Effie Folkerts: Porsche Propels Hybrids

View Slideshow

[SB10001424052970204224604577032090354513990]

Pedro Guimaraes/4SEE for The Wall Street Journal

There are two very trick bits to this car: The first is its tomorrow-tech flywheel energy-storage system. Like other hybrids, the car has a motor/generator (actually two, worth about 100 hp each) attached to the front wheels. Under braking, these motor/generators convert kinetic energy otherwise lost as heat in the brakes into electrical current.

However, unlike battery-equipped hybrids, the Porsche stores its amperage mechanically, spooling up a 31-pound flywheel operating in a vacuum chamber in (one hopes) a crash-proof box beside the driver. Under acceleration, the flywheel's enormous kinetic energy is converted back to electrons and returned to the front-wheel motors, helping the car go farther and faster. There is also the not-inconsiderable thrust provided by the 4.0-liter, 470-hp flat-six in the back, churning the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox. This car can accelerate and decelerate at about 1 g and corner at nearly 2 g, which is pretty physical, let me tell you. Lisbon hasn't been this blurry since the earthquake of 1755.

Enlarge Image

CAR

Pedro Guimaraes/4SEE for The Wall Street Journal

'There's very little drama in the steering, no unpleasant electrical pushback coming through the suede-wrapping steering wheel.'

At the American Le Mans Series' six-hour endurance race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in September, the GT3 R Hybrid walked away from the field, posting the fastest laps in the GT class and stopping only three times for fuel, compared with other competitors' five or more stops. Because the ALMS hasn't yet written the rules to cover this technology, the GT3 R Hybrid is ineligible for points. Porsche calls the car a "racing lab." I would like to publicly apply for the position of lab rat.

In racing, flywheels have a singular advantage of high power, which is to say, rapid discharge, compared with electrochemical storage. Batteries typically don't like deep power cycling (see your cellphone) and tend to get hot and fatigued.

The GT3 R Hybrid's flywheel device was built by Formula 1 constructor Williams as part of F1's pursuit of Kinetic Energy Storage Systems (KERS), which began in 2009. The date to remember, however, is June 2014, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. That race will debut a new set of rules by the race organizers, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, and it will see many of the world's great car makers competing with advanced hybrid prototype sports cars. Porsche, the winning-est marque in endurance racing, will return to the P1 class for the first time since 1998, fielding its 918RSR Hybrid, which will almost certainly use a more evolved version of the flywheel system on the car I drove.

Enlarge Image

CAR

Pedro Guimaraes/4SEE for The Wall Street Journal

'This is genius-level technology in the service of stupid fast.'

Set your TiVos now. This will be the race of the century, a battle of giants. It will also be the ultimate test of various hybrid technologies and arrays, and will ratify the wholesale hybridization of performance cars. In many people's opinion, and mine, too, this is the only direction big-time racing can go to save itself from its own vanity and irrelevance.

Why would Porsche put such an important piece of technology in the hands of an amateur like me? That brings me to the other trick bit: torque vectoring. The electric motors on the front wheels, where the steering gets done, can be driven at different speeds and power levels, with an articulation that's impossible with mechanically based torque-vectoring systems, like that on the McLaren MP4-12C. The Porsche can literally pull itself into a corner by over-driving the outside front wheel and under-driving the inside wheel.

2012 Porsche 911 S: Another Best 911 Ever

It's like falling into some sort of weird asphalt gravity well. There's very little drama in the steering, no unpleasant electrical pushback coming through the suede-wrapping steering wheel. When you go back to the power and unwind the wheel, all 200 electric horsepower at the front wheels yanks you down the track as if on a magic cable, vectoring torque to take you precisely where you're pointing. The car blasts out of turns with a fierce, arcing inevitability, with its mountain of software helping to balance the car on the very knife-edge of tire adhesion.

This is genius-level technology in the service of stupid fast.

The amount of corner entrance and exit torque vectoring ("TV IN" and "TV OUT," according to the knobs on the steering wheel) can be preprogrammed by the engineers according to the track layout, the condition of the tires and the driver's style. Like an earlier version of the car, the GT3 R Hybrid 2.0 has manual-mode buttons ("REKUP" and "BOOST") for the drivers to capitalize on chances to recuperate energy or pass, but on this day Porsche's engineers declined to let journalists try them. Crucially, another dial controls the electric-motor "map," allowing drivers to dial down the rate at which the electric boost comes on—quite helpful in the rain.

Porsche GT3 R Hybrid

Price as tested: $1.5 million (est.)

Powertrain: Integrated gas-electric hybrid with flywheel energy recovery system; midrear-mounted, direct-injection 4.0-liter 24-valve dual-overhead cam flat six with variable valve timing and dry-sump lubrication; six-speed sequential dog-type gearbox with paddle-shift actuation and multiplate carbon clutch; dual AC synchronous electric motor/ generators mounted on front portal axle; full-time all-wheel drive with limited-slip differential in the rear and programmable torque vectoring in front

Peak system output: 760 hp (470 hp internal combustion, and 200 hp electric boost of up to 8 seconds)

0-60 mph: 2.5 sec (est.)

Top speed: 195 mph (est.)

Length/weight: 175.5 inches/2,860 pounds

Wheelbase: 92.7 inches

EPA fuel economy: N/A

It adds up to nothing less than a revolution in race-car dynamics, a virtually self-adjusting car, a dancing alloy algorithm of stunning pace and rip-your-head-off handling, an all-wheel-drive car with optimized traction control that knows the track as well as or better than the driver. Then it's just bang-bang-bang, up and down the paddle-shifted gears, topping out on the front straight of Estoril at about 160 mph before a 1-g braking event at Turn 1—and, believe me, it is an event.

Complaints? First and foremost, the noise of the fully charged flywheel, whirling at between 28,000 and 36,000 rpm in the passenger compartment, is unbearable, a stunning, suffocating 500 Hz at, I'm guessing, at least 100 dB. It's like sharing your helmet with a Harrier jet.

Second: Frankly, Mein Herr, I'd like more horsepower. Perhaps a taller final gear? This car is so exquisite dynamically that it actually cries out for more top speed. I'm sure Porsche can fix that.

Bottom line: There is nothing about this technology, that cannot migrate to Porsche's road cars, and as I unstrapped my sweating and woozy self from the driver's seat, I felt as if I had driven a Porsche 911, circa 2016 or so. Indeed, it seems inevitable, given Porsche's track-based product development, that the company's flagship sports car will one day be a hybrid.

I'll be counting the tenths of a second.

Explore More

[mazda51014]