Hybrid and electric hot rodding is here at last, folks. We have been riding the slow chair lift to the top, but now we’re sitting high on the mountain with a pair of racing skis and we’re about to plow through the freshly groomed ski hill powder of electric performance. This is the future of hot rodding super advanced cars like Porsche’s 991 Carrera. It’s so difficult and costly to add turbochargers or change the tuning software of a car, which makes the drop-in electric motor sandwiched between the engine and transmission make more sense. Vonnen Performance in Northern California has developed a system that does just such a thing.
With batteries and controllers in the front trunk, and the thin motor wedged in the middle of the stock drivetrain, it doesn’t really have an effect on how the motor or transmission operate, it simply provides 175 horsepower worth of assistance on full-throttle acceleration events. When you want to make the jump to hyperspace, Vonnen’s electric motor is there to help out. Pretty much all other times, it’s virtually unnoticeable. That’s the genius of this system, it’s ability to seamlessly integrate with an already-great car. The electric motor weighs just 38 pounds, and the battery stack up front is just 80.
Vonnen has developed this motor to work with manual and PDK gearboxes for 991-generation 911s and 981-generation Boxsters and Caymans. They are working on a similar system for aircooled models right now, and hope to deliver 991s upgrades to customers in the first quarter of this year. It’s not a cheap operation, but 175 extra horsepower never is cheap, is it?