Porsche: 90.28 Miles

The Porsche has set its first calibrated range record: 90.28 miles!

The Porsche crew has been hard at work over the last month preparing to climb Mt. Washington and compete in the 1 Gallon Challenge.

Tyler, Mike, and I decided that Thursday was not the best day to do the hill climb, many of the concerns regarding braking and regen performance had not been adequately answered, and with only 3 people going, it didn't make sense to spend so much time driving there and back.

With a trailer and tow vehicle already secured, we decided to seize the opportunity to take the Porsche out on the 1 Gallon Challenge route and see how far we could safely go. We followed the route backwards starting from Cambridge and driving out there. We got stuck in traffic and took a long detour on the wrong Beacon St., stopped in a gas station to dodge a summer sprinkle (without a rain cloud in sight), the trailer got rear-ended and we spent a few hours eating ice cream while the police sorted out the paperwork. It was getting dark and cold, so we trailered the Porsche back to city lights and finished driving around town.

Heating only becomes an issue when driving in 3rd (i.e. high torque, low revs). We have motor temperature logs & need to analyze exactly the parameters when the motor overheats. It drives very well in 2nd, which is perfect for the country roads that are along the route. At the end of the drive, some capacity mismatch seemed to exist between the cell groups in the pack, but they all charged up perfectly balanced (so there isn't too much cell efficiency mismatch). Since this is the first time the pack has actually been balanced and fully cycled, we're hoping that some of the mismatch will work itself out as we cycle the pack more.

A lot of work has been going on in preparation for these drives, I'll detail more of what we've done in a coming post.