2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo | Suspension Deep Dive

Autoblog did a deep dive into the Taycan Turbo's suspension and there's a lot of info and photos that shed light on how impressive the suspension system is.

There's so much to take away from the article but here are some that stand out to me:

• The Taycan Turbo's brake caliper is as big as a size 13 shoe
• The Taycan Turbo can generate a monstrous 0.39 g of regenerative braking
• The front wheel assemblies weigh 60 pounds and the rears weigh 66 pounds (20-inch wheels, 245/45R20 sized tires in front and 285/40R20 in back).

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So what makes it so good? Clever engineering by clever engineers, of course. Let’s crawl underneath and see what that looks like.



The Taycan’s platform is distinctive for a Porsche because the entire floor structure is built to house a massive 93.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack. The front and rear electric motors are supported within entirely new suspension subframes, too. But Porsche was able to locate the suspension pickup points in familiar places so that a number of Panamera-derived bits could be bolted on.

But they’re not entirely the same. The Taycan is 1.1 inches wider in order to properly house the battery and its electric motors, and as a result, the suspension pickup points and the tire contact patches stand farther apart than they are in a Panamera. Adjustments also had to be made because the underslung battery makes this smaller car weigh about 500 pounds more than a Panamera Turbo. Its presence also alters the Taycan’s center of gravity to the point where it is the lowest in the entire Porsche catalog. And lest we forget, the suspension must also deal with electric motors that are able to deliver their massive wallop of peak torque pretty much instantly.



The front end has undergone more changes than the rear from Panamera. The track width increase is generally greater up here, but the bigger influence is the absence of a hulking internal combustion engine. There are dimensional differences as well, most notably a shorter wheelbase and overall length.

Those last differences do impact what we’re looking at because they conspire to reduce the space available for the double wishbone front suspension we see here, particularly the mounting points at the upper end.

But I can see that those brake calipers are distracting you. Let’s get them out of the way before we move on.

That’s a size 13 shoe. That rotor is just over 16.5 inches in diameter, and we can clearly see that the span of the caliper is broader than that. This is an Akebono-supplied 10-piston fixed caliper, and I have indicated the five pistons that reside on the near side. The bleed ports and crossover tube are just above and below them, and the rest of the metal is there to give the caliper stiffness and keep it from jacking itself open.

At first, this was all a bit peculiar to me. The Taycan can generate a monstrous 0.39 g of regenerative braking via the magnetism in its electric motors. That’s enough to handle all but the most aggressive street stops, and Porsche suggests that about 95 percent of the time, these calipers are just along for the ride. The recommended replacement interval is six years, and that’s a safeguard against corrosion effects; they’d last much longer otherwise. Likewise, that shiny coating is there to ensure the rotors always look good and never corrode despite pads that will oftentimes be out of the loop and unable to keep them scrubbed.

Why so massive, then? Two reasons come to mind. This is a driver’s car that begs to be driven hard. You’ll need good brakes when you cane it in the mountains. But even that might not even register unless you’re on a real racetrack. The other reason was made clear to me on Germany’s Autobahn. There we were, sailing along (legally) at 167 mph, when someone pulled into our lane doing 70 mph. All 10 pistons in these Akebonos made instant sense in one sudden brake application.



Admit it. You’re still staring at the brake caliper.

The upper wishbone (green arrow), lower wishbone (yellow) and steering knuckle are all lightweight aluminum alloy pieces. Get used to it, we’ll be seeing a lot of that.

Still, there are numerous shields keeping us from getting a clear view. Let’s try another angle.



That’s better. The view from behind is much more open. Now we can see the air spring (red), the stabilizer bar connecting link (green) and the rear-mounted steering rack (yellow). If you’re thinking something is missing, you’re right. We can’t see the front shock because that’s hidden within the air spring. Bag-over shocks, anyone?



Dimension-wise, this upper mounting point is lower in the Taycan than it is in a Panamera. This difference results in the need for a shorter spring/shock assembly and a shorter steering knuckle. The arrow indicates the height sensor that feeds back position data to the air suspension and other systems.



The close-up shows how the steering linkage is mounted behind the front axle centerline. This view also shows the lower wishbone’s forward pivot point is hidden in shadows behind the fender liner, as indicated by the arrow.



It’s tight in there, but we can see where the steering column’s output shaft (yellow) connects to the steering rack.

But the stabilizer bar is the star here. Its pivot point (green) obscures the PDCC mechanism that’s buried out of sight. PDCC stands for Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control, a system of stabilizer bars with couplings in the middle to improve performance in two ways. On uneven straight roads the coupling will slacken to reduce the effectiveness of the stabilizer bar and improve head toss. When it’s time to boogie the system can overdrive the stabilizer bars to make them behave as if they were bigger to greatly reduce body roll in corners.

The software is theoretically able to reduce body roll to zero and even make a car lean into turns, but Porsche doesn’t take it that far because their in-house driving aces say it starts to feel unnatural.

Meanwhile, the link (red) is what connects the stabilizer bar to the moving elements of the suspension.



The stabilizer link connects to the steering knuckle right at the top upper wishbone, a routing that keeps it well out of the way of the tire as it moves back and forth in turns. Its connection to the steering knuckle also makes it as efficient as possible because it creates a motion ratio of 1-to-1 with respect to suspension movement.



There is brake cooling ductwork in the nose of the car, and it exits here. The two parts don’t seem to line up, but that’s because I’ve got the car jacked up with the wheel hanging at full droop. These two will line up much better with the car on the ground, and the extra width of the outer piece is there to accommodate a normal amount of suspension travel.