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Porsche’s Mission R concept drops a big hint about its electric future

Sep 7, 2021 – Powered by a single 80-kilowatt-hour battery in the centre of the vehicle, Porsche’s new Mission R concept car is neither approved for FIA racing nor street legal. But it offers a tantalising peek at the marque’s electric ambitions.

“It’s an idea of how customer motorsport could be in the future,” said Holger Eckhardt, spokesman for customer motorsports, during a private video call with reporters before the car’s debut on Monday at the IAA Mobility car show in Munich. Mr Eckhardt said the two-door, single-seat coupe could be made by 2025 or 2026 to compete in cup races such as the Porsche Carrera Cup, a one-make series of private racing events that owners enter to test their track-suited cars against each other.

Since the late 1990s when it started making “cup cars”, the German car maker has sold 4250 Carrera Cup racing vehicles. Such cars are highly tuned for searing on-track performance and stripped of weighty non-essentials such as radios, carpeting and even extra seats.

A building block
The announcement came as electric ambitions continue to accelerate at Porsche, the most vital brand for parent company Volkswagen’s shift to electric vehicles. VW has been public about its aggressive plan to remove Tesla from the electric vehicle throne by 2023; along with Audi, Porsche has made the strongest moves in that direction.

In July, Porsche formed an alliance with Croatian tech company Rimac Automobili. The deal stipulates that Rimac holds 55 per cent of a new Bugatti-Rimac venture, while Porsche owns the remaining 45 per cent. This year, Porsche had also separately increased its stake in Rimac to 24 per cent.

Rimac did not contribute to the development of the Mission R but could contribute to future elements of the vehicle, Mr Eckhardt said.

Porsche’s current electric program bodes well for future products. Its four-door electric Taycan beat sales of the extremely profitable Porsche 911 in some markets. In the first half of this year, Porsche delivered 5367 Taycan models in the US, compared with 5108 911s delivered. Globally, Porsche delivered 19,822 Taycans and 20,611 911s over the same time period. Meanwhile, further hybrid and electric variants are planned.

Porsche will be a key competitor to Tesla in 2022, with a longer-term aim to fully electrify its entire range by 2030 (bar the 911),” Bloomberg Intelligence automotive analyst Michael Dean wrote in his August market report. “Porsche has already raised the tech bar in terms of battery-charge time and reproducible power on the Taycan, and has luxury Ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation] margins approaching 30 per cent, almost 50 per cent higher than Tesla in 2022.”

Bloomberg