When Porsche back in 2015 first revealed its multi-year plan to develop an all-electric sports car, it called the forthcoming vehicle the Mission E. Since then, the excitement surrounding the Mission E has continued to build slowly but surely. And with good reason, the Mission E’s specs are truly remarkable and may ultimately sway some prospective Model S buyers to side with Porsche instead. We’ll re-visit the Mission E’s specs shortly, but for now you should know that Porsche’s upcoming EV will not, in fact, be called the Mission E when it becomes available for purchase in 2019. Rather, it will ship under an entirely new name — the Porsche Taycan.
According to a report from Reuters, Porsche made the announcement earlier today, with Porsche CEO Oliver Blume noting that “Taycan” means a lively and young horse, a creature which of course can be found on the Porsche logo.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the Taycan name, but the vehicle’s specs more than make up for what is arguably a clunky and uninspiring moniker. Set to be priced somewhere in the $85,000 range, the Porsche Taycan will boast a 0-62 MPH time below 3.5 seconds and will have a top speed in excess of 155 MPH. Raw acceleration and speed are certainly impressive metrics, but overall range is a much more important metric when we’re talking about electric cars. In that regard, the Taycan truly delivers as it will boast a range of 310 miles on a single charge.
What’s more, Uew Michael — Porsche’s head of Electrics/Electronics Development — recently said that the Taycan will be able to charge twice as fast as a Model S. Specifically, Michael said that a high-voltage superchargers will be able to give the Taycan 250 miles of range in less than 20 minutes.
As a final point of interest, it’s worth noting that Blume a few weeks ago suggested that all Porsche vehicles, by 2030, may be fully electric.
