New Porsche 911: Full details

The all-new 992-series Porsche 911 made its global debut at the Los Angeles motor show last month, when pricing and specs were revealed for the 2019 Carrera S and 4S Coupe were announced.

Now Porsche has revealed full technical details of its eighth-generation 911, including the first petrol-electric hybrid version expected after the model’s midlife facelift in four years.

It’s longer, wider and even faster, but the real trick to the next-generation Porsche 911 is that it’s future-proofed for any global emissions or tax laws by its electrification potential.

Due in Australian showrooms in the second quarter of 2019, the new 911 scores upgraded turbocharged 3.0-litre boxer engines, with the Carrera S power output increasing by 22kW to 331kW.

It will be good for a 0-100km/h time of 3.7 seconds in rear-drive form and 3.6sec in all-wheel drive 4S guise. If that’s not enough, you can pull another 0.2 seconds off the sprint with the optional Chrono Package.

Fitted with an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission as standard (a seven-speed manual will be a no-cost option), the 2019 Porsche 911 Carrera S is listed at $265,000 plus on-road costs, while the 4S costs $281,100 plus ORCs.

Plenty more standard equipment than usual has found its way into the 911 this time around, including LED four-point headlights and tail-lights, a new full-width rear LED lighting strip, metallic paint and dual-zone climate-control.

If the 992 911 looks evolutionary, there’s a very good reason. The 911 is one of the few locked-down shapes no designer wants to mess with. It’d be like screwing up the Volkswagen Golf lineage.

But the evolution is there to see, to feel and even to touch. It’s still rear-engined, for example, but it’s less rear-engined than ever before.

Every Porsche 911’s engine has hung on to a crankcase-mounted bracket and it’s been that way for seven generations at Zuffenhausen.

This time the engine is bolted directly to the longitudinal chassis rails and is about 20cm further towards the cabin than it has ever been.

Porsche has done this to lower unwanted noise levels and improve handling, slashing five seconds from the 911-S’s Nurburgring Nordschleife time, which is now down to 7:25.

The new 911 employs updated versions of the 991-series engines, with new turbochargers forcing more air into the 3.0-litre flat six.

The Carrera S engine uses a pair of enlarged, symmetrical turbochargers, a new intercooler system that moves to the top of the engine and new piezo fuel-injectors.

It delivers its best power at 6500rpm, while it boosts its torque peak by 30Nm, with 530Nm arriving between 2300 and 5000rpm.

It runs with the compressor and turbine wheels working in different directions, with the turbine wheel now 3mm larger at 48mm and the 55mm compressor wheel embiggened by 4mm.

Its bypass valves are no longer vacuum-adjusted, but electrically adjusted, allowing it to control its peak boost pressure more precisely when it’s operating at 1.2 bar.

The piezo injectors squirt fuel in at 200 bar of pressure, opening and closing faster than the old car’s solenoid injectors and allow Porsche to divide the single injection into eight smaller parts per cycle. Which is scary quick at 6500rpm.

It also uses variable valve control with asymmetrical camshafts, with one lift height of 2mm and another of 4.5mm, where its predecessor just lifted at 3.6mm all the time.

All of this is connected to an all-new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission from the Panamera, with every gear ratio changed from its seven-speed predecessor.

Most of the gears are shorter, except for the moonshot eighth gear for highway driving, and that’s allowed Porsche to give the 911 a taller final-drive ratio.

The Carrera S can reach its top speed of 308km/h (the 4S is 2km/h slower) in sixth gear, so the next two cogs help to reduce engine speed at cruising speeds and lower emissions.

There is other big news about the powertrain, with the whole set-up being Ground Zero for the 911’s electrification.

The day will almost certainly come within the lifespan of this seven-year generation when the 911 will be able to run purely on electrical power as a plug-in hybrid to enter cities like London or Beijing, according to its development boss August Achleitner.

The new eight-speed gearset is nearly 100mm shorter than the 991-series 911’s transmission, giving it space for a disc-shaped electric motor in the future without major repackaging.

The torque rating of the PDK (Porsche’s name for the dual-clutch system) has risen to more than 800Nm, too, specifically to cope with the high-torque outputs of electric motors.

“We’ve taken the experience we gained with hybrid versions of the Cayenne and Panamera, as well as the 918 Spyder, and applied it to the new 911," Achleitner said.

"In the future, this will allow us to offer it with pure-electric capability.”

