Porsche unveils all-electric Tesla-fighting sports car – LA Times
Porsche unveils all-electric Tesla-fighting sports car
Porsche has unveiled an all-electric sports car concept. The vehicle will boast six hundred horsepower, a range of over three hundred miles, and a charge time of fifteen minutes, the company said.
Porsche has unveiled an all-electric sports car concept. The vehicle will boast six hundred horsepower, a range of over three hundred miles, and a charge time of fifteen minutes, the company said.
Porsche is hopping into the electrical car business.
The German sports car company has announced its all-electric Mission E sports car. The concept vehicle, which will be on sale within five years, boasts a six hundred horsepower motor, a range of more than three hundred miles, and a recharging time of under fifteen minutes.
Unveiled at the ongoing Frankfurt Auto Demonstrate in Germany, the sleek Mission E is an all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering battery-powered street car.
After many years in development, and one year of active prototyping, the concept car moves one step closer to reality, said Wolfgang Hatz, Porsche’s global head of research and development.
“We were asked many times, ‘Why don’t you do a unspoiled battery car?'” Hatz said by telephone from Frankfurst, hours before the unveiling. “We said it would happen when we can truly produce spectacle, reliability, and driving range. And now the time is right.”
Porsche has unveiled an all-electric sports car concept. The vehicle will boast six hundred horsepower, a range of over three hundred miles, and a charge time of fifteen minutes, the company said.
Hatz said the concept is “very close” to getting approval to budge to the production phase, but declined to identify a likely model year or a price — except to say it would be competitively priced for its target buyer.
“It will be competitive,” Hatz said. “The Porsche is always worth its price.”
Analysts were excited by the news, and gave credit to a certain California electrified car company for inspiring Porsche to pursue battery electrified spectacle.
Signaling ever more clearly its intention to put an autonomous vehicle on American roads, Google has hired veteran automobile executive John Krafcik to run its self-driving car division.
Krafcik, presently president of the online car-shopping company TrueCar, was formerly a top officer of Ford.
Signaling ever more clearly its intention to put an autonomous vehicle on American roads, Google has hired veteran automobile executive John Krafcik to run its self-driving car division.
Krafcik, presently president of the online car-shopping company TrueCar, was formerly a top officer of Ford.
“The brief reaction can be summed up in one word — Tesla,” said Kelley Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer. “Telsa and its CEO, Elon Musk, have demonstrated to all other manufacturers the appeal of a 300-mile-range, high-performance electrical car. It’s a wealthy and not very ample market, but there is a group of people who will spend more than $100,000 on a car with that kind of spectacle and that kind of range.”
The proposed spectacle specifications are amazing, Porsche said. The four-door, four-passenger Mission E vehicle will be capable of zero-to-60 mph in under Three.Five seconds, and will get to one hundred twenty miles per hour in under twelve seconds.
Using the auto industry’s very first 800-volt electrical system, the Mission be will be able to charge to 80% of total battery capacity in fifteen minutes — when, that is, a system of 800-volt charging stations are built.
It will also feature some dramatically futuristic electronics. An eye-tracking system, able to sense what part of the dashboard the driver is looking at, will highlight that part of the dash and expand options within specific gauges without driver input.
Hatz insisted the car is not intended to fight for customers with California-based Tesla Motors, whose Model S all-electric sedan typically sells for about $100,000.
“We don’t do a car because Telsa has done a Model S,” he said. “We have our own plans. The time was not right before now to bring a unspoiled battery car onto the market. But now the time is right.”
And the fresh vehicle will be, above all things, a Porsche, said Detlev von Platen, CEO of Porsche Cars North America — a point underscored by the company’s simultaneous unveiling of an all-new nine hundred eleven featuring improved chassis, turbocharging and fuel economy.
“With this car, we are not leaving behind our icon, and our center of gravity,” Von Platen said. “This car permits us to maintain the credibility of Porsche.”
