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Porsche Is Building a Tesla Competitor (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Back in September, Porsche unveiled a prototype for an electric vehicle. They were trying to gauge interest and figure out if they have the technical know-how to build one. Now, they've made the decision: Porsche's "Mission E" project will put an all-electric vehicle on showrooms by the end of the decade. Wolfgang Porsche said, "With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand." This is a reference, of course, to Porsche's parent company, Volkswagen, which has been in trouble for tampering with emissions standards recently.
Why are so many trying to compete with a company that is barely profitable, especially since oil has dropped?
Table-ized A.I.
Open the trunk of your electric car, and there's a small ICE chugging away.
Because it's what consumers want.
to challenge the big dog.
"Porsche's "Mission E" project will put an all-electric vehicle on showrooms by the end of the decade."
So they're putting them on the roof?
It's a pretty car. Unfortunately, the projected specifications of the Mission E indicate lower performance than the cars Tesla are making today. The only real advantage promised is faster charging -- from a network of high-voltage charging stations that don't exist yet.
Good luck with that.
"This is a reference, of course, to Porsche's parent company, Volkswagen" What? No, I'm pretty sure he means the Porsche brand of course. Full quote:
“With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand,” Chairman Wolfgang Porsche said in the statement. “Even in a greatly changing motoring world, Porsche will maintain its front-row position with this fascinating sports car.”
The rivalry of old becomes new again!
Excuse me, but if I were to buy a Porsche, I want a bitchin turbo-charged 6-speed with the awesome suspension and braking they're known for.
If I want a eco-Mobile, I'd buy a Leaf.
I still don't get why Porsche got into the SUV and Sedan market in North America.
This really strikes me as millennial hipsterism from people that never really learned how to drive a real car. The same people that drop down $80K for some Porsche SUV thing probably couldn't *ever* get my sister's '97 Civic out of first gear.
Haven't seen you in the last few stories I have poked into. Good to see you mooing again :)
...
Porsche intends to build an ALL-ELECTRIC SPORTS car, not a "Tesla competitor". They're not even calling this "Mission E" a sedan. And you can be quite sure, it'll be hella more expensive than a Model S.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
An automotive brand whose line-up includes an electric vehicle is perceived as "Green" by potential customers. Even if they purchase one of the gas fuelled cars, they still feel better about the brand - and a bit part of marketing and selling crap these days is removing our guilt.
Sounds like they're more building a competitor for the Tesla Roadster, which isn't even in production(right now).
I don't read AC A human right
"With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand." This is a reference, of course, to Porsche's parent company, Volkswagen, which has been in trouble for tampering with emissions standards recently.
Is it? How is it? It sounds like this is just a fluffy comment about how Porsche wants to be at the forefront of technology, nothing about the emissions scandal or anything else.
Why are so many trying to compete with a company that is barely profitable, ...
Tesla has only explored the very top of the "willingness to pay" (WTP) curve, they have proven their design and engineering skills, they are at an early stage and still figuring out how to scale manufacturing and their supply chain, they have a brand name that is incredibly "aspirational", they can't build them fast enough to satisfy demand, ... Now imagine getting the logistics/manufacturing sorted out and moving down the WTP curve.
FWIW, the license plate frame on a friend's Chevy Volt: "I wanna be a Tesla when I grow up". When she posted a picture of the frame to a Chevy Volt owner Facebook page she got a ton of thumbs up. A second friend drives a Chevy Volt and also wants a Tesla, he has a university alumni license plate frame though. The only thing keeping these two friends from a Tesla is affordability and Tesla is working on that.
So as far as promising business ventures go, I think Tesla may qualify.
especially since oil has dropped?
Did declining hay prices interfere with Ford?
An all electric 4 door luxury sedan that seats 5 is equaling your turbo.
Porche 2017 911 Turbo S: 2.8 seconds.
Tesla’s Model S P85D: 2.8 seconds.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/c...
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/...
Please don't feed the cows. We grow mushrooms here.
Why are so many trying to compete with a company that is barely profitable, especially since oil has dropped?
Because a Tesla all electric 4 door luxury sedan that seats 5 is equaling a Porche 2 seater sports car with 580 horsepower at zero to 60mph.
Porche 2017 911 Turbo S: 2.8 seconds.
Tesla’s Model S P85D: 2.8 seconds.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/c...
