Porsche

• Last year, Porsche said that adding fake shifting to EVs made the cars “worse.”
• It secretly toyed around with the idea and now has a prototype where engineers “could not tell the difference.”
• The automaker is now considering adding it to their next-gen EVs.

Remember last year when Porsche guffawed boisterously at Hyundai for adding fake shifting to its Ioniq 5 N? That was exactly one year ago. Evidently, a year was just enough time for the Germans to realize that they might have made a mistake, because now Porsche is apparently considering adding the feature to its own cars, too.

News comes from The Drive’s editor, Kyle Cheromcha, who recently went on a ride-along in a Porsche Cayenne EV prototype with the manager of validation for the program’s prototypes, Sascha Niesen.

During the short ride, Niesen revealed that not only is Porsche open to the idea of adding fake shifting to its EVs, but it’s already developed a whole symphony of fake engine noises and mechanical shift simulations so good that even its engineers can’t tell the difference.

Porsche Cayenne EV prototype

Photo by: HillClimb.tv

It turns out that Porsche’s engineers went on a quest to create a simulated engine noise from the Cayenne’s venerable V8 for the upcoming electric version of the SUV. Part of that development process was the need to tune the sound for all possible driving conditions.

“We recorded noises from both the sound it’s making on the inside for the interior, and for the outside, the sound coming out of the exhaust,” Niesen told The Drive, explaining how the Cayenne’s team worked to merge the sound of a V8 into an EV.

Porsche is a very emotional brand. Sights, sounds and feels are all very important parts of the driving experience. You can’t just throw the sounds of a V8 at a car and expect it to give off the same feel—the Cayenne EV’s engineers knew this. And this is where Niesen’s explanation gives away Porsche’s plans:

“You need to modulate it because the rev range [on the EV] is much bigger. But in theory, if you would introduce virtual gear shifts, you could use the whole thing, depending how many virtual gears you would introduce,” he said.

Porsche Cayenne Electric at British mountain race

Photo by: Porsche

When pressed, Niesen said that the so-called “virtual gears” feature is “in consideration,” meaning that Porsche hasn’t quite decided what it wants to do just yet. If the automaker does want to add the shifting feel, it will need to add some hardware—shifter paddles—to the Cayenne.

But it’s also done exactly that to another prototype that Niesen drove earlier this year. 

“I drove a concept vehicle in March. I wanted to hate it because it’s artificial and it’s fake and everything,” Niesen recalled. “I was afraid that the people that are doing it are just software geeks who have no idea how a transmission works and try to emulate it. And they know what they’re doing. They were able to make it feel like a proper torque converter gearbox. I could not tell the difference.”

He also acknowledged that it doesn’t make sense from an engineering perspective to give an EV fake shift points. That’s the same justification that Porsche development driver Lars Kern gave last year who said that fake shifting is just simulating something that’s “in the past.” But Niesen also noted that automakers did exactly this when introducing CVT transmissions just because it made the gearboxes feel more like a traditional car.

Porsche says that the key here is to give the buyer options. If the automaker includes the feature—and that’s a big if—in future EVs, it won’t be something that the driver will have to interact with, but it will be something that those seeking a bit more emotion from their driving experience could use regularly.

“That’s key,” said Niesen. “You’ve got to give the customer the option to be more engaged, but in an EV, it cannot be mandatory.”