Porsche Taycan EV breaks a battery charging record by spending just 2.5 hours and $77 at fast chargers for an LA-to-NYC trip

The man credited with the invention of the word "hypermiling" - Wayne Gerdes - managed to break a Guinness Book record for the fastest charging of an electric car with a bog standard Porsche Taycan EV, of the 2021 model year variety. Granted, the conditioning of the record award was highly specific - a coast-to-coast trip done with the shortest amount of time spent on a charger - but the achievement is still very impressive. The previous trip that broke Guinness's fast-charging record was done with a Kia EV6 which made it from New York to LA with just 7 hours and 10 minutes of charging time. Porsche says that the Taycan can charge from 5% to 80% for 22 minutes with a suitable charger that takes advantage of the company's 800-volt charging platform under certain conditions:

To achieve the stated charging time for corresponding state of charge range, the following is required: a CCS DC fast charging station with > 270kW and > 850V and a battery temperature range of 86°-95°F. For physical and chemical reasons, the charging speed decreases as the battery approaches its full capacity. Charging speeds over 80% state of charge are significantly slower and not recommended for daily use. For regular fast DC charging usage, we recommend charging at 50kW stations.

To test those claims and win the coast-to-coast fast charging challenge, Mr. Gerdes used the standard Taycan Performance Battery Plus model that is priced from US$82,700 in the U.S. and has a 282-mile EPA range:

Like all GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS attempts, we are required to meet a daunting set of requirements, including meticulously noting every stop – with independent witnesses for each charge. Every mile covered was filmed, GPS tracked and accounted for before being certified by a panel of adjudicators before the record was accepted. As noted above, the car selected was a standard 2021 Taycan equipped with the Performance Battery and the Premium Package including Adaptive Cruise Control and Porsche’s Electric Sport Sound.

His drive from the Los Angeles to New York City Halls took five days in November and covered 2,834.5 miles of distance in total. How much of that time was spent charging the Porsche Taycan? Try just 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 48 seconds as it took Mr. Gerdes just 22 minutes to get from a 6% to an 80% full battery with Electrify America's CCS DC fast 350KW charger. That's nearly three times less than the previous Guinness Book record of the Kia EV6, while the trip only cost US$76.82 in electricity charges for the 18 cumulative stops on the Electrify America network that Porsche partnered with for this particular coast-to-coast trip.

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