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Porsche’s Mission E To Compete With Tesla For EV Market But It’s Taking An “Enormous” Toll

By Patricia Grannum
Published on: 08:06 PST, Nov 3, 2017

Porsche has set its sights on competing with Tesla for the electric vehicle market, but apparently, it isn’t doing any favors for the company’s bottom line, Teslerati reports. Ahead of the release of their long-range, fully-electric Mission E in 2019, Porsche’s CFO had admitted that investing in electric has become an “enormous burden.”

“Today Porsche packs 8,000 to 10,000 euros in added content into an electrified vehicle, but those costs cannot be passed on via the price. The customer won’t accept it, just the opposite, in some parts of the world there’s a certain hesitation,” CFO Lutz Meschke said in an interview with Automotive News Europe. “That’s an enormous burden for a company of our size.”

Porsche plans to invest upwards of 3 billion euros into electric vehicles and plugins alongside its usual internal combustion engines. They also intend to implement cost-cutting measures to retain its profit margins.

“As sales shift toward EVs, a temporary drop in profitability in the midterm may be expected,” Menschke added.

As Teslerati notes, Porsche is one of Tesla’s biggest competitors. With the backing of its parent company, Volkswagen AG, the German car manufacturer is targeting the production of EVs for its next conquest as they respond to the growing demand for electric vehicles.

Porsche’s Mission E will be the automaker’s first fully electric car. It has a sleek, sporty design with luxury features that reflect its $80,000 price tag. The passengers and the driver will be sitting pretty in leather bucket-type racing seats. The rear passengers will also get an armrest and a small storage space, The Express reports. The luxury electric car is designed to be fast. It has two high-speed motors connected to the front and rear axles and produces 440kW (600bhp). This means that it can go from 0-62 mph in 3.5 seconds and 0-124 mph in 12 seconds on to a top speed of 155 mph.

As The Verge notes, it’s clear that Porsche is targeting the Tesla Model S with this vehicle. It will get “over-the-air” software updates like Teslas do but don’t expect too many self-driving features.

“There are situations in traffic jams where you will be able to read a newspaper, but our customers take pleasure from driving and this will remain,” Oliver Blume, CEO at Porsche, said in a recent interview.

But the self-drive/autopilot features are some of the selling points that seem to get customers the most excited, so we’ll see who wins the fight between Porsche and Tesla for the burgeoning EV market.

[Featured Image by Porsche]

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