Hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder gets green light

By on Jul 29, 2010 at 4:20 AM
General July 29, 2010

Yesterday, we reported on the Chevy Volt electric car and it’s $41,000 price tag. Now, we know some of you were probably thinking that a Chevy doesn’t exactly fit your personal steez, but we might have something for you. The Porsche supervisory board has green lighted the production of the 918 Spyder hybrid, complete with a 500-horsepower V8 and 109-horsepower electric motor. The new Porsche will allegedly net 78 miles per gallon and will retail for slightly more than the Volt, at around $650,000. We’re unclear as to how a 500-hp Porsche is going to get 78 mpg while a 140-hp Prius gets around 40 mpg… but hey, here’s to hoping those crazy Germans know something we don’t!

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  • craphos

    how about the $7,500 tax credit? :p

    • Edward

      The difference in the mpg is the result of
      Obama bailing an already failed and obsolete car company. HORRAY FOR Government Motors! Your tax dollars at work!

      • Ethan

        wtf are you talking about? Porsche is a german car company….

      • Mitch

        He was comparing it to the Volt, which is a GM product.

      • Chut Pata

        Why are you surprised? Do you think Tea Baggers know what they are talking about when they open their mouth?

  • JulioN

    At first I read it as $6,500… Now *that* would’ve been something.

  • Chris

    Slightly more than the Volt… damn I only need $649,986 more in my pocket… anyone wanna donate?

  • whirldy

    YUMM!!!

  • Jbrown

    This is what you call a beast.

  • B

    Sexiest hybrid out there.

  • X Glansburg

    if only the future was a bit more affordable

    • jarrett

      At that price they can actually slip Android in there somewhere, hoping they don’t use a certain wallpaper for upholstery.

      Of course, like anything else, if you are concerned about price it was already out of the budget.

  • gary

    Well my Prius gets 51mpg… Never been close to 40mpg!

  • Chut Pata

    “here’s to hoping those crazy Germans know something we don’t!”

    Well the Americans never thought a car can run without water, the crazy Germans came with Volks Waggon. Americans never thought a car can run on two wheel, the Germans came up with Motorbike. Americans never thought cars could fly, and the Germans came up with Aeroplane, just that Americans made it public first. The Americans never thought bombs can fly, the Germans came up with missiles.

    What else do the Americans think as an impossibility?

    • kingranch06

      I think it’s impossible to go through life without getting beat up with a name like Chut Pata.

      • Chut Pata

        Stand By! Die Deutschen sind auf dieser einen Arbeitstag

  • Bdus

    The car gets 70 mpg by using only the electric motor for putting around. If you want to dust the old codgers blocking up the left lane, hit the gas, and the car will switch from electric to V8 gas guzzling goodness. This also charges the electric engine while you enjoy some G’s. Pretty simple tech, been around a long time, rarely used because oil giants buy almost every patent up. You know, so they can add to their green technology portfolio.

  • BDot

    “The new Porsche will allegedly net 78 miles per gallon and will retail for slightly more than the Volt, at around $650,000″

    I literally LOL’d.

  • Neil

    It’s a plug in hybrid, so I suspect that is what allows the mpg figure to be so high: it’s running off electricity from the grid instead of gasoline for some of the time. This is the same reason the Volt gets “230 mpg”.

  • JMD,..in Northern VA

    The 78 mpg is more than likely due to the ability of the Porsche 918 to run in electrice mode until the battery packs depletes to a given level. If you drive the car for 30 miles and it operates on electric for 60-70% of that distant,…the mpg rating will be high. Note that some Prius owners are seeing mileage in the 50′s and 60′s range. This is mainly to to their commute distance and road speed travel. I have an 2006 Prius and when in city travel,…at speeds up to 45 mph,…it does 44 mpg with ease. I often do not remember when I last bought gas for it because the mileage is so great. Additionally, it doesn’t take much Hp to maintain a given road speed,…thus Porsche is designing the 918 to optimize us of the eMotor to achive high mpgs.

    Note, If Toyota had doubled the battery capacity of the Gen II Prius,…the mpg would go through the roof.

    The Chevy Volt is on to something. Imagine this. A vehicle with dual battery packs. The vehicle runs on one battery pack while a small 1-2 cyclinder engine chargers the battery not in use. Smart electronics would take care of the auto switching, etc. A tank of gas could literally last far beyond a mere 700 miles.

    What if my ’06 prius had 4 times the electric capacity using the same successful engineering? The mileage would go up sustantially.

    Hth

    JMD

  • Mitch

    This thing is going to be a monster, they said it will perform better than the Carerra GT which was already an insane vehicle.

  • DigDug

    If anyone can do it, it’s the Germans. Remember, these are the folks that many years ago had a contest with some US engineers to see who could engineer the ‘finest’ metal point. Our guys sent the Germans our best offering. They sent our sample back with a hole drilled through it.

    ‘Nuff said.

  • Bill

    The mpg for the 918 is merely indicative of how pointless the Prius actually is for anything other than feeling smug about ‘saving the environment’ when the reality is that most diesels would use far less fuel than it.

  • akmal;kj

    there is NO tax credit on a German ‘thing’..its a 10k gas gussler tax ontop!..ahahaha

  • Mumbo Jumbo

    The biggest question I have is… how does it SOUND and FEEL compared to the Carerra GT, which “only” cost $450,000 (and they had trouble selling 1200 of those). I mean, “HEY, feel those G-forces baby…” but without the right noise and sucking intake sounds and exhaust whine of a V-10… what’s the point?? “Anybody wanna take a ride in my stupid expensive electric train?” ?!?

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