GTS Ride Quality with or without Active Ride

[Avantgarde]

Air or gas molecules are not rigid by nature. They will always have a natural reaction delay to an impact vs steel, or any hard material. This is completely seperate than overall stiffness of the suspension air or steel. In every instance you drive an air suspension vs a steel suspension of the same vehicle you will feel this effect. It is very well known and documented. Everything else being equal, air suspension will have a negative effect on steering feel because of this delayed suspension reaction, period.

Now couple words on your style here prj. We all respect you for your tuning work, i have your tune on my car and i love it. But please fix your tone man. If you disagree you can disagree don't be disrespectful. I spent a decade with big auto and have a ton of pretty senior engineer friends and done many drives in test mules test tracks and spent too many hours of my life debating nerdy details on vehicles. I can tell you your knowledge and insight on motor control/software/tuning is 10 out of 10. Your knowledge on suspension/chassis/handling subtleties is nowhere near that (your stubbornness on this pretty uncontroversial matter is just one of many examples i’ve seen. You make bold statements and then walk back). So if you say shut up to all of us on your expertise area like motors i’ll tolerate that out of respect for the work and creativity you’ve shown in that area. If you expand it to every single area in this forum and declare yourself as ultimate source of truth every random matter, disrespecting people left and right, you start to be annoying.

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[prj]

Air or gas molecules are not rigid by nature. They will always have a natural reaction delay to an impact vs steel, or any hard material.

Not going to go into ad hominems.

I don't think you understand how air suspension works period.

You think the car is floating on it side to side or something when the only thing being affected is the up and down movement on each corner.
All the side to side movement is steel, it is rigid. The dampers are the same whether steel or air, and that's where the initial play is, not in the spring.

There is no reaction delay to direction change because it's an air spring, steel spring or hydraulic, because they barely affect initial direction change.

On every single VW AG car with an air suspension option (starting from the C6 A6) the car leans much less than the equivalent steel spring variant.

In terms of handling on the Taycan - PAR > Air > Steel spring. Unless you put the steel spring car on aftermarket coilovers and make it insanely stiff, but not stock.
A J1.1 GTS has sharper turnin and is stiffer than any RWD, because the ARB's are stiff and the dampers are turned stiffer. The ARB and the compression tune on the damper affect the initial bite by far the most.

On the AWD cars the steering is heavier, it's got nothing to do with steel vs air.

 

[Avantgarde]

You think the car is floating on it side to side or something when the only thing being affected is the up and down movement on each corner.
All the side to side movement is steel, it is rigid. The dampers are the same whether steel or air, and that's where the side to side play is, not in the spring.

You think saying this adds any value? Do you really think that I think air suspension is horizontally installed? The chasis' immediate reaction to a steering input is felt through suspension's reaction. When you give a sharp left steering input, that immediately puts pressure on the right side suspension and relieves pressure on the left suspension and visa versa. If you slow-mo what is happening in milliseconds this is the key difference between air and steel: Since steel is a rigid structure in the very first milliseconds the force immediately faces a counter-force from steel with literally zero time delay (this is regardless of the softness of the spring) You immediately feel this feedback in your steering. Then in the following milliseconds, spring starts to compress, this is a separate, secondary force. There is quite a distinct timing difference between these two events when you go to millisecond scale. In the case of air suspension, the first counter-reaction simply does not happen, because gas molecules will always have an initial "give" to compress and reach a certain level of rigidity to counteract. Again talking milliseconds here. To get close to same level of initial rigidity you'd probably have to increase the gas pressure to ridiculously high levels (then we are not talking about same suspension softness). That "give" and delay in the end is important element of what gives air suspension the comfort but steals from reaction time. Another way to test this is to do Super fast but VERY short back to back steering inputs, with which you can almost "confuse" air suspension, which will somewhat cancel out the inputs, while steel will be 100% with you all the time.

This is my last keyboard warrior comment on this matter. I know you'd love to continue. You made a comment 2 months ago about RWD steering feel saying "it is not better why does everyone say that?". And someone pasted a response with 5 or 6 professional youtube reviews essentially saying pretty much same thing about directness and natural feel of RWD. Instead of saying "my bad" and move on, you got pissed off and dead-set to disprove it over and over.

