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DRIVEN: Porsche Saves With Hybrid SUV
Cayenne S Hybrid provides muscular acceleration, exemplary drivability and luxury accommodations while it pushes up gas mileage.
The 2011 Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid shows off its sleek new styling as well as its high-tech gas/electric drive system. (Photo: Porsche)
The rich are not like us, or so F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said. Well, here’s one way that they’re different.
While the rest of us trundle along trying to squeeze the last bit of fuel mileage out of our little Priuses and Insights, the wealthy make do with such grand contraptions as this: a Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid.
Here we have an interesting conundrum, whether it is actually social consciousness and fuel conservation that brings someone to the abundant performance and luxury of a Porsche hybrid SUV, or is it something else that those of us with lesser means could never understand. With an optioned-up version costing nearly $85,000, It’s certainly not about fuel prices.
But enough philosophy. The all-new Cayenne S Hybrid really is quite an amazing machine, a technological tour de force that brings fuel efficiency into the realm of fast acceleration, crisp handling and high-speed touring.
This is a classic case of having your cake and eating it, too. The gas/electric version of Porsche’s extreme SUV has nearly all the performance of the V8 model while achieving fuel mileage that’s at least as good as the V6 version.
Of course, those who still can’t get over the German sports-car builder’s capitulation in marketing a brawny SUV should be doubly insulted by this high-tech addition to the fleet. Those people remember when Porsche was all about simple solutions to performance questions, with air-cooled boxer engines mounted in the rear.
My own little 1962 Porsche 356 is about as far afield of the Cayenne S Hybrid as an outboard-motor dinghy is to a luxury yacht.
Porsche has been tinkering quite a bit with hybrid cars of late, with such recent beauties as the 918 RSR and 911 GT3 R hybrid race cars, or the upcoming Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar. There are also hybrid versions of the vaunted 911 and the Panamera luxury sedan under way.
And lest we forget, a young Ferdinand Porsche created the very first gas/electric hybrid car in the early 1900s, a fact recently celebrated by the automaker, which built an exact working replica of the original for display.
Getting back to now, the Cayenne S Hybrid is about as good as it gets. The engine is a not-very-frugal supercharged 3-liter V6 rated at 333 horsepower, backed up by a high-torque electric motor mounted between the engine and the eight-speed automatic transmission. The motor generates just 47 horsepower but adds 295 pound-feet of torque, effectively producing a combined 380 horsepower and a muscular 428 pound-feet of torque when run together.
All that gusto helps the Cayenne S Hybrid move its nearly 5,000 pounds of heft from zero to 60 in just a smidge over six seconds, according to Porsche, which is nearly as quickly as the naturally aspirated V8-powered Cayenne S.
Fuel mileage is improved, with the S Hybrid getting 20 mpg city and 24 highway, compared with the non-hybrid S that gets 16 city and 22 highway. That is, if you keep your foot out of it and stop sampling the gee-whiz acceleration.
No, the hybrid does not get fabulous fuel mileage, which kind of makes me wonder about the entire exercise. It’s about par for comparable SUV hybrids, but it’s way down the list if you compare it with the leading compact hybrid cars that average in the 40s. But then, there’s all that Porsche performance.
The engine and motor working in consort is not what the hybrid is all about, however. At low speeds, the electric motor will do all the work up to 37 mph if you maintain a light foot. At highway speeds, the engine will decouple when the load is light, a process that the Europeans call sailing but which we call free-wheeling, letting the electric motor provide the pull without the drag of the engine. Step on the throttle, and the engine cuts in as needed for heavier duties such as hill climbing or acceleration. It’s all very seamless and unobtrusive.
The engine also shuts itself off when the Cayenne is not moving, such as waiting at a traffic light, which saves fuel that’s wasted in idling. There are several different driving modes that the driver can select to optimize power or economy, or else go somewhere down the middle. Generally speaking, under light throttle the Porsche runs on either gas or electricity, combining the two only when a boost of power is desired.
The voltage is returned to the batteries by the engine turning the motor as a generator and with regenerative braking whenever you step on the slow-down pedal, which is common hybrid practice.