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/...
So as far as promising business ventures go, I think Tesla may qualify.
Possibly they qualify, but operating a business venture as complicated as becoming an automobile manufacturer is far more difficult than hiring a bunch of extremely talented idealistic engineers. Business is much more than design and engineering, sad to say (because we here on Slashdot usually refer to the other parts of a business as the beancounters and the marketing-fucks), and Tesla has yet to prove they can sell to a mass market and maintain a service organization to said mass market. Cars are big things, and a cultural Big Deal to the customers that buy them. Niche cars that sell well to an elite market channel are something completely different than the Ford F-150 market.
Don't feed the oil troll. He's just acting as an agent, sensibly or insensibly, of the PR firm that came up with his talking points. Seriously, I'm starting to believe that the majority of "discourse" on comment boards is deliberate propaganda for one vested interest or another. And don't shrug your shoulders at this. These bastards are literally sabotaging democracy. They want you to apathetically shrug your shoulders and feel hopeless. When too many of us shrug our shoulders, democracy will die.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
If Porsche is building an electric vehicle, then Elon Musk has already won. Elon Musk started to shake up a stagnant century old industry, and if people are competing, it means they are playing his game. He's already said one company can't move the world to electric vehicles by itself.
I was hoping he killed himself, as he should
...but once it's off the test track, it turns out there's a hidden coal-powered steam engine in it.
for gas cars? I'm wondering if it's possible for a gas powered car to deliver the performance people want with the fuel economy & emissions standards needed to keep the air in a modern city breathable; at least if we're actually going to enforce it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they wait until "the end of the decade", they may be the only car manufacturer without an all EV model well before that time.
And no it's not to compete with Tesla, or because EVs are great (from an economic or market standpoint), or because of the VW diesel scandal. California and 9 other states are mandating that all automakers sell ZEVs (zero emissions vehicles), and that the ZEVs comprise at least 14.5% of their total vehicle sales by 2025. If they can't hit 14.5%, they'll either have to buy ZEV credits from another automaker, or they will be prohibited from selling any more ICE cars in those states until their ZEV sales go above 14.5%. Since those states make up approximately 1/3rd of the entire U.S. market, every automaker is busy prepping ZEVs - mostly electric, some hydrogen fuel cells.
This is why you have oddities like the BMW i3, which comes with an option for a backup ICE with a 1.9 gallon fuel tank to help people overcome range anxiety. Why not a bigger fuel tank? Because the ZEV mandate states that a ZEV is allowed to have a ICE engine as a backup, but its range on the ICE has to be less than its range as a ZEV.
This is also why Californians are enjoying some crazy-good lease and purchase deals on ZEVs right now. The ZEV requirement is already in effect, gradually ramping up to the 2025 target, so automakers have to start selling ZEVs now. But those states will consider the automakers to have hit their ZEV target for their state if they hit the target in California alone (since they're just mirroring California's mandate). So all the automakers are shipping nearly all their ZEVs to California and offering huge incentives for people there to buy/lease ZEVs before the end of the year, to drive up their ZEV sales as a percentage of all their vehicle sales in California.
automobile manufacturer is far more difficult. . .
You do realize that EVs are orders of magnitude less complicated than ICE cars, right? Reading your post is like reading the post of a telecom exec about landlines, just as smartphones are starting to take off. More nostalgic than enlightening. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
While I can admire any company that takes on an engineering challenge to make a product that can make them a profit the potential market for electric vehicles tend to largely be those that believe this is how we are going to combat global warming, which it will not.
Electric vehicles are coal powered vehicles. People may be able to convince me that powering an electric car from a coal fired plant would reduce the carbon emissions from the driver this is still only a very small part of the global warming problem. This is also assuming that global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels causes it, which is something I am not convince of as yet. I do believe that there is a problem with burning fossil fuels but it is a political one. The places that have large reserves of oil tend to also be places with a history of human rights abuses, by buying their oil we are rewarding them.
I see two solutions to this problem. First is, "Drill, baby, drill!" The USA has enough oil reserves to provide all of the liquid fuels and lubricants it needs, we only need the political will to do so and therefore no longer be a party to the funding of dictatorships. It doesn't solve the problem completely as these nations can still sell oil to other nations but at least we can honestly say we are not a party to it.