I owned multiple air suspension cars. And I am a fan. I also owned a cayman and a rwd steel suspension taycan. I am telling this to anyone who is interested. Go drive back to back a Cayman or a 911, a steel suspension Taycan, and an air suspension Taycan. If you don't immediately conclude steel Taycan has a VERY similar steering feel to Cayman/911 in terms of being direct and communicative, while the air suspension Taycan feels very different (comfortable & nice, and likely very capable in track but not at all like Cayman/911), you have to be insane or don't care about steering feel, which is fine. And all in all I still think Air Suspension is the way to go with Taycan given all other benefits.

 

[prj]

You think saying this adds any value? Do you really think that I think air suspension is horizontally installed? The chasis' immediate reaction to a steering input is felt through suspension's reaction. When you give a sharp left steering input, that immediately puts pressure on the right side suspension and relieves pressure on the left suspension and visa versa.

The air spring is not responsible for it. The rate of change is governed by the damper compression characteristic not the air spring. When you make a sharp turn the first moments the spring does next to nothing and it is all a function of the damper.

Furthermore, this claim is completely bogus:

My understanding is with the PAR set up, separate from all fancy leveling benefits, you have more “direct” connection to the road as there is no air/gas between the road and the vehicle’s chasis, as hydraulic arms are holding the vehicle afloat (except when it is parked when the car falls on a basic air cushion).

On PAR the spring is air.
PAR is a damper technology, not air. ZF sMotion:
https://press.zf.com/press/media/en...pi_smotion/tx2024-12-10_PI_ZF_sMotion_ENG.pdf

It uses the oil pumps to actuate the dampers up and down, the springs are air on all PAR cars. It uses the wheel height sensors to orchestrate the cooperation between moving the wheel via the damper and the air spring function on which every PAR car rides.

The pumps are not "holding the vehicle afloat" whatsoever. In neutral stance on a smooth surface the car rests on the air spring and PAR provides the delta control.

 

[d00d]

Always remember you are the student when talking with an engineer, I learned this when I told my dad I wanted to put a V8 in a Beetle.

 

[Avantgarde]

The air spring is not responsible for it. The rate of change is governed by the damper compression characteristic not the air spring. When you make a sharp turn the first moments the spring does next to nothing and it is all a function of the damper.

Furthermore, this claim is completely bogus:


On PAR the spring is air.
PAR is a damper technology, not air. ZF sMotion:
https://press.zf.com/press/media/en...pi_smotion/tx2024-12-10_PI_ZF_sMotion_ENG.pdf

It uses the oil pumps to actuate the dampers up and down, the springs are air on all PAR cars. It uses the wheel height sensors to orchestrate the cooperation between moving the wheel via the damper and the air spring function on which every PAR car rides.

The pumps are not "holding the vehicle afloat" whatsoever. In neutral stance on a smooth surface the car rests on the air spring and PAR provides the delta control.

In a normal car suspension the spring is the PRIMARY load-bearer, defining the vehicle’s response to action. The damper is a regulator, it does not replace the spring’s counteracting behavior but manages the rate of that behavior. They work together but for damper to regulate something there has to be an energy to regulate! which comes from the spring. Air is lazy, it needs to compress before it can exert a counter force. You can measure this “laziness". Energy moves through the air roughly at speed of the sound (340kmh). A steel coil moves it 15 times faster at 5,000 meters. Air spring delays the reaction time (which is a good thing for bumps) but the same delay exists when the car is reacting to steering inputs. If dampers are entirely responsible for counter-reaction like you said, there would not be any comfort benefit to air springs either. They regulate the input (energy) they get from springs, and they are dealing with a fast input in one case (steel) and a slow input from the other (air).

The second difference is steel’s linear response characteristic. 1 kg of weight on a steel spring always (give or take) give Xmm of compression. Air is inherently progressive, the more you compress it the exponentially stiffer it gets. When you turn the wheel, steel spring on the counter side resists immediately with a clean and predictable force (again damper further regulates this action, but it does not “replace” it all together). When you do the same on an air spring you are dealing with the lowest resistance level at the higher suspension position (mushiness) which gets harder is you push. This is very easy to feel on air suspension cars.

