Okay, y’all: let’s talk turbos. R&D Chief Wolfgang Hatz stepped out from the lab this past week to talk about how Porsche intends to meet increasingly stringent government fuel economy standards. His theme? Reality:
“If you look at euro per g/km then it’s turbo. Then at the end of the decade electrification has to be the next huge step.”
What he’s looking at is a big stack of EU and U.S. thou-shalt-nots that aim to stave off a Mad Max world by putting a lid on CO2 emissions. What does this mean? The 2018 and 2019 911s will probably use turbochargers. Possibly 2017, as well.
Then in 2020, 911s will begin to use plug-in hybrid technology, which means having a battery for partial electric power. The benefit of electric motors is that they deliver better off-the-line torque than any gasoline engine ever could. Period.
This will allow the 911 to retain its six-cylinder engines, keeping the four-cylinders far away in the Boxster, Cayman and Macan, at least so long as Hatz has a say. Inventive combinations of diesel, PHEV, gasoline and turbocharging will set the tone for the next 15 years or so.
All of this change is buttressed by miracles like the 918 Spyder, a hybrid that uses electric power along with its V8 engine to air-dry the tears of those clinging to their naturally aspirated flat-sixes. The 918 proves that Porsche is looking deeply into beating governmental fuel requirements.
Another halo car is the 911 GT3 RS, which Hatz said would only be trading its naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine for another, more powerful, but still naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine. Hatz affirmed that PDK will remain the only option for this track pearl, but allowed that a manual transmission sometime in the future isn’t an impossibility. Such artful phrasing.
To recap: future 911s will almost certainly get turbochargers, except for the GT3 RS, because of CO2 standards. It’s the world we live in.
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