Porsche’s Mission E electric-car development has reached singularity, it seems. The automaker claims that “the entire company is working towards a single goal” of offering, as its head of battery-electric vehicles, Stefan Weckbach, says in remarks released by the company, “a fully electric Porsche which is a perfect fit for [the] brand.”
For a brand known for creating emotive man-machine connections?built in no small part on a signature flat-six engine sound?it would seem an electric car would present a challenge to its designers and engineers. Weckbach agrees, and he lays out some of the ways his team is tackling that potential snafu in a broad-reaching update on all things electric Porsche.
First, the Mission E: It is a concept car that previews a very similar-looking, yet-to-be-formally-named production vehicle. Porsche plans to put the four-door EV on sale before the end of this decade and promises that the sedan’s 800-volt electrical architecture will support recharging to 250 miles of driving range in just 20 minutes. Overall driving range, on a full charge, will be over 300 miles.
So will it be fun to drive" Porsche thinks so, stressing that the car’s in-floor battery pack keeps the center of gravity low, aiding handling. While the company won’t “lower itself” to mimicking a gas engine’s sound using the interior speakers, it will deploy a sound of some kind that is “a clear reference to ...