Porsche Taycan takes battery charging to a whole new level of crazy

THE Porsche of battery charging stations. Would make a good tagline that, but that’s exactly what seems to have materialised from the brains trust at Zuffenhausen. It’s been no great secret that the company is working on 800-volt charging for its Taycan EV sports sedan. To put that figure into perspective, a Tesla Supercharger delivers 480-volt charging capability.

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Speaking to Bloomberg, Chief Executive Oliver Blume recently underlined the lightning-fast capability of the 800-volt Porsche Turbo Chargers. Juicing a Taycan for just 20 minutes will inject 400km of range into its 90kWh lithium-ion battery pack.

The most eyebrow-raising number was the fact that 100km of range could be added from zero in just 240 seconds. That would be enough to get most of us from home to work and back, although if I was a Taycan owner, I’d probably be looking for the long and twisty route.

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After all, the rest of the formula is pretty tempting, as evidenced by a flood of letters of intent to Porsche Australia’s office from eager would-be customers. The Taycan’s Magneti Marelli electric motors drive all wheels, sending it to 100km/h in less than 3.5 seconds. Above all, Porsche wanted the car to live the company’s values.

As head of the Taycan program, Stefan Weckbach told Germany’s Firmenauto, “A central question in the development was: Where is the optimal balance between range and performance? Theoretically, one would have to pack only a correspondingly large battery in the vehicle to get a lot of range. But that would not be typical Porsche, if only because of the excessive weight. Instead, we use very light electric motors. In addition, we can achieve a range of 500 kilometres via the high power density and high efficiency of the electric drive. This results in low power consumption, so we can use smaller and lighter batteries.”

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There’s still no word on how extensive the Porsche Turbo Charging network will be in Australia, but the company is looking to partner with third party suppliers to develop the charging infrastructure.