590 BHP Porsche Mission E concept revealed

With production cars hitting impressive new milestones, concept cars have had to become increasingly outlandish. Electric cars continue their fight to enter mainstream acceptance and it looks like Tesla’s success is proving to be a catalyst. At the Frankfurt motor show, Porsche unveiled the all-new Mission E concept. The four door, four seater is an electric car that produces an output figure of 590 BHP using an 800-volt drive system.

The concept car features all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, and Porsche claims the car will do the 0-100 km/h run in under 3.5 seconds, while hitting 200 km/h in under 12 seconds. Impressive, even in the performance car world, but not unheard of. However, what Porsche has addressed is the electric vehicle’s Achilles heel i.e. range and charge time. The German automaker claims that the Mission E’s battery can fill up on an 80% charge in a whopping 15 minutes with a driving range of 500 kilometres on a full charge!

A moveable body segment on the front left wing in front of the driver's door gives access to the charging port for the “Porsche Turbo Charging” system. Via the 800-volt port, the battery can be charged to approximately 80% of its capacity in around 15 minutes. As an alternative, the port can be connected to a conventional 400-volt charging station, or the car can be juiced up at home via inductive charging by parking over a coil embedded in the garage floor from which the energy is transferred without cables to a coil on the car's underbody.

The body as a whole is made up from a mix of aluminium, steel and carbon fibre reinforced polymer. The wheels are made of carbon, the Mission E has wide tyres mounted on 21-inch wheels in front and 22-inch wheels at the rear.

Inside, the car features four light weight bucket seats, an instrument cluster with five OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) displays and an eye-tracking system that works using a camera to detect which instrument the driver is looking at. The driver can then activate the menu of the instrument in focus by pushing a button on the steering wheel and navigate through it.

A production version of the Mission E is still a while away, but technologies used in the concept will find their way into future Porsche products.