The days of comparing electric cars with battery milk floats trundling across the UK at dawn are over. If the money lasts, and Porsche takes on Tesla with its first full electric car, the sparks could fly. However we will have to wait until 2020 before the German car maker’s ‘Mission E’ is market ready to try.
Porsche Takes on Tesla with a Brute
As we might expect the new Porsche is going to be a brute. The company press release salivates over its ‘600 h.p. (440 kW) system power and over 500 km driving range.’
The package includes ‘all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering, plus zero to 100 km/h acceleration in less than 3.5 seconds’.
The battery technology behind this makes for interesting reading. Porsche takes on Tesla with ‘a charging time of 15 minutes to reach 80% charge of electrical energy’. There is talk of an advanced lithium-ion battery extending the full length of the car. Certainly the doors will open wide enough to accept a large payload.
The Model E Takes Electricity to New Frontiers
With all that power frustrated in city traffic, Porsche has used a few spare volts to entertain the driver.
An on board eye-tracking system detects which instrument they are watching.
Then it links control over it to buttons on the steering wheel for easy navigation. However despite all the holographic imaging, we find the battery charging options most interesting.
As might be expected, the Porsche Mission E has a hidden charging port in the front fender. Secondly, it has an induction charging option whereby the driver parks the car above a charging plate in their garage.
Finally, if you were wondering where the rear view mirrors are, there aren’t any. Instead, cameras transmit images to the lower corner of the windscreen. Not an ounce of precious energy lost to wind drag as Porsche takes on Tesla in exciting ways.
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