last time that a 911 only had one turbo rather than two, but because the electric motor can spool that one turbo so fast, you only need the one. Guys, whether your collector car is a hybrid or old-school gasoline, keeping your battery healthy is absolutely key, and that's why CTEK is the official battery tender partner of not only the Smokin' Tire, but Westside Collector Car Storage as well. Here, it is our job to keep these cars charged up and ready to drive, and CTEK's got us covered. Whether you're talking about a traditional AGM battery or the brand-new lithium stuff, or even the very high-end specialty tenders like this Porsche one, which is labeled Porsche, but clearly a CTEK, they have it all covered. Even the very highest-end brands like Ferrari, Bentley, and Rolls-Royce are private-labeling CTEK chargers for their own cars. Hit the link in the video description, get a CTEK for your car, and make sure that if you're not driving it for a couple weeks at a time, it's ready to go when you need it. Thank you to CTEK for sponsoring today's video. So, as we pull away from a stop in normal mode, right away, the engine's revving, it's going through the gears, but as it upshifts through the gears, it's so smooth. It's got the assistance of that 110-pound feet of electric torque. The car doesn't have any range, so to speak. You cannot drive it on electricity alone. The electricity is only there to assist the gasoline, but my biggest complaint of any of those three-liter turbo-powered 992 cars, the Carrera, Carrera S, Carrera T, Carrera GTS, all of which had very similar powertrains, was that in normal mode, the engine would sort of bog a bit and upshift early to try to save fuel. So you'd have to drive it in sport mode for it to be, like, bearable. Now, it upshifts even earlier in that normal mode, but it's so much smoother, and it's so much less vibratey, less boggy, and you're able to drive around normally with the engine under 2,000 RPM and have plenty of power to get up and over little hills, to accelerate from a stop, making the sort of everyday road-driving experience much more pleasant. They've also recalibrated the suspension, not just for stiffness and rebound and whatever, but to work with that 400-volt system, which can compute and change settings much faster than the old system. So even with the same hardware, the 400-volt system allows it to respond, adapt, and make changes much faster than ever before. The battery itself is small. It's 1.9 kilowatt hours, which is similar to the battery used in the Ferrari 296, the E-Ray, and the McLaren Artura. Small, but unlike those other cars, it doesn't drive wheels. It only drives that gearbox motor, which then also recuperates into the battery, as well as the turbocharger motor. So we haven't even really gotten to that. Oh, it's saying my active lane-keep assist is not possible because this camera is covering the sensor. My bad. Let's now flick it over into Sport, and that way we'll get into a little bit of boost here. Manual. So one turbocharger with an e-motor in between the compressor and the turbine wheel, right? And that allows it to spool up faster. Virtually instant boost off of idle. Net result, 0.4 seconds less in the zero to 60 time. So instead of 3.4 seconds, this will do it in 3.0 seconds. And almost all of those gains come in the first 60 feet. This engine has a bit of a deeper tone, that extra 600 cc's of displacement versus the old GTS. And as if PDK couldn't get any smoother, this hybrid system fills in every last bit of torque. So the gear changes in normal mode are basically imperceptible. And in the Sport modes, they're just as fast as ever, but somehow even smoother. Virtually no change in torque with the gear change. That's really amazing. But Matt, you say it's heavier. And that is true. It is 103 pounds heavier than a comparable last gen GTS, and gaining weight is bad, that's true. Believe me, if anyone knows that gaining weight is bad, it's your boy, Matt Farah. But there are trade-offs. And I would say, considering the benefits of the hybrid system, for certain people, the trade-off is worth it. Am I saying that my dream 911 is a hybrid? No, it's an ST with a manual gearbox and a race car flywheel and clutch. But if I wanted an everyday 911, the 100 pounds is worth the trade in power, smoothness, and efficiency. Speaking of efficiency, the new GTS is more efficient all the time. But one thing Porsche can't really talk about, but I can, is how much more efficient it is at speed. You know, when manufacturers quote fuel economy numbers, they're talking about during that cycle that they test on, right? They don't really talk about the fact that it's more fuel efficient when you're going fast. But this new engine design allows for the ability to keep a better air-fuel ratio and to use less fuel to cool the heads and cool the engine than before, and that means more fuel efficiency. Plus, the fact that the turbocharger can regenerate power using the electric motor inside it, that also slows down the exhaust gases to help engine brake and reduces emissions at the same time. So there's bits of efficiency that come from everywhere, and those same bits of efficiency translate into speed when you output them the other way. Bottom line, this is really, really cool. But we're on our way to a racetrack right now, the Ascari Circuit. I've never been, I've heard great things, I can't wait. The four-wheel drive convertible makes an excellent touring car, but what I really wanna see is how my favorite variant, the rear-wheel drive GTS Coupe, performs on the track. So let's cut here and skip to there. What a treat, what a treat. I have been hearing about the Ascari Circuit for many years, and look at this, finally here on a beautiful day. The thing is, I don't get to use the entire circuit. I'm using about a third of it, that way each journalist can have their own little section to make videos. So the section I have chosen is quite technical and tight and beautiful. The tarmac is very