Finally on PAR: I was clear I have not driven one. But from what I read, PAR completely changes the role of a damper to a damper/spring combo. The air spring in PAR vehicles do not have a traditional role like in a spring. They simply serve as a kick stand, keeping the car at a “base” level. All responsibility of "counteracting” is offloded to PARs mechanically connected hyrdolic arms. When you push the PAR vehicle on one side, the resistive force you face is not the air suspension reacting, because before air is engaged at all PARs hydrolic arm immediately “counter-push”es that side of the car up. So you are not subject to air's reaction time. You are sitting back on air's mushy cushion only when car is back level (essentially when the hydrolic arm lets the car sit back on the air spring). So the "lag" is entirely eliminated, but only when needed. - Again this part is my understanding I can't say I am 100% accurate on PAR.

 

[Beattie]

I found this review for those that haven’t seen it. Good write up.

https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-driven/2025-porsche-taycan-gts-sport-turismo--uk-review/49478

 

[prj]

In a normal car suspension the spring is the PRIMARY load-bearer, defining the vehicle’s response to action. The damper is a regulator, it does not replace the spring’s counteracting behavior but manages the rate of that behavior.

The damper is what regulates the rate of change. If you take the damper out the spring will just compress and decompress at will.
So when you make a sharp movement it's the damper that takes the initial hit. The spring needs to compress before it starts doing anything.
It doesn't matter if the spring is air, steel or cheese. It has a certain amount of preload, but when you exert a strong amount of force on it, then it's the damper keeping it from instantly compressing.
Essentially the damper is like the initial bump stop, which slowly compresses, and then the next bump stop is the physical bump stop, if you managed to bottom out the spring.
On turn-in you immediately hit the compression limiter on outer wheels and the rebound limiter on the inner wheels, at that moment the car is carried by the dampers and all you feel is the damper characteristic, until the counterforce of the spring is higher than the compression/rebound limit or you hit the bump stop.

By definition the spring at the top of it's travel does next to nothing. So during turn in the initial response is based on the damper, not on the spring. If you had no damper the car would immediately fall on it's side in the opposite direction and then yo-yo left to right.

Because you don't seem to understand what a damper does in the suspension and what the spring does, then all other conjecture is moot anyway.

Finally on PAR: I was clear I have not driven one. But from what I read, PAR completely changes the role of a damper to a damper/spring combo.

No.

The air spring in PAR vehicles do not have a traditional role like in a spring. They simply serve as a kick stand, keeping the car at a “base” level.

No. The car is on an air spring on each corner.

All responsibility of "counteracting” is offloded to PARs mechanically connected hyrdolic arms.

There are no hydraulic arms, what are you even talking about?
It's pushing the damper piston up and down with hydraulic fluid.

When you push the PAR vehicle on one side, the resistive force you face is not the air suspension reacting, because before air is engaged at all PARs hydrolic arm immediately “counter-push”es that side of the car up.

There is no hydraulic arms.
Of course the air spring compresses. The damper then instead of only slowing the compression and the rebound can also counteract it based on the wheel height sensor by exerting force on the damper, but only for large movements. The smaller movements are still a function of the damper compression and rebound characteristic, and of course the spring is not going anywhere.

But then the air spring has nothing to do with the initial bite on the suspension anyway, as it's a characteristic of the dampers and each corner is carried by the damper the moment the compression of the spring exceeds the damper compression characteristic (same for the rebound).
Which makes this whole imaginary air molecules thing even more hilarious...

So you are not subject to air's reaction time. You are sitting back on air's mushy cushion only when car is back level (essentially when the hydrolic arm lets the car sit back on the air spring). So the "lag" is entirely eliminated, but only when needed. - Again this part is my understanding I can't say I am 100% accurate on PAR.

No, you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Avantgarde]

The damper is what regulates the rate of change. If you take the damper out the spring will just compress and decompress at will.
So when you make a sharp movement it's the damper that takes the initial hit. The spring needs to compress before it starts doing anything.
It doesn't matter if the spring is air, steel or cheese. It has a certain amount of preload, but when you exert a strong amount of force on it, then it's the damper keeping it from instantly compressing.
Essentially the damper is like the initial bump stop, which slowly compresses, and then the next bump stop is the physical bump stop, if you managed to bottom out the spring.
On turn-in you immediately hit the compression limiter on outer wheels and the rebound limiter on the inner wheels, at that moment the car is carried by the dampers and all you feel is the damper characteristic, until the counterforce of the spring is higher than the compression/rebound limit or you hit the bump stop.

