The Mission E will have plenty of friends.
Electric mobility is fast gaining momentum, and Porsche doesn’t want to be left behind. If their investment plans are any indication, the German sports car company has every intention to keep abreast of the surge, readying more funds to ensure that Porsche remains in contention.
The last Porsche spoke of its electric initiatives, they said that they were budgeting something along the lines of €3-billion (around $4.71-bil) to push their Mission E saloon and other electrified plans along. However, coming out of the recent Porsche AG Supervisory Board meeting (how German is that), they’ve doubled the cash allocation to over €6-billion (or $9.42-billion) for both product development and “material assets.”
“We are doubling our expenditure on electromobility from around three billion Euro to more than six billion Euro. Alongside development of our models with combustion engines, we are setting an important course for the future with this decision.” — Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Board, Porsche AG
Of that budget, some €1-billion ($1.57-billion) will be allocated to the electrification of Porsche’s existing model portfolio, while half a billion Euro ($785-million) will be utilised specifically to push out the Mission E as well as its “variants and derivatives.” We can only guess as to what that means.
When it hits the market, Porsche will endeavour to offer three variants of their hyper-fast saloon. There’ll be an entry level model with 300kW on tap, a mid-range model with 400kW, and a top-flight all-bells-and-whistles variant with 500kW on tap, with power going through all four wheels as standard. A two-speed automatic transmission will help the car achieve its top speed of 250km/h, and also to enable full-throttle upshifts that will undoubtedly contribute to the 3-second century sprint time.
When it arrives in 2019, the Porsche Mission E will carry a sticker price around the $95,000 mark, putting it comfortably between the company’s existing Cayenne SUV and ‘conventional’ Panamera saloon, and right up against its fiercest rival, the Tesla Model S.
Aside from the Mission E, Porsche will also go about the electrification of its existing combustion-powered lineup, in a similar fashion as they have with the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. Around 60% of Panamera buyers in Europe, reportedly, opt for the hybrid model, with Scandinavia posting the highest take-up rate of them all, with the hybrid Panamera accounting for 90% of total sales.
Keeping these electrified cars juiced is also a priority for Porsche. So money will be pumped into the upgrading and expansion of charging infrastructure through Europe, an initiative that Porsche joins Audi, BMW Group, Daimler, and Ford to push to fruition. Some 400 rapid-charging 800v chargers will be installed along busy European motorways by the year 2020.
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