There has been much hype surrounding Tesla Motors and their new Model S lately, and rightly so. After winning many accolades, such as the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year, Tesla has become the bane of the motor industry. Tesla’s successes with creating a fantastic electric car have seemingly inspired other companies to follow in their footsteps and step up their hybrid game.
Which brings us to the Porsche 918 Spyder. Porches’s newest car model was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show yesterday and received much applause. The 2-seater car boasts a 4.6 liter V8 engine that puts out 608 hp with its gas engine. However, the engine gets a boost from 3 additional electrical motors, pushing its total horsepower to 887 total. What do all these numbers mean? Well, the Porsche 918 Spyder can go from 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds, and 0-124 mph in 7.9 seconds. (And if that still doesn’t mean much to you, well, let’s just say this thing is damned fast.)
Porsche put all of this magnificent horsepower to the test when it took three drivers and the 918 Spyder to the Nurburgring Nordschleife track in Germany. After a morning of driving around perhaps the world’s most trying rack-track (and giggling like 3 year old kids the entire time, I imagine), one of the drivers was able to set a new track record for the fastest time in a street legal vehicle. Porsche factory driver, Mark Lieb, was able to complete the 20.6 km long track in 6 minutes and 57 seconds, with an average speed of 179.5 km/h. (Which, for all us silly Americans who don’t use the metric system, is equivalent to travelling a 12.8 mile track with an average speed of 111.5 mph). All of this accomplished in a car that can get up to 95 mpg, which doesn’t seem either possible or fair.
One other thing that definitely seems possible, but not fair, is the price tag. The base model of the Porsche 918 Spyder will cost $845,000. Unfortunately, that still means if I want to achieve the speeds that the 918 Spyder can reach, I will be relegated to purchasing a ticket to Cedar Point and riding the Top Thrill Dragster, which can go from 0 to 120 mph in under 4 seconds. (Eat that, Porsche.)
Image via Wikimedia Commons