All of this high-tech activity happens behind the scenes so that the driver is hardly ever aware that the S Hybrid is doing anything other than what a “normal” Porsche SUV does. The eight-speed transmission has a lot to do with the seamless performance, replacing the annoying drone of continuously variable automatics commonly found in most hybrids, substituting a fast-acting shift mechanism that stays on top of things under every driving situation.
While the rest of us trundle along trying to squeeze the last bit of fuel mileage out of our little Priuses and Insights, the wealthy make do with such grand contraptions as this: a Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid.
Here we have an interesting conundrum, whether it is actually social consciousness and fuel conservation that brings someone to the abundant performance and luxury of a Porsche hybrid SUV, or is it something else that those of us with lesser means could never understand. With an optioned-up version costing nearly $85,000, It’s certainly not about fuel prices.
But enough philosophy. The all-new Cayenne S Hybrid really is quite an amazing machine, a technological tour de force that brings fuel efficiency into the realm of fast acceleration, crisp handling and high-speed touring.
This is a classic case of having your cake and eating it, too. The gas/electric version of Porsche’s extreme SUV has nearly all the performance of the V8 model while achieving fuel mileage that’s at least as good as the V6 version.
Of course, those who still can’t get over the German sports-car builder’s capitulation in marketing a brawny SUV should be doubly insulted by this high-tech addition to the fleet. Those people remember when Porsche was all about simple solutions to performance questions, with air-cooled boxer engines mounted in the rear.
My own little 1962 Porsche 356 is about as far afield of the Cayenne S Hybrid as an outboard-motor dinghy is to a luxury yacht.
Porsche has been tinkering quite a bit with hybrid cars of late, with such recent beauties as the 918 RSR and 911 GT3 R hybrid race cars, or the upcoming Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar. There are also hybrid versions of the vaunted 911 and the Panamera luxury sedan under way.
And lest we forget, a young Ferdinand Porsche created the very first gas/electric hybrid car in the early 1900s, a fact recently celebrated by the automaker, which built an exact working replica of the original for display.
Getting back to now, the Cayenne S Hybrid is about as good as it gets. The engine is a not-very-frugal supercharged 3-liter V6 rated at 333 horsepower, backed up by a high-torque electric motor mounted between the engine and the eight-speed automatic transmission. The motor generates just 47 horsepower but adds 295 pound-feet of torque, effectively producing a combined 380 horsepower and a muscular 428 pound-feet of torque when run together.
All that gusto helps the Cayenne S Hybrid move its nearly 5,000 pounds of heft from zero to 60 in just a smidge over six seconds, according to Porsche, which is nearly as quickly as the naturally aspirated V8-powered Cayenne S.
Fuel mileage is improved, with the S Hybrid getting 20 mpg city and 24 highway, compared with the non-hybrid S that gets 16 city and 22 highway. That is, if you keep your foot out of it and stop sampling the gee-whiz acceleration.
No, the hybrid does not get fabulous fuel mileage, which kind of makes me wonder about the entire exercise. It’s about par for comparable SUV hybrids, but it’s way down the list if you compare it with the leading compact hybrid cars that average in the 40s. But then, there’s all that Porsche performance.
The engine and motor working in consort is not what the hybrid is all about, however. At low speeds, the electric motor will do all the work up to 37 mph if you maintain a light foot. At highway speeds, the engine will decouple when the load is light, a process that the Europeans call sailing but which we call free-wheeling, letting the electric motor provide the pull without the drag of the engine. Step on the throttle, and the engine cuts in as needed for heavier duties such as hill climbing or acceleration. It’s all very seamless and unobtrusive.
The engine also shuts itself off when the Cayenne is not moving, such as waiting at a traffic light, which saves fuel that’s wasted in idling. There are several different driving modes that the driver can select to optimize power or economy, or else go somewhere down the middle. Generally speaking, under light throttle the Porsche runs on either gas or electricity, combining the two only when a boost of power is desired.
The voltage is returned to the batteries by the engine turning the motor as a generator and with regenerative braking whenever you step on the slow-down pedal, which is common hybrid practice.
All of this high-tech activity happens behind the scenes so that the driver is hardly ever aware that the S Hybrid is doing anything other than what a “normal” Porsche SUV does. The eight-speed transmission has a lot to do with the seamless performance, replacing the annoying drone of continuously variable automatics commonly found in most hybrids, substituting a fast-acting shift mechanism that stays on top of things under every driving situation.
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