18 minute read
Flights of Fancy
Rita Arnaus
27-year-old Rita’s parents were themselves Spanish windsurfing champions. Rita was born and raised in Barcelona and only took up kitesurfing at the age of 16. She soon turned professional and entered her first competitions at 19, being crowned Spanish champion multiple times. She came second in the GKA Freestyle World Tour in 2021. Thrilling insights into the production of Christophorus can be found in Liam Whaley’s video blog at christophorus.porsche.com
Advertisement
simply wishing to relax and enjoy the feeling of a fresh wind in their face.
Wind, which has a positive effect on physical and mental well-being, as even recent psychological studies confirm. For example, kitesurfing teaches us serenity and acceptance of the fact that there are parameters in our lives that we cannot always perfectly control – the wind and the waves may not always turn out the way we humans want. When Liam returns to the beach after his big air session, he, too, says: “If I’ve had a bad day, I hit the ocean, which is my safety zone. There’s no need for me to talk to anyone and I can express my feelings on the water. This recharges my batteries.”
The levanter easterly wind subsides a little. It’s time to relocate from Balneario beach to another spot that’s more suited to Rita’s discipline, freestyle – Valdevaqueros awaits. Liam loads all the equipment into his Cayenne E-Hybrid Coupé. Rita drives the same model at home in Barcelona. For her short trip to Tarifa, she jumped into a 718 Boxster 25 Years at Málaga Airport. The wind was already beginning to pick up during the drive – Rita savored it with the car’s top down. She now switches from the convertible to her board.
At Valdevaqueros beach, Rita retrieves her equipment from the passenger seat of the Boxster, gets her kite ready, slips into her neoprene wet suit, and slides onto the water. The Spaniard agilely performs multiple turns, passes the bar from one hand to the other behind her back during jumps, rotates in the air on her own axis, upside down, forward, backward – all with the grace of a dancer. Rita can’t help but laugh upon hearing the comparison when back on land: “As a teenager, I really did dream of having a career as a dancer. It was through dance that I learned to control my body movements.” She is still benefiting from this hugely to this day in her kitesurfing, she says. “Giving up on my dance training was a difficult decision to make. But I combined the two things and now I dance with the wind.” ●
Top-class equipment: Liam’s boards are high-tech constructions made of carbon.
Liam WHALEY
Patrick Dempsey
Photo by Nigel PARRY The Licensing Project
Born: 1966 Residence: Malibu/Maine Profession: Actor Porsche: 911 T, built in 1972 Patrick Dempsey was already appearing on stage at the age of 15. He had his movie debut in 1985 in Heaven Help Us and won the Young Artist Award just two years later. An actor and director, Dempsey came to international attention playing Dr. Derek Shepherd in the hit series Grey’s Anatomy. Off set, the 56-year-old with Irish roots pursues his greatest passion – motorsport. The race car driver competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans multiple times, finishing in second place in the class GTE-Am in 2015, and founded his own racing team Dempsey-Proton Racing. He is now a permanent member of the Porsche motorsport family and has been the face of the Porsche Design Eyewear brand since early 2021.
What is love?
How are you?
The Porsche 911 in three words?
Which simple things can make you happy?
What would you never do in a 911?
What’s your favorite road?
What can distract you?
Three things you would take to a desert island?
Is there a historical figure you admire?
What on a 911 could you do without?
And what couldn’t you?
What music did you wake up to this morning?
Your favorite film?
Your favorite book?
Where do you long to be?
Your most treasured possession?
Your secret?
The 911 moment of your life?
Doing something that comes from your heart without wanting anything in return and with no judgment.
I will be a lot better when this COVID pandemic is truly over.
A timeless classic.
Kindness or someone saying hello or a warm smile.
Surf a 100-foot wave.
The Pacific Coast Highway from Carmel-by-the-Sea to San Simeon.
Leaf blowers.
An umbrella, a knife, and fishing hooks.
Marcus Aurelius.
A front license plate.
Everything else.
I don’t listen to music in the morning, just an alarm clock.
Round Midnight by Bertrand Tavernier.
American Nations by Colin Woodard.
In the mountains.
My Porsche 356.
My secret is my secret that I don’t feel like sharing with the world.
Racing Le Mans.
Never forget where you came from.
Hidden Treasures
Secretive: At first glance, the pavilion of the Opéra parking garage in Zurich gives nothing away as to what lies beneath. Finely lasered and perforated metal panels allow for fast smoke extraction in the event of a fire.