By definition the spring at the top of it's travel does next to nothing. So during turn in the initial response is based on the damper, not on the spring. If you had no damper the car would immediately fall on it's side in the opposite direction and then yo-yo left to right.

Because you don't seem to understand what a damper does in the suspension and what the spring does, then all other conjecture is moot anyway.


No.

No. The car is on an air spring on each corner.

There are no hydraulic arms, what are you even talking about?
It's pushing the damper piston up and down with hydraulic fluid.


There is no hydraulic arms.
Of course the air spring compresses. The damper then instead of only slowing the compression and the rebound can also counteract it based on the wheel height sensor by exerting force on the damper, but only for large movements. The smaller movements are still a function of the damper compression and rebound characteristic, and of course the spring is not going anywhere.

But then the air spring has nothing to do with the initial bite on the suspension anyway, as it's a characteristic of the dampers and each corner is carried by the damper the moment the compression of the spring exceeds the damper compression characteristic (same for the rebound).
Which makes this whole imaginary air molecules thing even more hilarious...


No, you have no idea what you are talking about.

The damper is what regulates the rate of change. If you take the damper out the spring will just compress and decompress at will.
So when you make a sharp movement it's the damper that takes the initial hit. The spring needs to compress before it starts doing anything.
It doesn't matter if the spring is air, steel or cheese. It has a certain amount of preload, but when you exert a strong amount of force on it, then it's the damper keeping it from instantly compressing.
Essentially the damper is like the initial bump stop, which slowly compresses, and then the next bump stop is the physical bump stop, if you managed to bottom out the spring.
On turn-in you immediately hit the compression limiter on outer wheels and the rebound limiter on the inner wheels, at that moment the car is carried by the dampers and all you feel is the damper characteristic, until the counterforce of the spring is higher than the compression/rebound limit or you hit the bump stop.

By definition the spring at the top of it's travel does next to nothing. So during turn in the initial response is based on the damper, not on the spring. If you had no damper the car would immediately fall on it's side in the opposite direction and then yo-yo left to right.

Because you don't seem to understand what a damper does in the suspension and what the spring does, then all other conjecture is moot anyway.


No.

No. The car is on an air spring on each corner.

There are no hydraulic arms, what are you even talking about?
It's pushing the damper piston up and down with hydraulic fluid.


There is no hydraulic arms.
Of course the air spring compresses. The damper then instead of only slowing the compression and the rebound can also counteract it based on the wheel height sensor by exerting force on the damper, but only for large movements. The smaller movements are still a function of the damper compression and rebound characteristic, and of course the spring is not going anywhere.

But then the air spring has nothing to do with the initial bite on the suspension anyway, as it's a characteristic of the dampers and each corner is carried by the damper the moment the compression of the spring exceeds the damper compression characteristic (same for the rebound).
Which makes this whole imaginary air molecules thing even more hilarious...


No, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Here we go again. Dude you do have a problem. You can't have a conversation. There are many sophisticated people here and you keep throwing childish insults when you face the slightest disagreement. Nothing I said above is controversial. PERIOD. Did you even read it?

And the only reason we are going this rabbit hole is because you refuse to accept a VERY BASIC AND WELL KNOWN trade-off of air-suspension: Steering feel. You can spend the rest of your life try to disprove it. Mind you it is will be a steep hill.

The other things I noticed you said and walked back:

1- "there is no suspension difference between GTS and a Turbo on the same wheel set up" "i drove one and did not feel a difference" (Even though it does not surprise me that you did not feel a difference after all this . Then you smoothly walked back and said "well if you put a normal car in sport plus it will feel the same with GTS

2- "Taking 90kgs off the front axle you won't feel anything in steering because the car is 2 tons". Someone who spent their life on F1 suspension calibration called you out. You lost your cool again sending insults and tweaked your response to say well the dual motor car is more powerful and will still lap faster - as if the debate was about power

3- Then you said there is no much of a power step-up between a 911 and 911 4S but there is a big difference between Taycan base and Taycan 4S, to justify your point of view. While the power differences between the two are pretty similar.

