Porsche’s One-Off Electric Cayman May Be a Preview of Its Tesla-Killing Future
The past few weeks have been pretty huge for electric vehicle news. First there was the Range Rover Sport P400e, the Jaguar E-type Zero, and now, the new electric Porsche Cayman. There’s good and bad news here, though. The bad? This thing won’t actually go to production. But the good thing is it introduces the technology that will be used in the upcoming electric Porsche Mission E sedan.
Called the Cayman e-volution and unveiled at the Electric Vehicle Symposium in Germany, it will have an electric range of about 201 kilometres. The electric Cayman is also capable of performance levels faster than the gas-powered Cayman S. Zero, hitting 100 km/h in 3.3 seconds (a full second faster than the S). This, of course, is all buildup to the release of the Mission E concept, which Porsche says will have an electric range of about 500 kilometres (if true, very impressive).
Porsche is also releasing some new charging technology with the Mission E teaser. The “Porsche Turbo Charging” system claims that you can reach an 80 per cent charge in just 15 minutes. It’s an 800-volt system that’s aiming to go head-to-head with the Tesla Supercharger’s current 480-volt system. Seems like Porsche is really aiming to knock Tesla off the electric car podium.
It would be great if Porsche did go to production with the Cayman e-volution. I’d be interested in seeing how an entry-level electrified luxury sports car would do in the market. But that’s probably a gamble Porsche doesn’t want to make. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait until the end of the decade for the release of the Mission E and see if it holds up to these Tesla-killer claims.
