Porsche Mission X EV tugs at the purse-strings of billionaires
A select few were allowed to touch it. Despite a possible price tag of more than $1 million, Porsche’s powerful EV hypercar cast a spell on those who saw it and enthralled motor enthusiasts.
Of all the major, established car brands in the world that are leaping on the electrically powered bandwagon, the enthusiasm shown by legendary sports-car specialist Porsche is the most surprising, and now it is teasing the world with the first EV hypercar, its Mission X, which it confidently predicts will be the fastest production vehicle ever to lap the legendary Nurburgring circuit in Germany.
While the Mission X will appeal mainly to billionaires and car collectors, Porsche is also turning its biggest-selling vehicle, the mid-sized SUV Macan, into an EV this year, and the sporty Boxster convertible and Cayman coupe will be next.
Porsche brought the only drivable concept-car version of the stunning Mission X to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix, to show it off to keen customers (the company already has plenty of expressions of interest from people wanting to buy one, even though it will cost well in excess of $1 million) and motoring enthusiasts who generally like their cars a lot louder.
A select group of journalists were allowed to touch and even sit in this incredible-looking machine while its creator Michael Behr (who also worked on such incredible vehicles as Porsche’s 918 Spyder and created the 911 Dakar) explained why it will be just as game-changing to drive as it is to look at (and yes, they really do intend to use that F1-style steering yoke in the production version).
“The Nordschleife (as the Germans call their favourite 21km section of the legendary Nurburgring) is the DNA of Porsche, everything we are producing or developing, there’s always goal to produce a lap time, and we can say that this Mission X will be the fastest production car ever, on road tyres, around the Nordschleife, and it will be fully electric, so this is something completely new,” Behr said.
Porsche won’t tell us, yet, just how much power the vehicle’s two electric motors, one on each axle, will make, but one ingenious move the company has made, which becomes obvious when you look at how low and race-car like the Mission X is, has been moving the batteries.
Porsche’s other electric sports car, the Taycan, has a reasonably low seating position, but the driver’s backside in a hypercar like this needs to be virtually on the ground, so in the Mission X the seat is a full 123mm lower than the Taycan (the engineers also wanted to make sure there was enough headroom for owners to be able to drive it comfortably with a racing helmet on), and that meant no batteries below the floor, where they normally sit in an EV.
“What we did was to put the batteries in a block behind the seats, right in the middle of the car, and that’s allowed us to create a mid-engine balance, just like you’d get in a mid-engined combustion car, or the centre of gravity is in the middle of the car, and we can still make it very low,” Behr added.
“This also helped us to target downforce, because, unlike a combustion car, there’s no cooling going on at the front of the car, so we can concentrate on generating as much downforce as we can.
“The whole idea of this car was to show what’s possible and to find the new limits, pushing the envelope of what’s possible with an electric vehicle and allowing us to bring in a new era. And how often, in your whole career, do you have the chance to bring in a new era? It’s very exciting.”
Excitingly, Behr confirmed that Porsche is going to use the same approach with its first proper electric sports car, the next generation Boxster and Cayman, which are set to arrive next year. It’s not yet clear how long the legendary, range-topping 911 will stay with a combustion engine, but it is clear that Porsche is going all in on electric power.
Porsche has not yet confirmed that it will build the Mission X, despite overwhelming interest from its customers, and collectors, around the world, but you only need to look at Behr’s smile when you ask him whether he thinks it will happen, and he shrugs knowingly. You can bet he gave the same shrug when he was developing the legendary 918 and people questioned whether it would ever be a real, street-legal car.
Details are still sketchy about things like range as well, but Behr says he wants the Mission X to be capable of not just one flying lap but multiple laps in a row of the Nordschleife, flat out.
