Porsche accelerating their mission electrification

Porsche is beginning to make real noise for its upcoming all-electric car, the Taycan. Formerly dubbed Mission E, workers in Stuttgart have started a small series production in the new facility. Porsche will use those first 100 EVs for testing and practising.

The Porsche Taycan is expected to hit the road next year powered by twin electric motors with more than 440 kW. The maximum range is set at 500 km via NEDC and in our newsletter today, we quoted Detlev von Platen, Porsche’s board member for sales and marketing praising the Taycan’s fast-charging capability. He said it can recharge to 80 percent in less than 15 minutes, half the time it takes when charging at a Tesla Supercharger.

Von Platen is not the only executive pushing Porsche as the most electrifying brand in the Volkswagen family. Porsche will be investing no less than six billion euro for electrification by 2022, Porsche CEO Oliver Blume announced in February. 500 million euros were earmarked for the development and production of the Taycan, and more than a billion euros will flow into the electrification of existing vehicle models.

For the Taycan, the start of production, however small a series, marks the start of this electric area. Porsche has already made a huge investment of 700M euros in their production facility that had to be constructed anew. The so-called Bau 70 is now being tested and has to be ready in mid-2019 to then accommodate for full series production of the Porsche Taycan. Up to 20,000 units shall be made in year one and Porsche say their capacity can increase to 30,000 electric vehicles depending on demand.

Overall, Porsche aims to electrify half of all vehicles sold by 2025. Today, Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board and responsible for Finance and IT clarified “that over 50 percent of Porsche models delivered from 2025 will be electrified”. Porsche also specified that among the planned plug-in cars, they plan a 50/50 split between battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

handelsblatt.com (small series, in German), porsche.de (electrification)