Model S to the Nürburgring Next Week!

[Dangerous Fish]

Not sure why there's discussion about Cup 2R while the Instagram closeup photo of the Performance Raven seen near the Nürburgring clearly shows a standard Cup 2.

The Cup 2R logo has a different layout with Pilot and Sport on top of each other.

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There are two Model Ss being talked about.
The one outside the Hotel with a Gurney flap and Cups2s registered in NL.
Another one on a truck reported to be on Cup2Rs registered in US.

Neither or both might or might not be anything to do with Elon's tweet.

 

[Prachatice]

The fact that were even having this conversation is the coolest part of all of this. This could not have happened only a few years ago. Tesla is instrumental in bringing in this level of competition which was the plan all along. Who cares what ultimately happens. They've already achieved their goal of bringing EVs into the mainstream. Way to go Tesla!!

 

[Etna]

Another one on a truck reported to be on Cup2Rs registered in US.
Neither or both might or might not be anything to do with Elon's tweet.

The one on the flatbed is not a Raven, therefore not a credible candidate.

A car with US license plates on a flatbed in Germany is something completely normal: How to Ship Your Car to USA Military Bases in Germany - K International

 

[busaman]

it will be fun to see as i have driven mine arround there and the brakes started to fade after the first six corners (and there is 150 of them) im no pro driver in a car but im no slouch either the only way to get a stock ms fast round the track is to miss the corners completely which i almost did twice when the anchors were not strong enough to pull up... i stand by my word a stock ms will be rubbish...compared even to a mini cooper..

 

[Uncle Paul]

The future of braking solutions for relatively heavy EV's will be on board capacitors. They will allow serious braking with advanced brake regeneration systems.
Juice will flow, absorbing tremendous amounts of kenetic energy, slowing the car. That stored energy will be instantly available to re-accelerate the heavy car off the next corner. This will add range and lower lap times.

Standard friction brakes will just be used for the fine control and balance going in, and through the corner.

Similar to how current EVs use their regenerative brakes to take most of the workload off street driving, and eliminate brakes overheating on long down hills. Taken to the next level will use the technology of Maxwell.

 

[Simon21]

The future of braking solutions for relatively heavy EV's will be on board capacitors. They will allow serious braking with advanced brake regeneration systems.
Juice will flow, absorbing tremendous amounts of kenetic energy, slowing the car. That stored energy will be instantly available to re-accelerate the heavy car off the next corner. This will add range and lower lap times.

Standard friction brakes will just be used for the fine control and balance going in, and through the corner.

Similar to how current EVs use their regenerative brakes to take most of the workload off street driving, and eliminate brakes overheating on long down hills. Taken to the next level will use the technology of Maxwell.

I think you're right. I feel like my BMW has a lot more regen power than the Tesla. They can definitely improve in that regards

 

[busaman]

the only problem with super capacitors it there is a corner on the ring every few seconds with no time to regen much

 

[PhantomX]

the only problem with super capacitors it there is a corner on the ring every few seconds with no time to regen much

Also can regen ever be powerful enough to apply 2 to 3 G, or more worth of braking forces? This is not a concern for regular street car, but once you get into high performance sports cars or hyper cars, that type of braking is required. And if you get into F1 level, that's up to 6G of deceleration.

 

[Saghost]

The future of braking solutions for relatively heavy EV's will be on board capacitors. They will allow serious braking with advanced brake regeneration systems.
Juice will flow, absorbing tremendous amounts of kenetic energy, slowing the car. That stored energy will be instantly available to re-accelerate the heavy car off the next corner. This will add range and lower lap times.

Standard friction brakes will just be used for the fine control and balance going in, and through the corner.

Similar to how current EVs use their regenerative brakes to take most of the workload off street driving, and eliminate brakes overheating on long down hills. Taken to the next level will use the technology of Maxwell.

Big capacitors have two problems. First, the voltage at the capacitor is proportional to the charge in it, so they really can't live on the same circuit as the battery pack and you'll need a dc dc converter to connect whichever one isn't in line with the drive inverters, which will impose power limits.

Second, in a collision they tend to dump all of their energy instantly, creating a big fire and electrocution risk.

 

[P100D_Me]

i stand by my word a stock ms will be rubbish...compared even to a mini cooper..

I did find it funny (and sad) that here is you saying you've actually driven your Model-S around this track/road, it was terrible and yet people are hitting the disagree button on your post! People need to accept this is how it is with the Model-S at the moment.

People don't have to like the Taycan but the facts are Porsche knew their customers would expect their EV would be able to do this so they engineered it as best as they could to cope. Back when the Model-S was being designed I'd say most of the engineering decision makers would not have even known how to spell Nürburgring yet alone design a car to run laps on it (or care to).

So what if the Model-S can't run 8 minutes flat out around that track, it certainly doesn't affect my day to day driving experience and it is unlikely to affect majority of Model-S owners. Elon shouldn't get caught up in this with Porsche because at the moment he will just make the Model-S look bad in the eyes of those that don't understand the intent and differences between both cars.

