The next electric sports car from Porsche is at the starting blocks, with the German luxury sports carmaker confirming that the Mission E Cross Turismo will begin production at its Zuffenhausen factory.
The EV sports car is a crossover variant of the Taycan, the production version of the Mission E that was on show recently at Sydney’s Barangaroo.
The confirmation comes amid media rumours of a Macan EV following comments by Porsche CFO Luts Meschke that an electric SUV would be “very likely” by 2022.
While an all-electric Macan is still yet to be officially announced by the automaker, it is now certain that it will mass-produce a second electric sports car: the Mission E Cross Turismo, which was first presented as a concept vehicle at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2018.
To produce the vehicle, the sports car manufacturer is adding 300 new jobs at its headquarters in Zuffenhausen, to the 1200 that will be created to produce the Taycan.
The announcement is yet another step in the €6 billion plan by the company in order to prepare for the shift to electric mobility by 2022.
The four-door Cross Turismo will differ from the Taycan in that it will have more ground clearance and adopt the wagon body style that was seen at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.
Other than that, the Cross Turismo will share the powertrain of the Taycan, with one electric motor per axle to deliver over 440kW of power, Porsche’s 800v charging capacity and a 90kWh battery to deliver a range of 500 kilometers (according to the old NEDC measurement method).
The car will be able to accelerate to 100km/hr in less than 3.5 seconds.
The Mission E Cross Turismo will be launched in 2020, although how much it will cost and what it will actually be called is not yet known.
In building the new sports EV at the Zuffhausen factory, Porsche will be taking advantage of new ‘green processes‘ being put in place at the plant to work towards carbon-neutral production.
According to Meschke, the German carmaker will continue its electrification journey with next generations of the Cayenne and Panamera model lines and added that well over half of Porsche’s range will be electrified by 2025.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.