Porsche is undoubtedly going after Tesla with the all-electric Mission E

We often poke fun at the media for calling every new electric car a ‘Tesla killer’ and while we certainly wouldn’t call Porsche’s upcoming Mission E a ‘Tesla killer’, the German premium automaker is undoubtedly going after Tesla with the vehicle.

Aside from the obvious fact that the Mission E is a large premium 4-door sedan that will be competing in the same segment as Tesla’s Model S, Porsche was even spotted benchmarking Mission E test mules with Tesla’s vehicles last month.

The main differentiating feature is the fact that Model S’ interior configuration is a 5-seat+2, which makes it a family sedan, while the interior configuration of the Mission E concept with suicide doors opening on 4 seats is something you mostly see in a performance sedan.

But as we reported last week, rumors coming out of Porsche’s recent Mission E event in Norway last month suggest that Porsche is getting rid of the suicide doors and adding a seat to the interior configuration.

If the change turns out to be true and Porsche achieves it targeted base price of ~$86,000, the vehicle should be in the same ballpark as Model S based on most main metrics.

Electrek’s Take

Again, Porsche’s Mission is, in my opinion, the most exciting new EV of the first batch (2018-2019) of EVs to come out of premium German automakers – mainly because it’s the first to officially come out with a 800-volt charging system.

But the vehicle is due in 2019 and other vehicles could beat the Mission E to it. We will see.

Unfortunately for Porsche, aside from the high-powered charging system, the specs that Porsche has announced for the Mission E are barely competitive with the Model S.

The Model S’ base price is about $10,000 lower than Porsche’s targeted base price for the Mission E.

They said that they are aiming for the vehicle to have “over 310 miles of range” (500 km) on a single charge, but being based in Germany, Porsche is likely talking about the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), which is much more forgiving than the EPA rating and doesn’t really reflect real-world range. It’s should still have a more than decent range around 250 miles.

With the latest changes to the Model S variants, Tesla’s flagship sedan now starts with a range of 259 miles and goes up to 335 miles.

Porsche is also rumored to be aiming to offer different range options with different battery packs, it’s not clear if 250 miles is the base or top option – hopefully, it’s the minimum.

The German automaker is also aiming for a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 3.5 seconds. Normally, that referrers to the top performance version, which for Tesla’s Model S is 2.5 seconds while the base version, which is now the Model S 75D, accelerates to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds.

Of course, those are not the only important metrics and Porsche could also be tuning the car to achieve better track performance for example – something Tesla’s Model S is not tuned to achieve.

Hopefully, the fact that Porsche is benchmarking the Mission E using Tesla’s vehicles means that they are actually aiming to beat those specs, which they should since the vehicle is coming out in 2019 and they are comparing them to 2017 vehicles.

We wouldn’t be surprised if Porsche announced significantly better specs than previously announced for the production version of the car next year.