The second solution I see is nuclear fission. Electric cars as a solution to global warming is based on the theory that hydrocarbons must be dug out of the ground and that some day we will have an electric grid that will not run on coal. We can have an electric grid that does not run on coal only if we build enough nuclear reactors. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized in a way that closes the carbon loop, this also depends on nuclear fission.
I've seen people claim that some day we can power the world with wind, solar, hydro, and other "green" energy if only we invest in enough technological development to make these technologies cheap enough. We'd also have to build a whole new electric grid that is "smart" enough to handle the unreliable energy sources like wind and solar. We'd also have to develop the electric storage technologies to power the grid when we don't have enough wind, sun, and water. You go do that, develop those technologies. In the mean time, while you are off trying to make the technology to save the world I suggest the rest of us actually get to work building nuclear power plants and, you know, actually save the world.
As a bit of a side note I can see why people look back at the 1950s and 1960s in America as something of a high point in our history. Back then we were building things and doing stuff. We were building nuclear power plants then, something we have not done in forty years. We sent people to the flippin' moon! The USA cannot even get their own astronauts into low earth orbit any more, we have to ask other nations to do it for us. Something changed some time between then and now and I don't like it. I do believe that the USA is going to rediscover this thirst for more, and do so soon. This Porsche electric vehicle is perhaps a sign of that. I realize that Porsche is not an American company but they are reacting to American tastes in vehicles. They are seeing a market created by Tesla and think that they can do better. This market is in America.
Oh, and I realize that people do look at the 1950s and 1960s through rose colored lenses so don't lecture me on things like segregation, the state of medical technology, or what ever else you might come up with. I speak of the pioneering spirit then compared to now, the drive to make a better world for the future. Now we have people that think it is perfectly acceptable for their children to live in houses than they grew up in, because it's more "green" to do so. People rarely strive to be an astronaut, engineer, soldier, or even a perfectly acceptable job like being a plumber, welder, or truck driver. Now people strive to be a professional athlete, an entertainer, or something "safe" and boring l
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Tesla is mass-market. They have a full-scale car factory that is producing close to 100000 cars per year. They are investing like crazy in expansion that will allow them to produce 500000 cars a year, starting 2 years from now.
All while the supercharger network is growing: http://supercharge.info/ It's already dense enough to travel to most of the interesting places in the US and it's only going to get better.
And yes, I own a Tesla.
It's mainly because Porsche is subject to the EU's absurd CO2 emissions limitations, which hit every company alike - no matter if they produce small, lightweight cars that drive a lot in city traffic and don't last as long (like french cars), or if they produce expensive luxury cars. Electric cars don't produce CO2 (directly :-)), and therefore are counted as "not producing CO2". In the end, each company's "fleet average" is calculated.
Also, Porsche is planning ahead for a scenario where E-cars are more than a niche market.
Fixed that headline for you...
"Porsche Is Building a car which it hopes will be a Tesla Competitor"
Fucking American idiots. Can't even understand the words 'in' and 'on'.
Are the cars going to be "on" the roofs of the showrooms? They are going to be IN the showrooms - American cretins.
Electric cars are supposedly an environmentally friendly technology. Has anyone looked at the *long term* sustainability and renewability of the battery technology and materials that are being used in the manufacture of the batteries. The toxicity profile is another issue, toxicity becomes much more of the problem when you are dealing with huge quantities and volumes of material as in a battery.
I know people talk about hydrogen. I once read a science fiction story about a planet that drained its oceans and killing itself off by burning up all of its water to make hydrogen, the free hydrogen would end up escaping the atmosphere into space. I dont know if thats a realistic scientific possibility but its something to keep in mind. What about creating all of that free hydrogen from water, what problems are there with the hydrogen then escaping the atmosphere? We need to consider the sustainability implication for the long term such as a billion years of use of such technology.
A technology which was of interest and which avoided many of these issues was cars powered by pressurized air. Tata in India was working on such a car. The benefits are that the storage medium of course is abundant, its a reuseable medium, its just air, its non-toxic, and its lightweight meaning that the car doesnt expend much energy to carry the fuel itself around. The air itself isnt harmed in any way, the air is stored and then released again, totally renewable. Fill-ups probably can be fast, as the pressurized air can be pumped from a tank at a service station into a car. There are some engineering difficulties but Tata was working on it. It could be a great thing if can be made to work.