smooth. And this is a GTS rear-wheel drive Coupe. Now that the manual is gone, this is the lightest available configuration for this car. And right away, going from the convertible four-wheel drive to the Coupe rear-wheel drive, world of difference. I would say the most complimentary thing that you could say about a hybrid sports car is that it doesn't feel like a hybrid. And out here, that is the truth. It revs up like a 911 should. The sound is totally unique. It's more baritone, it's definitely loud. And you don't notice the battery at all, other than making those shifts extra smooth. And the car feels fast. I haven't even mentioned it, but we're pushing 532 horsepower and 449 pound-feet of torque. That's total system output. The turn-in is really good. The steering with the rear steer felt very aggressive out on the mountain road, but here on the track, it feels right. Just a little bit of pushiness on the power, but the balance is very, very good, and the agility is very good. The fact that they can have the same Bilstein dampers as before, but now that they're running through that 400-volt system with new, faster processors, the car feels even more hunkered down and stable. Those movable vents in the front are, of course, open to cool the brakes and the radiators. They can close for better efficiency in the eco modes, but I'm pushing them. And, woof, this one has the 10-piston ceramic brakes, so a little bit of understeer with a lift tucks the nose right down. The balance is excellent, guys. Man, this thing, the word that keeps coming into my head here is control. I feel like I have a lot of it. The engine, because it doesn't have that belt drive anymore, it's been freed of a bunch of things that cause drag, and consequently, it revs up fast, really fast. Not ST-fast with that super-light flywheel, but definitely faster than any of those three-liter cars. And if I leave it a gear higher, like coming out of that chicane there, I can use the torque of the E-motor, so I don't have to downshift to get all the way to the top of that power band coming out of the slow corners. That saves me time. All these improvements, despite the weight, led to 8.7 seconds quicker than the old car around the Nordschleife. Seven minutes, 16 seconds. That's flying, flying for a mass-production car. There we go, making it move just a little bit. What a lovely car this is. Really takes bumps very well. It's tight. Woof. I mean, it feels like a motorsport-grade product. The inputs are right. Gearbox is super-fast. The brakes are exceptional. And okay, it's not the ST or a GT3 RS, but this is a daily driver Porsche that happens to be pretty amazing on the racetrack right now. We don't have Cup 2s. We have regular Goodyear tires. Now we're really gonna open her up. We got a bonus session to see what she'll do on the fast side of the circuit. Oh, wow, it really rotates nicely, diving over that crest. Much bigger, faster corners here. Wow, really kind of hits that red line hard when you get there. No automatic upshifts from this car. Tightens. Remember the tightens. Totally different meaning of that. Sort of a deceptively high digital red line there. What a beautiful place to drive a sports car. Oh, wow. Really open on the front straight. Exercise those brakes a little bit. Load it up down there, and then we're gonna unload it as we dive over this crest. Unload. That feels great. Woo! Guys, this is a fast car. Really, really fast car. Oh, my God. That's fantastic. On that little tight section, we got the agility. On this side, we get the speed, and there is a lot of speed. Wow. Really, really quick, this thing. Do the two, three shift flat. It actually kicks. Let's just take one cool down for me, not the car, because woo! Couple of downsides. The big one is the price. It's really, really expensive. You start putting options on this thing, and you're into a number that starts with a two, which for people who want a GTS, which is upper middle class in Porsche speak, that's a lot of money. Inflation has something to do with that, but this car has gotten expensive, and it doesn't necessarily look like a $200,000 car to most folks. When I hear twos, I think GT3s, I think turbos. I don't necessarily think GTS, but having said that, the performance is there. I mean, this has the kind of performance you'd get from a turbo of only a couple years ago. Then there's the potential for long-term reliability, and I say potential, because Porsche has been building hybrids for a long time. They're not known to be horror shows. Not saying they're perfect, but they're not reliable tragedies. They're fine, and so the third owner may have to be concerned about the complexity of this vehicle over time. Is it Porsche's job to build cars for the third owner? No, not necessarily. It's not, and they offer a good long warranty. Let's do another flyer. The steering's better in the rear-wheel drive one than the all-wheel drive one for sure. I understand why someone might want the all-wheel drive, but and the turbo just spools up so fast. This new engine is a hot rod, man. Bigger displacement, single turbo, spooled by electricity for full boost off of idle. Come on. Admittedly, many of the best technologies in this car you feel on the street when you're coming from a stop to go, when you're on light pedal and the engine no longer needs to bog because it's got the e-assist, and I have to say that's a good thing because it fixed all the issues I had with the economy modes in the old three-liter turbo cars, and then out here on the track when you're going quick, it's only been made better. The hybrid system totally disappears into the background, and what you're left with is just a really, really fast 911. So, is the hybrid 911 good? Short answer, yes it is. Thanks to Porsche for having me out here. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you later. And remember, always fight your tickets on the Off the Record app available in the Android and iOS store or go to offtherecord.com slash TST.