Porsche’s new electric car promises to be the fastest on the Nürburgring, the world’s toughest race track.
When most people turn 75, just being alive and healthy is enough of a gift for them. However, for its 75th anniversary, Porsche has given itself a wonderful gift – a hypercar that will become the fastest production car on the Nürburgring. And yes, it will be an electric car.
The Mission X is currently only a concept, but it is a vivid indicator of what the next Porsche electric train might look like.
Porsche says it will have an amazing power-to-weight ratio: at least one horsepower per kilogram of weight thanks to a new, all-electric, 900-volt architecture. If we take the latest Porsche hypercar, the 2015 918 Spyder, and its curb weight of 1678 kg as a benchmark, this would mean somewhere around 1700 horsepower. This is almost twice as much as the Spyder, which became the first production car to lap the Nürburgring in less than seven minutes.
Porsche presented the Mission X concept on the occasion of the company’s 75th anniversary and on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Le Mans 24 Hours. There’s a natural connection here: the Mission X’s design is also said to have been inspired by Le Mans, with doors that open up and forward like the classic 917. This is just one of the accents of the radical styling, which includes a glass bubble covering the passenger compartment protected by a carbon fiber exoskeleton. The resulting shape resembles the prototypes of the past Le Mans, but is made in a modern style.
Despite the fact that the Porsche has an electric motor, like the Taycan, Porsche has placed the battery behind the seats, the so-called “e-core” scheme, which should create the same driving dynamics as a car with a centrally located engine.
We’ve already seen insane levels of power and performance from brands like Rimac, and even in production sedans from Tesla and Lucid, so if Porsche is going to build this next-generation hypercar to impress, it’s going to need four-digit power numbers. The thought of such power combined with the engineering and racing expertise of a company like Porsche is something to be excited about.