Of course neither this and none of the aformentioned technologies are energy generation technology they are energy storage. With an air tank you might use say, a solar panel to provide the energy drive the air pump that pumps the air into the cars pressurized air tank. This stores the solar energy as pressurized air. The air is then gradually released from the tank by valves that drive the cars cylinders. To some degree the process can be inverted, you can create a vacuum and use the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere to push air into the vacuum tank, harnessing the velocity of the jet of air as it does so.
As for solar technologies an often overlooked solar technology is the use of solar concentrated thermal technology, a mirror dish is used for instance to focus solar energy on a stirling engine which can then convert the energy into mechanical and electrical energy. The advantages of this is the technology avoids the needs for expensive photovoltaic production of large surface areas. A version of this also focuses a larger amount of solar energy on a smaller photovoltaic cell using the dish.
Will it cheat in the level battery and the km sensor? cortesy of the vw group of course!
Great just what the world needs.....Another toy that only rich people can afford.
I'lll start taking this seriously when the come out with an electric F150 that costs less than $30k.
Acknowledging reality doesn't make someone an "oil troll", rather people that imagine an absurdly expensive unprofitable vehicle is a solution to anything are shills and trolls. Telsa loses $4k on every one of their "feel-good-symbolism-over-substance" toys they sell.
Tesla has only to maintain current sales of the Model S and deliver the Model X reservations up to the launch date to achieve 75000 cars for 2016 and then their annual revenue would be $7 billion. They're NOT "losing 4k per vehicle"; they're making costly investments to grow. In the car biz, that's what it takes.
Porsche is making a billion euro play for their "Mission E", and they already have most of the necessary facilities. This is for a low-volume car that won't be on sale for 3-5 years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in,"
-- Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, 2006 on the prospect of Apple making a smartphone.
The time for skepticism on Tesla was 10 years ago. Now you just like a dinosaur who can't figure out why the sun isn't shining any more.
Bullshit. That's like saying that Amazon used to lose money on every book they sold. In reality Amazon were building their business for future profitability, just as Tesla are.
"Symbolism"? Ha ha. You hate Tesla because you see their success as somehow attacking your anti-science climate denialism. What a loser you are.
Porsche could rip off the entire design from the ground up and ship it... hell they could license the Tesla cars and mass produce them and it will still not be a "Tesla competitor".
Just like when you buy and Apple iPhone or Apple Watch, the devices aren't particularly anything real special. It takes a few weeks before 50 other companies ship a damn near clone and often even better devices than that for half the price. And yet, iPhone and Apple Watch still sell like there's no tomorrow.
To make a Tesla competitor, Porsche would have to dump all their other cars and rebuild their company as being a modern "cool" company. They'd have to kill off their dealerships too.
Making a car which is similar and in theory comparable or even superior to a Tesla will never succeed so long as Porsche doesn't bet everything on it.
On the other hand... I guess Porsche has already begun by making new models which are so fat they can't fit in parking spaces. I'm dieing to see all the funny people who will buy the Model X and destroy their doors in parking garages.
I am really surprised to see that the charging stations network has higher density in central Europe than in the USA! (Spain is a different world)
The company cut its production targets (number of vehicles produced) last summer for 2015 and 2016, including the Model X. They are not going to deliver that many cars. I know Musk has said he is confident that they can deliver about 19K a quarter, but nobody at that company has explained how they are going to do that. He has talked about utilizing economies of scale which is laughable. Ford, Toyota, even Subaru have economies of scale, not Tesla.
The are spending too much and the price of the vehicles sold don't provide a profit, hence they are losing money on each vehicle. You can only spend capital you have and at their burn rate the pot will be empty by next summer. They had to revise the revenue numbers because people have been opting for lower priced models and the strong dollar hasn't helped with foreign sales. Tesla had just $1.15 billion on hand last June, down from $2.67 billion a year earlier.
I understand what it takes to get a car off the ground, but I am not deluded by this hero worship for Musk.
My comment was to rebut your assertion about Tesla's rosy outlook, nothing more.
