Just as electric power steering didn’t destroy the 911, neither will Porsche's new T-Hybrid powertrain. It's more Turbo than anything., but they also know the fastest ones are heavy. So, there’s been understandable resistance to electrifying iconic featherweights like Lotus sports cars andcompetitions have all been earned on the merits of the 911’s telepathic ability to turn a driver’s instinct into a dynamic maneuver, absent any inertia, hysteresis, or other resistance.
Porsche has developed a totally new 3.6-liter engine and will force-feed it with a new, larger single turbo. Sounds like a recipe for epic turbo lag, except for an electric motor that spools the turbine up to its 120,000-rpm top speed in 0.8 second—about a third of the time the twin turbos fitted to the 3.0-liter powering the present 911 GTS need to reach peak boost.
Bonus: Instead of a wastegate, when there’s surplus boost, that little motor regen-brakes the turbo, sending power back to the battery. Since we’re obsessing about weight, know that the motorized mono-turbo and plumbing weigh the same 59.5 pounds as the bi-turbo setup it’s replacing. By itself, the new engine produces 478 hp and 420 lb-ft—up handily from the 3.0-liter’s 450 hp/405 lb-ft.
All those inputs add up to 532 horsepower and 449 pound-feet—enough to drop the weight-to-power ratio from 7.2 pounds/hp to just 6.3, which Porsche claims will drop the 911 hybrid's 0-to-60-mph times over the outgoing GTS by 0.4 second, to 2.9. EPA fuel economy should improve very slightly , but the engine no longer runs full-throttle enrichment, so track-day consumption should improve more significantly.
Inside, there’s a fully digital curved 12.6-inch reconfigurable cluster that can be programmed to show an old-style tach rotated so redline results in a vertical needle, and deeper CarPlay integration allows some of this info to appear on the center cluster. The big center display can show all manner of performance data, if anyone has the spare attention to study it while “on maneuvers.” And all 911 hybrid models get a new leather and “Race-Tex” suede interior.