Clocking on: Rico Würfel arrives at work in his 911 Turbo S Cabriolet (above). When not doing his rounds in his underground stomping ground, he can be found in the control room (below).
Archaeological exhibits and architectural finesse – the parking garage by Zurich’s opera house is a modern museum – but also tells a story that is more than 5,000 years old. We join the car park attendant on the night shift in his underground workplace.
By Jo BERLIEN Photos by Sabina PARIES
On this Friday evening in early spring in Zurich, the audience has the choice between tragedy and comedy. The tragic is on offer up above in the opera house – Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francis Poulenc, a tragedy in three acts set in the times of the French Revolution. In the course of the evening, 16 nuns will meet their fate under the guillotine on the stage.
Or perhaps the audience would prefer an opera buffa – a one-man comedy featuring impresario Rico is being presented down below in the parking garage. Rico Würfel is a car park attendant. And his subterranean workplace has a fascinating story to tell.
When Würfel drives into the parking garage in his white 911 Turbo S Cabriolet, the sports car fits in seamlessly with the vehicles he is entrusted with by the operagoers. The car park attendant comes across as someone you wouldn’t have to ask twice for an interesting conversation. Würfel is a gifted communicator who is at his best not only when talking about his 911. It is as if this were Rico Würfel’s subterranean stage. The setting is certainly apt as the Opéra parking garage is anything but ordinary. This is why we are here. We want to know about the 5,000-year-old secrets that once lay buried here.
It took 13 years for the Swiss city’s classiest parking garage to be planned and built. It now lies underground out of sight, with only the striking entrance piquing people’s curiosity and effusing architectural finesse. What’s unusual here is that the opera house is located at the northern tip of Lake Zurich – with the underground parking garage being built directly in the body of water. The higher of the two parking decks is up to 8.2 feet below the water level.
In a city which is world-famous for its bank vaults, the parking garage would appear to be a safe, too, and is under the round-the-clock surveillance of 66 cameras. It serves as a temporary safe haven under Sechseläutenplatz square for 288 vehicles. Sports cars, sedans, and convertibles are trustingly placed in the car park attendant’s hands. You could, of course, simply shrug your shoulders like Bettina Auge, the opera house’s press spokesperson: “The parking garage? You park your car and don’t hang around in the exhaust fumes.” But Würfel keeps a clear head here, too. The 52-year-old has been working down here for six years. And it doesn’t take long for us to see that he makes this delightful, bright, functional building a more friendly place.
There’s no time to linger – he has to perform an inspection round with his coworker from the early shift. Würfel is unruffled. The job does obviously have its downsides – cleaning the upper deck, removing tickets that are stuck in the
Atmospheric: Video projections of the current opera program flicker across the walls and whet the visitors’ appetites for the evening’s entertainment.
The underground design serves as a festive prelude to the opera.
ticket machines. But it is a job that offers a lot of freedom and all kinds of incalculables. “I don’t know what boredom is,” the car park attendant says. “You never know what’s round the corner, and that’s what makes it so interesting.” And yet he does know to a degree what’s coming – he is familiar with the crowd and the localities, the opera house, the Bernhard Theater, the Mascotte music club. The evening proceeds. The gong will sound shortly and the nuns will march out in the opera house. In the parking garage, the latecomers are in a hurry. Würfel makes his way around his stomping ground. The qualified roofer has now been living in Switzerland for 20 years. He grew up in Frankfurt an der Oder in the former East Germany, not far from the Polish border. He was 19 when the Berlin Wall fell. But Würfel stayed and dreamt of a Porsche and a fulfilled future. “I then emigrated when I was 32,” he says. “I simply traveled down with my coworker Michael and looked for work. But I found a lot more.” Würfel met his wife, adopted her son, and eventually found his job at the parking garage. “I love to talk and am very communicative,” he says with a satisfied smile on his face. “It’s just what I need for the job. And you obviously need a degree of happiness, too.” His job is crisis-proof and weatherproof. Würfel the roofer now works below ground. When he starts work in the morning, he is curious to see what the weather will be like above ground at lunchtime.
Würfel is also a museum custodian. He leads us to the other end of the garage where you exit to the lake and announces: “Here’s the Archaeological Museum that’s part of the parking garage.” We now hear the full story of this extraordinary place. When the excavators rolled in to dig the excavation pit for the parking garage, numerous artifacts of international significance were found. What the archaeologists found there dated back to the Bronze Age, in other words approximately 5,000 years ago. The building work was immediately suspended for nine months and a team of up to 60 archaeologists worked around the clock to preserve the traces found there. The investigators
Archaeological window: The parking garage invites people to linger. The museum section has artifacts from the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age on display.
