Driving a $900,000 Porsche 918 Spyder to the future

It’s more than just its inherent speed, or the whooshing noise that fills the cabin like a school choir jamming with James Hetfield. It’s what it represents in an industry full of skeptics. It’s a portal into the future – a time capsule left by some mad scientists born decades too soon. It’s something that shouldn’t exist.

And yet it does.

How do you take three independent power units and make them work in harmony? I guess that’s why I’m not an engineer, but I get the impression even the folks in Stuttgart can’t believe what they’ve achieved.

Imagine the memo: “We are going to create a new halo supercar. It will be a plug-in hybrid, capable of traveling further than a Toyota Prius in all-electric mode. And yet it will lap the Nurburgring faster than any production car before it.”

Enter the Porsche 918 Spyder: The most technologically advanced car of our time.

Electrification is a murky word among car enthusiasts. “Instant torque” is a term that’s gaining traction, but the weight shackled to heavy batteries adds a dampener in many purists’ eyes.

Mine too. Mechanical, lightweight, simplistic missiles – like a Ferrari F40 or even a TVR Sagaris – are what I dream of at night, and the 918 isn’t any of those things.

It was once said, “You can always tell who the pioneers are because they have arrows in their back and are lying face down in the dirt.” During the early stages of its development, many – including myself – believed Porsche had gone mad. Why would you focus on plug-in hybrid technology – which adds around 600 lbs. of mass – when aiming to build the ultimate supercar?

The fact is that electric power makes cars quicker, if it can be applied correctly. This is no Prius, or Volt, or an overpriced Cadillac ELR. Yes, it musters 67-mpg in electric mode and can travel up to 12 miles without an engine. And the 22-mpg EPA combined rating is mighty impressive when you consider all 887 mystical unicorns at play. But the electric motors’ primary purpose is to fill the torque gap while the combustion V-8 spools up. 

This means instant, crushing, devastating power whenever your foot grazes the throttle pedal. On the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, it made a 560 hp Porsche 911 Turbo S look like Betty White driving a Geo Metro. It could keep up with Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari 458 Speciale while you listen to Enigma and sip a caramel macchiato. I didn’t try that last part, but I assure you, it could.

And that’s how the 918 managed a 6 minute 57 second lap around the Nurburgring, becoming the first ever production car to go sub-seven. McLaren was the next to achieve such a feat with its P1 – the 918’s archrival along with TheFerrari.

However McLaren won’t release the exact time. Is that because it couldn’t beat Porsche? Not necessarily, according to McLaren. It says it doesn’t want to fuel a dangerous speed war between the leading supercar makers. And that’s very noble.

McLaren, Porsche and Ferrari all use electricity to increase speed, only Porsche has taken the “plug-in hybrid” aspect far more seriously. And it has to, because hybridization is a technology that will – thanks to EPA mandates – one day grace our Boxsters, Caymans and, yes, our 911s. Porsche is investing in the future, not in the present.

And that’s what makes the 918 so special. It doesn’t feel like a closed book.

I haven’t driven the P1 (and no one has reviewed the daftly named Ferrari) but all indications point to it being a faster supercar than the 918. The complexity behind Porsche’s engineering, however, is arguably greater.

After driving the 918 on both road and track, I found myself incredibly contemplative – like spending an afternoon with a bottle of Mouton Rothschild and William Gibson.