Never underestimate human ingenuity. Especially the ingenuity of nerdy enthusiasts with too much time on their hands. To them, there’s nothing that can’t be done, and no problem that can’t be solved. So when Porsche says you can’t tune the new hybrid 911 GTS, those same enthusiasts will see it as a challenge.
Admittedly, when Porsche engineers told Top Gear Netherlands that the hybrid 911 can’t be tuned, they weren’t throwing down the gauntlet or being antagonistic toward the aftermarket community. The company isn’t even locking the ECU, like some other supercar brands have done in the past. They’re just not sure how anyone would go about it—and it all has to do with the car’s electric turbocharger.
Most turbocharged engine tunes revolve around the turbo itself. Sometimes the turbocharger is replaced with a bigger, better one, which then requires a subsequent ECU tune. Sometimes, tuners just increase turbo boost by keeping the wastegates closed longer, thus creating more power. However, Porsche says messing with its turbo is a bad idea.
Unlike the previous, pure-ICE 911s, the new hybrid version features one turbocharger instead of two. However, it’s larger than the older turbos and, rather than spin entirely from exhaust gases, it incorporates a small electric motor that can spool the turbo up while engine revs are low. And instead of a traditional wastegate, the 911 hybrid’s turbocharger uses its extra internal pressure to spin the electric motor and send up to 11 kW worth of energy back into the high-voltage battery. That battery not only powers the turbo’s electric motor at low rpm, but it also powers the electric motor that’s sandwiched between the engine and transmission. There’s also an anti-lag system that uses the turbo’s little motor to keep boost up even while off throttle in Sport Plus mode, so that full boost is available on corner exit.
In other words, the GTS’s hybrid system is complex and deeply intertwined, and the software that makes sense of it all is likely immensely difficult to tinker with. Hence why Porsche says it shouldn’t be messed with, whether by tweaking the existing electric turbo or replacing it with a bigger one.
However, there’s an important distinction to be made between what Porsche is saying and what other brands have done in the past. Before the R35 GT-R debuted, Nissan claimed to have software-locked the ECU, thereby preventing tuners from modifying it in any way; Chevy did the same for the C8 Corvette. However in both cases, tuners figured out how to crack them, and the tunes came. Porsche isn’t locking anything, and its engineers still admitted to Top Gear Netherlands that nothing’s impossible. Someone will eventually work everything out and open the floodgates for the rest of the aftermarket. The real questions are who that’ll be, and how long it’ll take them.
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