He hinted that a hybrid 911 could use the same lithium-ion battery pack as the Panamera S E-Hybrid, with 14.1kWh of charging capacity. That gives the bigger car a (theoretical) 50km of EV range, but that may rise for the lighter 911.

It’s also probable that, while heavier, a hybrid 911 could accelerate even harder than the Carrera S or the grippier 4S, with Achleitner insisting the Panamera S E-Hybrid was its performance reference point.

That would push its power output up to within about 20hp of the outgoing 911 Turbo, but with significantly more torque.

A hybrid version would see a lithium-ion battery moved to the front-end of the 911 in concert with a smaller fuel tank, all of which would add weight but improve balance, with the standard Carrera S toting 61 per cent of its 1515kg over the rear axle.

Another hint that the new Porsche 911 is pre-engineered for hybrid work is the switch from an electro-mechanical brake booster to a purely electronic one, allowing for much more specific energy regeneration in all circumstances.

While both the Carrera S versions have a mechanical limited-slip differential, a new all-wheel drive set-up allows the 4S to send up to 50 per cent of its drive to the front-end.

Porsche reinforced the clutch and now the front clutch/differential unit is water-cooled, partly to cope with looming hybrid demands of it.

To extra grip and stability of the all-wheel drive system adds 50kg over the Carrera S (up to 1565kg) and robs it of only 2km/h in top speed (206km/h).

For the first time the 911 has switched to Porsche’s motorsport standard of mixing up the tyre sizes for diameter as well as width and aspect ratio.

The Carrera S will run 20-inch rubber up front and 21-inch alloys on the rear.

To balance this out and elicit more front-end bit, the front track width moves out 46mm (to 1589mm) and the rear shuffles 39mm further out (to 1557mm).

The car is 4519mm long, with a 2450mm wheelbase. It has stretched out to 2024mm wide, including its mirrors, and it’s 1300mm high, with a 132-litre luggage compartment up front.

The suspension is based around a MacPherson strut front-end and a multi-link rear, but that’s rather selling it short.

It’s so sophisticated now that it even has a wet-driving mode, which uses a sensor in the wheel-arch to tell the car when there is water around and it adjusts its skid-control parameters to suit the conditions.

And there’s even a 40mm lift kit for the nose of the car to help it in and out of garages and car parks.

There’s also the option of PASM (Porsche Active Stability Management), which lowers the chassis by 10mm and delivers active damping.

The new PASM system has new pressure chambers for rebound and compression damping, which has a magnetically-adjustable control valve.

In addition, the Porsche chassis specialists have developed separate software controls for the new damper technology, which perfectly align the damper function to their application in the new 911 and there are even separate software controls for the damping system.

The go-faster Sport Chrono Package boosts both performance and ease of driving, with the addition of dynamic active engine mounts.

It includes a new Sport Response button to overboost the engine for 20 seconds and PSM Sport mode, plus the stopwatch and the Track app.

Along with new wheels and tyres, the standard chassis package includes stiffer springs and anti-roll bars and larger standard brakes.

The rear-brake size has increased from 330mm to 350mm, and even the pedal’s ratio has been shortened for a more precise, direct action, though a composite brake disc is still an option.

The steering, too, has been altered, with a ratio that’s now 11 per cent more direct than before, though that can be tightened by another six per cent for cars with the optional rear-wheel steering.

The full digital instrument cluster is not considered appropriate for Porsche’s main player.

Instead, it scored a full, in-your-face, old-school rev counter, front and centre. It remains the most important dial in the car, with the gear indicator inside it.

The tacho is flanked by a pair of 7.0-inch TFT screens, while there’s a 10.9-inch touch-screen infotainment system in the centre of the dash, derived from the Macan and the Cayenne.

There is a standard sound system, though both Bose and Burmester sound systems are options. The Bose surround-sound setup has a 570-Watt output and 12 speakers, while the Burmester system boosts that to 855 Watts.

It now runs to a raft of driver-assistance features, from Park Assist to Night Vision (with a thermal camera for the first time) and Lane Keeping with traffic-sign recognition.

It’s also connected, with access via its LTE-capable SIM card, and it premiers its Radio Plus feature via web radio. If the car outruns the FM range of a radio station, it seamlessly switches to the station’s web-streaming service.

Stand by for our first drive of the 992-series Porsche 911 Carrera S from the global launch in late January, followed by details of the new entry-level 911 Carrera models and the inevitable new cabriolet, Targa, Turbo, GTS, GT3 and GT2 variants.