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Pedro

Fake it til ....

There was a time—gather 'round, kids—when a tachometer actually meant something. That needle sweeping across the dial wasn't theater. It was mechanical truth. Pistons flying, valves dancing, combustion happening in glorious, controlled chaos. You didn't pretend to shift gears. You did it, and if you messed it up, the car let you know in a language made of grinding metal and regret.

Fast forward to today, and Porsche—yes, that Porsche—has decided that what the newest version of the all-electric Taycan (2027) really needed was… a tachometer.

Let that sink in.

Not a metaphorical one. Not a clever energy meter. No, no—an honest-to-goodness, sweep-the-needle, “look at me, I'm revving” tachometer… in a car with nothing revving. No pistons. No crankshaft. No camshafts.

Nothing spinning in the way a tach has measured since Ferdinand Porsche was sketching ideas on a napkin.

It's like installing a heartbeat monitor on a marble statue.

Now, to be fair, electric motors do spin. They absolutely have RPMs. In fact, they spin to the moon and back compared to most engines. So yes—technically—a tachometer could display something real in an EV.

But here's where Porsche decided “technically correct” was the perfect launchpad for a full theatrical production.

You can now pull paddles behind the steering wheel—paddles that, in a proper Porsche, would command lightning-fast gear changes through an honest-to-goodness Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK) transmission. In the Taycan, those paddles trigger… simulated shifts.

That's right. The car pretends to change gears in a drivetrain that doesn't actually need multiple gears in the first place.

So what happens when you “shift”? The car pauses, adjusts torque delivery, maybe even gives you a little head-nod moment—like it's saying, “Yep, totally just shifted that invisible gearbox for you, boss.”

And because they're fully committed to the bit, Porsche adds synthesized engine sounds. Not just any sounds—sounds designed to remind you of a real internal combustion engine. The very thing this car proudly does not have.

So let's review:

Fake tachometer showing fake RPMs.

Fake paddles shifting fake gears

Fake sound mimicking a real engine

All wrapped in one of the most advanced electric vehicles on the planet.

Now don't get me wrong—the Taycan, the stunning, precision-built electric machine that can embarrass supercars, is an engineering masterpiece. It's fast, it's precise, and it does things with electrons that would make Nikola Tesla sit up and say, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

But somewhere along the way, someone in Stuttgart decided that what we really needed wasn't just performance—it was nostalgia cosplay.

Because apparently, silence is unsettling. Instant torque is suspicious. And a single-speed transmission is just too… honest.

So instead of embracing the beautifully alien experience of electric propulsion, they're layering on digital theatrics to make it feel like something it isn't. It's the automotive equivalent of ordering a plant-based burger that “bleeds” just to reassure you it's still… burger-adjacent.

Here's a thought: if you miss shifting gears, buy a car with gears. If you miss engine noise, drive something with an engine. And if you're going electric, maybe—just maybe—let it be electric without the need for a full theatrical production convincing you otherwise.

But what do I know? I'm just a guy in a garage who still thinks a tachometer should be connected to something that actually spins and I don't know about you, but I've never needed my Porsche to pretend to be something it isn't just to make me feel better about driving it.