By: Dave Abrahams
Frankfurt Motor Show - It's no accident that the concept headlining the Porsche stand at the Messe looks a lot like a 911.
But the Mission E is also a four-door four-seater, a more practical and versatile layout than the 2+2 coupé architecture of the classic 911. And like the Panamera, it ain't slow.
It has two permanent-magnet synchronous motors, similar to the ones in the 2015 Le Mans-winning 919 hybrid, delivering a combined 440kW. That's enough to take the concept from 0-100 in less than 3.5 seconds and to 200km/h in less than 12 seconds.
Torque vectoring distributes power to all four wheels as needed, and all-wheel steering gives the concept agile handling - agile enough to get it round the Nordschleife at the Nurburgring in less than eight minutes.
The concept is fabricated from a mix of carbon fibre, steel and aluminium, running on carbon-fibre 21 inch front and 22 inch rear rims. The lithium-ion battery pack takes up the entire floor of the car between the front and rear wheel-arches, keeping the centre of gravity low and the weight evenly distributed.
Porsche claims a range of more than 500km on a fully charged battery, with the usual caveat that using all the performance all the time will drastically reduce that figure.
QUICK CHARGING
But this is where it gets tricky: Porsche is claiming that it can pump enough amps into the battery to take you another 400km, using a special 800-volt charging set-up, in a little more than 15 minutes.
Behind a moveable panel just in front of the left A pillar is the connector for the Porsche 'turbo charging' system. By doubling the voltage from the 400 volts that has become the industry standard, the Zuffenhausen whitecoats say they can run enormous amperages without overheating the battery or melting the cables.
As internal resistance rises, however, so does the amount of energy that goes wasted as excessive heat, which is why quick-charge systems typically stop at about 80 percent of full charge.
Since it is doubtful that there is more than one of those 800 volt charging stations in existence at the moment, the Mission E can also be recharged - using the same cables - from a normal 400 volt rapid charging point (allow at least three hours) or wirelessly by parking it over an induction coil cast into the floor of your garage, which will take all night but will give you a 100 percent charge.
INNOVATIVE DESIGN
The front end is typical Porsche, echoing the 918 Spyder and endurance racing cars, with unusual four-point LED headlights, 'hovering' in the airflow of the air inlets. Each cluster is grouped around a sensor for the driver aids, the rim of which lights up to act as a turn indicator.
The rear doors are rear-hung, so there is no B pillar - and, of course, there's no transmission tunnel, so the floor is flat, giving the designers free rein to lay out the interior with four individual 'clamshell' seats and a centre console that sweeps up to meet the dashboard.
The virtual instrumentation is displayed on a free-standing organic LED screen - as well as some by holograms - operated mostly by eye-tracking and gesture control.
The instrument cluster's five round dials are organised in categories - Connected Car Performance, Drive, Energy and Sport Chrono - and an eye-tracking camera detects which one you're looking at right now. Press a button on the steering wheel and you can scroll through the menu for that particular display.
OPERATED BY GESTURES
More than that, if you adjust the seat, or move around in it, the eye-tracking camera will shift the entire display across the screen so that the steering wheel never blocks key readouts such as speed and charge remaining.
In the gap between the upper and lower segments of the dashboard is a row of holographic icons for media, navigation, climate control, contacts and vehicle settings, operated by gestures that are detected by sensors. Close your hand in the air over the relevant icon to select it, pull your closed hand up, down or across to scroll and push a finger at it to 'enter'. More detailed secondary menus are navigated via a touchscreen on the centre console.
You can also operate most of their functions externally from a tablet or smartphone - even send a temporary 'digital key' to a friend or family member's phone that will unlock and start the car, within predetermined time and location parameters.