There has been a slew of announcements from Volkswagen Group today, but the the real news for us is the announcement of the Porsche Mission E electric sports sedan!
Back in April, I spoke to notable people at Porsche (notably Mark Webber) at the WEC at Silverstone about the potential of Porsche launching a fully electric sports car, at the time everyone was understandably tightlipped even going so far as to say that they couldn’t see it happening. Well, it has happened, in the form of the four seater Porsche Mission E.
Obviously there is a direct comparison to the Tesla Model S P90D with it’s Ludicrous Mode and super fast charging and it seems that Porsche have specifically targetted these areas with Mission E.
The Mission E has all wheel drive dual electric motor drive producing 600HP accelerating the car from 0-60mph in less than 3.5 seconds. The technology for this vehicle has been inherited from the awesome Le Mans class Porsche 919 LMP1 giving exceptional energy recuperation.
Charging the vehicle can be just as rapid as Porsche have chosen an 800 volt ‘Porsche Turbo Charging System’ which can replenish the battery to 80% in just 15 minutes! The car also supports 400 volt home charging and even inductive charging meaning parking over an inductive charging plate will begin replenishing the cars power plant. Fully charged, the Mission E gives up to 310 miles range, which is again in Model S territory.
The interior is future-proofed by the inclusion of 3d eye tracking displays and holographic controls with race bucket seats for all four passengers.
This is a massive announcement from the world’s most popular sports car manufacturer and we can now look forward to the eventual production model and the technology finding its’ way down the VW Group food chain to the other brands in the group.
I love the fact that Porsche are so incredibly active in the EV and Hybrid market. It’s a very exciting time for car manufacturers at the moment. As I’ve said before, we are seeing a gold rush in the electric vehicle market, driving it forward faster than ever and this can only benefit ‘us’, the drivers in fuel efficiency, performance and most importantly – safety.
We had a wonderful day at the World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Silverstone last weekend. Not only were we guests of the wonderful people at Porsche Motorsports, we were also able to chat to the Technicians and Drivers and find out more about how the idea of Hybrid power translates to the worlds fastest racecars.
Matt Porter interviews Mark Webber about the Porsche 919 LMP1
During our day, we were able to speak to former Formula 1 driver Mark Webber who is now racing the Porsche 919 LMP1. We also spoke at length to Alexander Hitzinger who is in charge for the 919’s development as Technical Director for the LMP1 and Michael Christensen who is the works driver for the Porsche 911 RSR.
I would like to thank the ever amazing Mark Webber for his patience after a long day! Sam Lloyd at Lloyd Bell Productions and Nick Perry at Porsche Cars Great Britain for their help making the day so memorable.
Massive thanks to Paul Shalan for attending with me and taking so many AMAZING photographs!!
You can listen to this weeks episode at the top of the page or below.
Porsche 919 Hybrid, Porsche Team – Photo courtesy of Porsche
We had a very exciting weekend at Silverstone for the World Endurance Championship Qualifiers, namely 6 Hours of Silverstone which is the UK heat of the WEC which culminates in the world famous 24 Hour race at Le Mans.
The WEC LMP1 class now uses hybrid technology and following on from our series of electric and hybrid car reviews, we were interested in finding out what Porsche were doing in this area.
Porsche Motorsports and former Formula 1 driver, Mark Webber
Porsche Motorsports very kindly invited us to be their guests for the day and we were able to interview drivers, Mark Webber & Michael Christensen, plus we were also able to chat to Porsche LMP1 Technical Director Alexander Hitzinger about the technology around the car and what the future holds for us in an increasingly electric world.
To hear the interview, tune in to BBC Radio Suffolk on Monday 20th April 2015 at 11:40 and find out what Mark Webber thinks of the all new hybrid technology and how it will eventually effect us in production cars to come.
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