Why 600 HP engines and top-level cars? For the common diesel car, non sportive driving style, but not soccer mom driving, 100 CV, 240 Nm, 10s 0-100km/h is OK for a car costing ca. 15Keur and wheighing 1,2 Tm. Furthermore, I can only drive up to 130 km/h (legally 120 km/h). As much, I drive 100 km a labour day, maybe 300 a weekend day and if so, I end up parking in a mall (in an e-car world, mall's undercover parking is to be a synonim of non-fast charging stations).
Why those enormous horse herds?????
Nice analogy.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
"On paper and on specs Porsche will beat Tesla. I think it would even beat Tesla in every benchmark on the test harness. Only when it hits the real road, it might run into some unanticipated results", said the engineer who has been recently transferred from the corporate HQ of Volkswagen to its Porsche division.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
All great explanation of why now but all ignore the easiest one, "enter showrooms at the end of the decade". Quite simply they are forecasting demand and adjusting for it. Why make the announcement now, FUD, fear uncertainty doubt, basically to steal sales from Telsa by getting people to hold off. Problem off sports cars are starting to be seen more as dork machines and not the chariots of heroes and heroines, just douchy shit heads with too much money posing around in a pretty dysfunctional vehicles (comfort levels in a porsche suck, ride is awful, getting in and out a pain, shitty storage, pretty dang fucking useless beyond poseur status and the internet versus the idiot box is turning that on it's head). Makes a whole lot more sense to go the compact sports utility vehicle, TESLA will do really with with the cSUV and unless competitors do the same they will fall behind. With out mainstream media controlling the message, function will win out over form and especially over poseur status (just come off as a lame arse loser victim of marketing).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
None of the current ICE based car makers want to go to electric cars. This will eat into their profits esp since they do not own the batteries. As such, other than Tesla, EVs like the leaf are limited on performance. It is trivial for Nissan to give it much closer performance to a Tesla, BUT they will not. The reason is that these will eat into ICE profits. And Porsche? They will deliver the minimum car to take on Tesla, but not blow away their ICE performance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"The are spending too much and the price of the vehicles sold don't provide a profit, hence they are losing money on each vehicle"
Wrong. If they stuck to simply developing the Model S and X and making incremental improvements, they'd do just fine.
But they're essentially trying to replicate the entire ICE infrastructure for their pure EVs and do it quickly while driving down the cost of the most expensive component - the battery pack. When the Roadster was launched, it was $400-500 per kWh. It's now 1/2 that for the biggest players and may be cut in 1/2 again in
3 yrs.
The Gigafactory is a bold expensive play but with so many automakers jumping into the EV space, it'll probably pay off quickly as Tesla will have control over the most crucial piece in the supply chain.
"and at their burn rate the pot will be empty by next summer."
Wrong again. Part of their problem was being very late on delivering the Model X for which they already have over $1 billion in orders with deposits.
If they get the deliveries flowing, they'll have a big chunk of that to add to cash on hand. Also, they'll be able to cut back somewhat on the Supercharger station build out as they already have installed so many. They should be able more than halve the install rate until after the Model 3 is in full production.
Some of the money they're "burning" goes towards the PowerWall / PowerPack products which should start shipping in Q1 2016 and ramp up as Phase 1 of the Gigafactory comes online. If they're able to deliver on the Model 3 reveal in March, they'll get a bit more cash on hand from reservations (but probably not more than $50 million which isn't much compared to Model S / X sales).
But it is quite a race to Summer 2016 and the Q1 earnings call promises to be very tense.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I hope that Tesla is working on a truck but I can't see a battery-only one being successful in the USA until the per-kWh cost drops even more - and gas goes up.
If Via Motors is struggling to sell their hybrid trucks, I don't think Tesla is ready to enter that space just yet.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I want to know more about this, and why anyone would want it. If a cop pulls me over for speeding, with it show a my guilty expression mood, or turn red if I'm having a bit of road rage?
From the article:
The car’s cabin also features its share of tech, including an eye-tracking system, a curved OLED dashboard display that adjusts according to the driver’s seat position, and the ability to detect the driver’s mood using a camera mounted in the rear-view mirror. (The Mission E can reflect the mood by displaying an emoticon in the dashboard.)
Just another day in Paradise
"Why make the announcement now, FUD, fear uncertainty doubt, basically to steal sales from Telsa by getting people to hold off."
People who can afford Teslas don't wait five years to buy vehicles.
Just another day in Paradise
I just hope Porsche decides to use Tesla's charger instead of rolling their own.