4- Also separately you said anything but Turbo S in first gen won't be battery limited with tune. While if you tune a base with smaller battery you won't be able to get 480hp consistently. Because smaller battery voltage will drop to low 500s at lower state of charge and with only one 600amp inverter to deal with your power will be limited. You totally missed this - any btw this is in your ally.

Some of them small points but I did not bring up because we can all see your immature side. I am sure many others do too and stay back. I will say what you said for some one else: I don't care if you wrote a bunch of code or are the pope, you miss a lot of important nuances like any other human being but lose your cool your intellectual integrity, when someone points it out to you, then tweak your arguments and wrap up with insults. It is ok to say "oh yeah i did not think about that, makes sense thanks". It is important to have this maturity. This is my lost post on this. Here i will help you "no you don't know what you are talking about" - so you can copy and paste this in your response without reading my note. Off you go.

 

[AlexR]

I had a J1 Turbo and now a GTS J2. J2 is much more firm - Sports Car v 911.

 

[prj]

1- "there is no suspension difference between GTS and a Turbo on the same wheel set up" "i drove one and did not feel a difference"

Was never said.
I said there is a difference, albeit not a huge one.

2- "Taking 90kgs off the front axle you won't feel anything in steering because the car is 2 tons"

Was never said, not even remotely close.

3- Then you said there is no much of a power step-up between a 911 and 911 4S but there is a big difference between Taycan base and Taycan 4S, to justify your point of view. While the power differences between the two are pretty similar.

Also not said.

4- Also separately you said anything but Turbo S in first gen won't be battery limited with tune.

This was never said, what are you on about? This is the most ridiculous thing that you have claimed out of all of this when the complete opposite is in the powertrain threads.

While if you tune a base with smaller battery you won't be able to get 480hp consistently.

Huh?

Because smaller battery voltage will drop to low 500s at lower state of charge and with only one 600amp inverter to deal with your power will be limited. You totally missed this - any btw this is in your ally.

No it won't and it doesn't. Have plenty of logs as well. You'd have to be at 10%.

You do not have enough knowledge about the engineering behind the vehicle to engage in a meaningful conversation, so all you can do is just spew insults.
It's enough, enjoy your place on the blocklist.

 

[SoccerMan94043]

I had a J1 Turbo and now a GTS J2. J2 is much more firm - Sports Car v 911.

Is the J2 GTS with PAR?

 

[Beattie]

I had a J1 Turbo and now a GTS J2. J2 is much more firm - Sports Car v 911.

I had a J1 Turbo and now a GTS J2. J2 is much more firm - Sports Car v 911.

I had a J1 Turbo and now a GTS J2. J2 is much more firm - Sports Car v 911.

Does the acceleration of the GTS feel any different from your Turbo?

 

[AlexR]

GTS feels faster - more brutal and slightly less controllable!

 

[RWD_Coil_Springs]

Let me add that if one is going to compare 2 different Taycans that the only way to do it scientifically is to use the same wheels and tires. Tires especially make a big difference on any car. You can clearly feel a difference in the same car by changing to a different tire model. I myself have had 5 different tire makes/models for my RWD steel spring Taycan and I felt the differences every time. Also other factors like tire wear, tire pressure, tire temperature, etc. will affect steering feel to whatever degree. Not to mention the difference in wheels in terms of unsprung weight, etc.

It is common knowledge that unsprung weight is more important (by a factor of 5 or so?) than sprung weight. Unsprung weight includes both the wheel and the tire, etc. Having said this I recognize that highly experienced world class expert automotive engineers know far more than I do.

From my perspective the only way to scientifically compare 2 Taycans is to drive the first Taycan, then take the wheels/tires off and mount them on the second Taycan and drive on the same roads as close to the same time as possible. When attempting to come close to doing a scientific comparison there should be as few variables as possible—and ideally only one variable.

BTW there is a former F1 engineer who frequents this forum who knows far more about this than I do.

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