All posts by Francis Mitterrand

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2022 Porsche Macan goes to charity

On September 24, the 27th Leipzig Opera Ball will be held, which will be attended by athletes, politicians, businessmen and other celebrities. Between the culinary highlights and the first-class stage program of the artists, guests will have the opportunity to participate in a raffle and the main prize is a 2022 Porsche Macan.

The Leipzig Opera Ball is an annual event that raises funds for charity, and this year (9th time) Porsche will sponsor the event. That’s why the Stuttgart-based company decided to offer a specially made Macan. “With this special car, we are creating an attractive incentive to purchase tickets on the evening of the opera ball. Every ticket sold helps to implement social projects,” said Gerd Rupp, CEO of Porsche Leipzig.

This specially made Porsche Macan is painted in Signal Yellow with ‘Leipziger Opernball 2022′ and ’20 Years of Porsche Leipzig’ lettering on the door sills. It is powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged Inline-4 engine with 261 hp (192 kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque (base model). Power is transmitted to all wheels via a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. It reaches 60 mph in 5 seconds with a top speed of 144 mph (232 km/h).

Porsche is currently well positioned in the market. The intention of the company is to maintain the existing sales growth, but also that half of the sales, in the coming years, come from electric vehicles. That would be the path to fulfilling the long-term goal, which is carbon neutral by the end of the decade. When it comes to the Macan, Porsche intends to offer this model with an internal combustion engine until 2024, while an all-electric model should hit the market soon. At full capacity, the intention is to produce almost 90,000 electric Porsche Macans per year.

Source: Porsche

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Porsche will receive an €85 billion investment

The global world crisis caused by the war and the constant political conflicts of the great powers also affected the automotive industry. Many car manufacturers are trying to find a way out of the current crisis in various ways, and one of them is Porsche, which decided to offer its shares to the market next month. Certainly, there will be no shortage of interested parties, and predictions are that Porsche will receive €85 billion ($85 billion) in investment.

According to Bloomberg, several major global investment groups and companies have shown interest in investing in the global brand. Some of them are T Rowe Price Group, Qatar Investment Authority and billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull). However, the largest shareholder will remain the VW Group. Plans for the Initial Public Offering (IPO) will be announced after the approval of the supervisory board.

Even before, there were interested investors, but doubts about the way the company is managed and the influence of the VW Group turned them away. This continued even more after Oliver Blume became VW Group boss.

Last year, Porsche achieved record sales growth worldwide with over 300,000 cars sold. The highest sales growth was achieved in the United States with 22 percent (70,025 cars), Germany with 9 percent (28,565 cars) and China with 8 percent (96,671 cars). The best-selling Porsche model in Europe was the Macan (88,262 units), and what is most surprising is that the Taycan surpassed the 911 model in sales, even though the popular “elf” achieved a historic result with 38,464 units sold.

In the first six months of 2022, Porsche delivered almost 150,000 cars, which is less than last year. The pandemic and the supply chain caused the most problems. Despite this, growth was achieved in some markets. For example, in Europe, compared to last year, sales increased by 7 percent (43,087 vehicles), and in Germany alone, 13,785 vehicles were sold. Despite the difficulties, Porsche managed to sell 62,245 cars in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and the Middle East, while in the United States the number was 32,529. In the Chinese market, sales fell by 16 percent (40,681 vehicles).

Source: Bloomberg

News

Cars will reach 60 mph in less than a second

At the recent Auto Week in Monterey, Chief Program Engineer of Rimac Nevera, Matija Renić, made a statement that pushes the limits when it comes to electric hypercars accelerations. When asked how fast cars will reach 60 mph in the future he said “in less than a second.”

Rimac Nevera with 1914 hp

The development of electric cars was primarily aimed at endurance and range, but the development of technology allowed new companies, who saw their opportunity, to create new super fast electric cars. Currently, most cars reach 60 mph in 2.5 – 3 seconds, which is a big improvement from the not-so-distant past. But let’s talk about the fastest ones.

Let’s take Rimac Automobile for example. Their fastest car Nevera has 1,914 hp and 1,741 lb-ft of torque, which allows it to reach 60 mph in 1.85 seconds with a top speed of 258 mph (413 km / h). It is the result of long-term development, but also the pride of the Rimac company. “The car is very fast, really. The values ​​are like that, we are proud of them, but the car is more than that. The car is not a specialist for one thing, it is not a dragster with which you will go to the track and achieve a record time,” said Matija Renić . The company is aware that creating a car that will reach 60 mph in less than a second will be a very difficult task, but the current cars show what automotive technology will be able to do in the future. The goal of Rimac Automobili was not a racing car, but a driver’s car, something that is very attractive and will reward the driver as soon as he hits the road and starts enjoying the drive.

Engine development and horse power will not be a problem, but something else looms as a major obstacle for current road cars, and that is the effect of g-force on the driver’s body. What allows race car drivers to withstand high g-force, especially when entering corners, is a specially designed cockpit. This is currently not possible with road cars, and if they want to reach acceleration under one second, new innovative solutions will have to be found. As an example, an acceleration of one second means a g-force of about 2.8, and half a second of nearly 6, which is more than the g-force that affects a pilot when taking off from an aircraft carrier.

Enthusiasm and hope are what pull engineers towards their goal. But how far are we actually from those “less than a second”?

Source: The Drive