Tesla has revolutionized the industry of the all-electric powertrains with their models that do not have even a hint of a gasoline powered backup engine. The statement given when asked about this alluded to the fact that Tesla is doing their thing well while others with EV offer only a small range and don’t seem to know what they are doing. Even though that is not word for word what was said, it covers the gist of the bold arrogance that came out of Tesla motors which felt like a shot at other companies.
Many other companies have taken offense to the arrogance of Elon Musk and his team, but most of them have not come up with a suitable alternative. Chevrolet was the first to announce a Tesla fighter that would be a worthy opponent and come in a form of the Bolt that will arrive soon and offer a range that is greater than the standard 200 miles for the Tesla products. During the time from concept to production for the Bolt, Tesla has increased the range on many of its models to come out near 250 miles on a single charge, but there may be more challengers than Tesla bargained for.
Porsche has unveiled a concept car at the Frankfurt Auto Show that is called the Mission E Concept with is a four seat sedan built on the Panamera platform and may be the replacement for the Panamera in the near future. The inspiration for this build came for the 919 Hybrid which won Le Mans and gave Porsche the lead in hybrid racing. This car is powered by a pair of Permanently-Excited Synchronous electric motors (yeah, if I was in a Porsche I’d be permanently excited as well) which push power to all four of the wheels using the Porsche Torque Vectoring system. Similar to the Tesla Model S the battery packs for this car sit under the body to help create a lower center of gravity.
With every Porsche performance is important therefore we look at this new concept car compared to the performance model from Tesla, the P90D. The Porsche is expected to reach sixty in less than 3.5 seconds, which is slower than the P90D run of 2.8 seconds. The range for the Porsche is longer though at 310 miles comparted to 253 for the Tesla model. The output shows up at over 600 horsepower in the Mission E while the P90D offers 762 horsepower of output.
This new concept is expected to be able to charge using an 800 volt charging system to offer a 250 mile range after just 15 minutes of charging. The current stations set up for Tesla offer 170 miles after 30 minutes on a 480 volt system for the P90D. Unfortunately the reality of this system becomes and infrastructure problem for Porsche and unless they are able to set up these charging stations anywhere this quick charge that would cause Tesla owners to have charge-time and range envy will be for naught.
The interior of the Porsche shows itself as one of the most advanced ever. This car offers a holographic instrumentation that knows what instrument you are looking at and gives you the controls for the menu for that system. The gauges and screen also change position with the driver as the seat and steering wheel are adjusted to offer the most advantageous view of the screen from every position of the seat. That is a huge difference from most of the currently offered system which are not able to adjust in a similar fashion.
What is the reality of this project? While the 800 volt charging stations sound great and the instrumentation is really cool the fact is the next generation Panamera will most likely not be quite this bold. There will probably be a fully electric drivetrain when it comes out but not what you see on this concept car, however, if any company could put this to production, Porsche can.
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