Daily life in a parking garage: Operagoers head back to their car (above). Würfel in front of his 911 – his sixth Porsche (below). soon determined that people had been living here where vehicles now find a temporary home in around 3234 BCE. The vestiges of the settlements optimally preserved in the wet lake bed are part of a whole array of lake dwelling settlements in and around Zurich. Beneath this sensational find, there lay the world’s second-oldest surviving wooden door, some 20,000 animal bones, and prehistoric tools such as ladles, bows, and flint axes. The ancient settlements in the region now have UNESCO World Heritage status.
The parking garage is now a place of discovery, a place where modern architecture and archaeology meet. A sculpture by the Swiss artist Gottfried Honegger above the access ramp welcomes the operagoers and there are midnight-blue noise barriers that are reminiscent of a curtain. There is music playing and video installations flicker theatrically across the walls. Over there on the lake side, the Archaeological Window can be visited. Relics from 5,000 years of history are on display in glass cases. They are now neatly lined up here after what seems like an eternity in the waterlogged ground – a fishing net, a cape, hats, flint axe blades, and artifacts made from wood, bone, and antlers. These are the belongings of people who once lived here in a settlement made up of rows of pile dwellings on the lake. Cars now park below it – with thousands of years of history separating the two. It is surreal how history sometimes encroaches on the present.
Here at the Opéra parking garage, history is vividly presented. Würfel now takes us on his evening inspection round. He unlocks metal doors behind which technology hums and wastewater rushes
SeaQ Panorama Date Dive into the Original
Opera house: The Sechseläutenplatz square above ground was renovated when the parking garage was built. A view of the opera house, which opened in 1891. through pipes. In the control room, he checks the surveillance images on the screen. It’s a quiet night. Würfel looks out of the window at a sea of cars. He, too, has a collection, he says. “A contemporary one!”, he says as he looks at his own white 911. “Six Porsche, one after the other,” he laughs. Würfel is aware of the fact that Porsche-driving car park attendants are something of a rarity. “For a long time, the idea of owning a sports car was merely a childhood dream. But I am enterprising and I pursue my dreams.”
Up above on stage, the tragedy is just coming to its dramatic end. It is followed by rapturous applause and a standing ovation. Down below, the first cars will soon be audible as the operagoers head back home. Rico Würfel’s shift has come to an end, too. He is met with applause in the form of the roaring of high-cylinder engines. “I found happiness here,” he says as we part ways. Here in Switzerland, beneath the opera house. And then the rear lights of his 911 disappear into the Zurich night. ●
PUBLISHING DETAILS CHRISTOPHORUS Porsche Magazine
70th year, no. 403, 2 / 2022, ISSN 0412-3417. Price per issue in an annual subscription: €6; USA: $8.50. Christophorus is published in thirteen languages: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. • Christophorus on the internet christophorus.porsche.com • Editor Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Germany, Public relations, press, sustainability, and politics: Dr. Sebastian Rudolph • Head of channels and publications, managing editor Sabine Schröder • Head of channels and media Daniela Gutfleisch • Christophorus editorial management Alexander Günzler • Editorial staff Dieter Gross, Karolina Mahrla, Hermann-Josef Stappen • Distribution / Coordination Simone Kühner / Kathrin Breuning, Christina Hettich • Editorial office Delius Klasing Corporate Publishers (DKCP), Germany; Editors-in-chief: Thomas Ammann, Edwin Baaske; Head of content: Matthias Kriegel; Editor: Christina Rahmes; Project management: Stephanie Bremer, Marco Brinkmann, Laura Holstein; Image editing: Markus Bolsinger; Head of production: Dimitrios Kigmas • Graphics design hoch drei GmbH & Co. KG, Germany; Art direction: Wolfram Schäffer; Layout: Ioannis Karanasios, Mark Ch. Klein, Freya von Bülow • International editions Apostroph Germany GmbH • Contact Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Christophorus, Porscheplatz 1, 70435 Stuttgart, Germany; Tel.: +49-711-911-25278; E-mail: christophorus@porsche.de • Advertisement marketing EV Media, Alsterufer 16, 20354 Hamburg, Germany; Advertising director: Armin Roth, Tel.: +49-40-6077193-11; E-mail: armin.roth@ev-media.com • Production and printing The Hennegan Company, An RRD Company, Florence, KY. All rights reserved. Reprint of articles or portions thereof only with permission of the publisher. We are not responsible for the return of any unsolicited photographs, slides, films, or manuscripts. • Subscriptions Christophorus can be obtained by calling 1-800-PORSCHE, Option 3. The subscription runs for at least a year and is also billed for this period. Please make payment only upon receipt of the bill.
