In order to deliver on the two year target, Porsche is increasing its resources dedicated to research and development. This is apparent with Porsche’s Supervisory Board agreeing to a proposal to to double the budget for electric car development, drawing in additional expertise in the field of electromobility. The additional spend also required clearance from the Volkswagen Group, which owns Porsche as a subsidiary firm.
For this, the company’s CEO Oliver Blume has allocated six billion euros ($4 billion) for the development of new electric cars. The bulk of this spend will be used primarily for creating hybrid versions of existing Porsche models. Furthermore, work will be undertaking to develop a completely new range of cars with fully electric drive.
In a statement, Oliver Blume said: “We will enter new market segments, but we will also electrify existing models.”
He added the company still retained a sense of caution: “At the moment we are checking all market segments to look at where electrification makes sense and at which point in time.”
Porsche’s first attempt at a battery-electric-powered car will be the Mission E model. This vehicle is scheduled to be launched at the end of 2019. The initial run will be 20,000 cars, and the style of vehicle is, in many ways, a direct challenge to many Tesla models.
From this point, Porsche are currently examining which variants would make sense going forwards. Smart2Zero additionally quotes Blume as saying: “We already have ideas about what else we can do on the basis of Mission E.”
The big challenge for Porsche will be acceptability into the German market, where interest in electromobility is lower than in other markets, like the U.S. One reason is the lack of infrastructure in terms of car charging points, and any major expansion of electric cars in this part of Europe would need to move in tandem with an expansion to the charging network.
In addition, Volkswagen’s Brand CEO Herbert Diess has launched a program called “Transform 2025+”. This outlines the company’s course for the next decade and this includes electromobility, digitization and the connected cars at the forefront.
