Porsche to build electric Mission E sports sedan, will hit 80 percent charge in 15 minutes

It’s just as everyone hoped: Porsche is going after Tesla. Porsche has announced that it will invest $1 billion to build the Mission E, the company’s first 100-percent electric car that debuted in concept form in September and is now scheduled for launch by 2020. The company says the project will create over 1,000 jobs, and involve a new paint shop and assembly plant, as well as the expansion of an existing body shop and engine factory for building the electric motors.
The Mission E is roughly similar to the Tesla Model S on paper; it’s a four-door sedan (though not a hatchback) with four bucket seats and a combined driveline output of over 600hp, with a promised 0-60 under 3.5 seconds and range over 310 miles — putting it easily within striking range of the Model S in Ludicrous Speed mode. Porsche is designing an 800-volt charger that the company promises will be twice as fast as today’s quick charge systems, and that can deliver 80 percent charge in just 15 minutes. It’s also planning a wireless charging system via induction coil beneath an owner’s garage floor, assuming the owner ponies up for the cost of purchasing it and having it installed.

The instrument panel is fully OLED in the concept version, and we don’t see any reason why Porsche wouldn’t build that into the final product to one-up the Tesla Model S’s 17-inch capacitive touch screen. The panel also mimics the 911’s classic five-gauge cluster in OLED form. The car even has an eye-tracking sensor that will reposition the gauges and open up menus based on where the car sees you looking on the panel. And here’s a new one: There’s an emotion-tracking sensor in the rear view mirror that can sense how happy or sad you are, and the car tells you so with an emoticon on the dashboard.
“We are resolutely taking on the challenge of electric mobility,” said Dr. Oliver Blume, chairman of the Porsche executive board, in a statement. “Even with solely battery-powered sports cars, Porsche is remaining true to its philosophy and offering our customers the sportiest and technologically most sophisticated model in this market segment.” Blume also said that the Mission E project “underlines the importance of Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen as a production site, of Baden-Württemberg as a center of technology and of the whole German automotive industry.”

Something tells us that Porsche will price the Mission E at least as high as the Model S, given that most of the Porsche lineup above the Boxster and Cayman is already into the range of Elon Musk’s sedan and even the new Model X. Porsche is also no stranger to electric drivetrain components; its $850,000 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid supercar made serious waves on its introduction, so a fully electric car is the logical next step for Stuttgart.