How Does the Taycan Recover Energy While Driving?
Minus to plus: The recuperation system feeds some of the braking energy back into the battery of the Taycan and is responsible for one-third of the vehicle’s range.
Porsche is setting benchmarks with a unique recuperation management system.
By Heike HIENTZSCH Photos by PORSCHE, Rafael KRÖTZ
Double the power: The two electric motors at the front and rear axles of the Taycan are incorporated into the brake system. T he autobahn is empty and you’re driving 125 mph, until a small delivery van changes lanes to pass a truck. No problem – you’re maintaining a safe distance and slow down to 60 mph. But a great deal of energy is consumed in the blink of an eye, as vehicles with an internal combustion engine convert kinetic energy into heat when the brakes are applied, which they’re unable to use. Electric vehicles, on the other hand, can recover a large portion of this energy, using the electric machines as generators when slowing down and storing the power generated in the battery. For example, the Porsche Taycan can use a significant amount of the braking energy for propulsion, which is referred to as recuperation, based on the Latin recuperare. Recuperation has established itself as a technical term. Kinetic braking energy increases twice as fast as speed – double the speed means four times the recuperation. When braking from 60 mph, the Taycan generates four times as much energy as when braking from 30 mph. This recuperation and the propulsion itself both play a key role in the efficiency of electric vehicles.
How does the Taycan do that?
“We incorporate the electric motors we produce in Zuffenhausen into the brake system for the purpose of energy recovery,” explains Ingo Albers, Head of Chassis Development at the Porsche development center in Weissach. “Electric motors can generally be controlled in four-quadrant operation.” In other words, an electric motor can work with both the rotation speed and torque running in the same – positive – direction. But each electric motor can also function as a generator, in which case the motor continues to turn in the same direction, but is now powered by the wheels rather than powering them itself. It generates electrical energy, rather than consuming it. And because it takes a lot of energy to power the motor and thus turn the rotor against the magnetic resistance, this negative torque can be used to brake the vehicle.
The control units and power electronics of the electric motors in the Taycan are therefore intelligently connected with the controls and logics of the brake control system. The conventional hydraulic wheel brake and electric motors can slow down the vehicle together. The experts in Weissach have developed a complex recuperation strategy. Within milliseconds, the electronics decide what percentage of the braking will be electric and what percentage will be hydraulic. While the driver cannot feel the difference, they can see it in the power meter in the instrument cluster.
Around 90 percent of everyday braking is 100 percent electric, allowing the Taycan to recover energy. “But in extreme situations, such as full braking from a top speed in a fully loaded Taycan, a maximum braking capacity of more than two megawatts must be applied,” says Albers. “The electric powertrain cannot do that alone. The conventional wheel brake is then applied to a higher degree.” It may also activate because the battery is already full and can no longer recharge through recuperation. Just in case – take, for instance, downhill driving – the hydraulic wheel brake is designed for high performance. Thanks to the design of the electric motors and the electronics in conjunction with Porsche’s signature intelligent control, the Taycan can recuperate with up to 290 kilowatts. “That’s at the absolute top of the field,” says Albers. “And we plan to increase this value.”
Coordinating recuperation: In combination with the electromechanical brake booster, Porsche Stability Management (PSM) ensures that the Taycan always maintains the same pressure point in the brake pedal.
Ingo ALBERS
Following our own path
Some car manufacturers have the electric drive’s recuperation system activate automatically the moment the driver removes their foot from the gas pedal, which is referred to as one-pedal driving. “We made the decision to go a different route with the Taycan,” says Albers. “You apply the brakes to slow down, which is a learned behavior and it’s authentic. The driver receives consistent, predictable feedback. We also offer full integration of systems such as ABS and PSM.” Technically speaking, it would be much easier to apply the electric motor braking to the gas pedal, rather than integrating it into the brake system. “But we incorporated limited recuperation into the gas pedal, which the driver perceives to be efficient, smooth coasting particularly in rural areas,” explains Ingo Albers.
In other words, Porsche will always be Porsche – in continuous optimization. We even defined our own path when developing the first all-electric sports car in Zuffenhausen – always with the goal of maximum efficiency. With this clever strategy in the background, the Taycan secures around one-third of its range with the recovery of brake energy, i.e. recuperation. ●