 

[PhantomX]

I did find it funny (and sad) that here is you saying you've actually driven your Model-S around this track/road, it was terrible and yet people are hitting the disagree button on your post!

People don't have to like the Taycan but the facts are Porsche knew their customers would expect their EV would be able to do this so they engineered it as best as they could to cope. Back when the Model-S was being designed I'd say most of the engineering decision makers would not have even known how to spell Nürburgring yet alone design a car to run laps on it (or care to).

So what if the Model-S can't run 8 minutes flat out around that track, it certainly doesn't affect my day to day driving experience.

Just to add to this. Porsche didn't design Taycan to run Nurburgring just to show off to Tesla. Porsche tests every single one of their cars on the Ring. It's a design criteria. This includes the Cayenne. I still remember being at LA Autoshow when Cayenne first came out, and they were showing the video of Cayenne Turbo on the Ring. I thought it was crazy, but that's Porsche. Racing is their DNA, so everyone of their cars will be designed to run the Ring as fast as practically possible. Other OEM's, including Tesla, don't need to do that. In fact, I think it's stupid to chase after Porsche's time on the Ring because the amount of money needed to make a good Ring car will detract the development team from other important features that are needed to attract non-Porsche market (which is probably 90% plus of the market).

 

[Saghost]

I did find it funny (and sad) that here is you saying you've actually driven your Model-S around this track/road, it was terrible and yet people are hitting the disagree button on your post! People need to accept this is how it is with the Model-S at the moment.

I have no problem accepting that this is the way it is with the S - in 2015 when his P85D was built.

Saying that this is the way it is today based on his experience with a 2015 car seems to me to be overlooking substantial evidence that the cars built this year should be much more capable on the track than those of the past.

 

[MP3Mike]

I did find it funny (and sad) that here is you saying you've actually driven your Model-S around this track/road, it was terrible and yet people are hitting the disagree button on your post! People need to accept this is how it is with the Model-S at the moment.

But a current Raven Long Range Performance is a long way from a P85D. (Was it even a P85DL?) He was also running with a low SoC which impacts performance as well.

There have been major changes that should make it better. And at a minimum I assume they will use more capable brake pads. (Which anyone should do that is making a fast run around the ring.)

 

[SO16]

Wow. After this event, it’s sure going to be fun watching the “I told you so” harassment. Now....if I only knew which side was right.

 

[Saghost]

Wow. After this event, it’s sure going to be fun watching the “I told you so” harassment. Now....if I only knew which side was right.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Raven will do much better than a P85D. I honestly wouldn't have guessed it was quite up to the best a Taycan can do, with the carbon-ceramic brakes and everything.

But Elon only announced after Porsche did - I have trouble believing he'd do that if he knew this week's run would be much slower than the time the Taycan just set or even if he didn't know.

 

[PhantomX]

But a current Raven Long Range Performance is a long way from a P85D. (Was it even a P85DL?) He was also running with a low SoC which impacts performance as well.

There have been major changes that should make it better. And at a minimum I assume they will use more capable brake pads. (Which anyone should do that is making a fast run around the ring.)

The cooling and drivetrain update should make it last the entire Ring without power reduction. But do we know if Raven has any major chassis changes? Model S likely needs significant stiffening to handle the high speed sweeping corners of the Ring. The spaces in Model S is great for every day use, but all those spaces need to be fill with cross members to stiffen up the car if it wants handle high speed courses like Ring.

 

[ICUDoc]

The cooling and drivetrain update should make it last the entire Ring without power reduction

I wish I knew that this is true.
The only way I will know about what changes help the Raven to do what 'ring times is to wait and see. The most fun / excitement on this site since the Model 3 announcement...

 

[Magellan55]

Why is everyone assuming they are going to the 'ring to chase the Taycan's time? When did anyone from Tesla say that? Maybe this track event was scheduled before Porsche announced their time, and this is just a coincidence? Especially if this is a test mule, they would have been planning this for a while.

 

[nativewolf]

re Porsche having track times as part of design criteria.. I can hardly think of a less useful design criteria. Also an antiquated one that is completely backward facing, like they are living in the 1960s or something. The world has been moving away from private ownership of cars for at least a decade, the time when cracks started appearing in Japan as young people delayed or abandoned car ownership. In a world of non private car ownership track times...don't matter. Add self driving cars on top of this and it really becomes a WTF who cares. I care if I can drive my Tesla across the country. It already accelerates too fast for my own good, when do I actually need to go faster on a curvy street? Never. Stupid. The engineering accomplishment is impressive and completely useless, like analog HD TV that Japan spent a billion dollars creating. What this really shows is that Porsche is still being run by idiots. BMW at least is floundering so badly they fired CEO, when does Porsche do the same? All that engineering money should have gone into a question of how to drive the thing from home to a meeting 2 hours away and back. Which it can't do. They have engineered something ...but it is not impressive.

 

[MJP.P3D-]

The first vehicle to complete the ‘Ring without the aid of a human pilot would make a much more compelling story IMO (and be much more in line with Elon’s goal(s) for Tesla).