Porsche brings electric future to Australia

Wild statistics for the new breed of electric performance cars include shattering performance and runaway fires that last for weeks.

Car companies are preparing for a switch to electric racing as road cars go green.

Porsche shipped a high-performance electric concept car to Sydney ahead of next week’s Australian Grand Prix to gauge customer interest in electric motorsport that promises to outperform traditional combustion-powered race cars.

Porsche's 718 Cayman GT4 e-Performance prototype.

The Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 e-Performance track car makes more than 800kW of power, reaches 200km/h in just 5.6 seconds, and is capable of lapping circuits faster than petrol-powered 911 GT3 Carrera Cup cars for about 30 minutes at a time.

While the car is not set to complete high-speed laps during its Australian visit, the car’s project manager, Björn Förster, says it is important to lay foundations for an eventual switch to electric racing.

“When our company announced that we will be producing 80 per cent of our cars with electric drivetrains by 2030, it was very clear to us to do this project, because in motorsport the same will happen,” he says.

Porsche's 718 Cayman GT4 e-Performance prototype.

“Either if it is due to opinion of the public or due to regulations, at one point we will have to stop … combustion engine motorsport.

“So we went away to develop this car way in front of any regulations.”

The car has been displayed in high-profile events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Förster says customers involved in racing are some of Porsche’s most loyal clients – for both road and race cars – and that electric racer’s tour will help connect with them as the brand prepares to release an electric successor to the petrol-powered Porsche Boxster convertible.

Several manufacturers are flirting with high-performance electric track cars.

BATHURST, AUSTRALIA – FEBRUARY 25: (EDITORS NOTE: A polarising filter was used for this image.) Romain Dumas drives the Ford E-Transit Supervan during a demonstration the Bathurst 500, part of the 2024 Supercars Championship Series at Mount Panorama, on February 25, 2024 in Bathurst, Australia. (Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)

Ford’s Superman shattered the Bathurst lap record for closed roof cars at the opening round of the Supercars championship in February, ahead of demonstration laps in Adelaide and Melbourne this month.

The Ford beat a lap time posted at the Bathurst 12 Hour by a specially modified V8-powered Mercedes-AMG race car.

Speaking at the 12 Hour, Mercedes-AMG head of motorsport Christoph Sagemüller, says an eventual switch away from petrol power was “part of the plan” for Mercedes.

Mercedes set a lap record at Mount Panorama with a specially modified racing car.

“It is part of the direction we have to go to in racing, but especially also for street cars,” he says.

“I truly believe also in racing there will be there will be the shift, but I think this won’t be tomorrow.

“If the whole portfolio is electric, the racing will be electric as well.”

Mercedes, like Ford, BMW, Porsche and many other brands, offers “customer racing” programs for wealthy clients who want to participate in motorsport around the world in categories such as GT3 racing.

Sagemüller says current technology and limited infrastructure makes it difficult to switch to battery-powered motorsport on a broad scale, adding “I’m pretty sure it will take another five to 10 years before you can really make it feasible for customers to race”.

Mercedes-AMG head of motorsport Christoph Sagemüller.

“Racing has been, in the past, always been the driver of technological change.

“With electrification it’s the other way around – the street is going faster than racing.”

But Porsche’s Förster disagrees, saying lessons learned in electric Formula E racing, through the e-Performance demo car and hybrid Le Mans prototypes are reaping rewards in energy management, battery cooling and consistency of performance for the next generation of road cars such as Porsche’s Taycan Turbo GT.

“We can give new technologies a chance to come alive,” he says.

“And if they are proven on the racetrack we can transfer them into a series car on the road.”

Andreas Roos, head of BMW M Motorsport, told Australian journalists “we have to have the link to road relevance”.

“You always have to have the link to the road cars,” he says.

“We at BMW see it completely holistically, motorsport.

“[We] see it as a marketing tool and also to develop technology … but also base it on our road car technology to prove what you can do with BMW M models on the race track.

“This link you have to find.”

BMW returns to Le Mans in 2024 with the M Hybrid V8 race car.

BMW will return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans this June, competing in prototype and GT classes. The faster prototype has a V8 hybrid engine closely linked to the 4.4-litre twin-turbo hybrid V8 in the latest BMW XM performance SUV, while the GT machine is based on BMW’s twin-turbocharged six-cylinder M4 Competition coupe.

As is the case for combustion-powered models, BMW’s upcoming electric performance cars will have racing cousins.

“We have a lot of Investigations already going on in different areas,” Roos says.

“We already are in the transition phase and for sure, we also will see in the future fully electric road cars also from the M brand.

“And then we also have to have something on the race track which at the end shows the performance of our road cars.”

Electric race cars face several challenges before becoming commonplace.

Trackside charging infrastructure is incredibly limited, not only in Australia but around the globe.

No permanent circuits currently have the ability to rapidly recharge a couple of dozen high-performance electric race cars at the same time.

The cars are expensive.

Porsche's 718 Cayman GT4 e-Performance prototype.

Förster says the high performance battery in the GT4 e-Performance is worth €300,000 ($495,000) and represents roughly one third of the car’s cost.

And electric race cars bring a unique set of safety considerations ranging from improved training and equipment for trackside officials to special circumstances surrounding the risk of fire.

Förster says the worst case scenario “thermal runaway” fires in electric cars are rare, and occur slowly enough for the driver and trackside volunteers to get clear of danger.

“You have a lot of time to tell the driver ‘stop in your favourite corner of the racetrack, the car will start burning soon, Take all of your stuff out of the car, and after 10 minutes you should be five metres away,” he says.

“When the car is burning, it will be burning for two weeks.”