Porsche Mission X targets road-legal 'ring record
New EV concept lays the foundation for Porsche's eventual return to hypercar production
It’s 10 years since the world was stunned by the hybrid hypercar holy trinity: Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder. Now the latter has previewed how its EV hypercar future might look, on the very day that it celebrates the 75th anniversary since the first 356 Roadster registration. This is the Mission X, a ‘spectacular reinterpretation of a hypercar, with Le Mans-style doors that open upwards to the front and a high-performance, efficient electric powertrain’.
Don’t expect it to be clogging up your social feeds parked in city centres just yet, however. As befits a Porsche with the ‘Mission’ tag in its name, this isn’t a production car. But it’s also customary for these kinds of concepts to have a strong grounding in reality - see how much Mission E made it into production Taycan. And look at just how, well, ready it looks. Or to put it another way, there will be an electric Porsche hypercar, and it’ll probably look a lot like this Rocket Metallic dream machine. And with that in mind, Porsche is making huge promises for the road-going reality. Which they've got a record of delivering on.
Apparently the idea, ‘should we take out concept car into series production’, is to make a Porsche with roughly one horsepower per kilogram of kerbweight - so at least 1,000hp, if not more like 1,500 - twice the charging capacity of a Taycan Turbo S - something like 450kW - as well as significantly more downforce than a GT3 RS. Which makes 860kg at 177mph. All of which should help it achieve Porsche’s other aim for the Mission X: to create a new fastest production car around the Nordschleife, a record that currently sits with the AMG One and its 6:35.183. The days of modified GT2s in a tit-for-tat battle with every sillier AMG GTs is suddenly starting to seem like a very long time ago. The development aims of the Mission X sound truly ludicrous, but so once upon a time did the idea of mid-engined Porsche with Le Mans V10 in it, or a plug-in hybrid V8 one. So don’t be at all surprised when a Porsche with an ‘e-core layout’ for its batteries - keeping that mass low and centralised behind the seats - becomes a reality.
And even if it doesn’t, a car that looks like this is guaranteed to cause a stir. Porsche describes the design as ‘the pinnacle of performance and modern luxury’; it’s a similar size to its hypercar predecessors at 4.5m long and 2m wide (with 2.73m of that length for the wheelbase), but less than 1.2m tall. As is becoming Porsche concept tradition, the amalgamation of retro elements with modern design features is very, very neat: the rear light bar is recognisable from the Mission R and chunky wheels - 20-inch at the front, 21 behind - fill out the arches, but there’s also inspiration from the old 906 and 908 sportscars in the front lights as well as 917-style doors. Plundering heritage can be a good idea when confronting the future, especially so when it can be to look this tremendous.
There’s an old-school racer theme to the interior, too, with a Kalahari Grey carbon seat reserved just for the driver - with the passenger’s in Andalusia Brown, as is the rest of the cabin. There’s even a bracket for your companion to pretend they’re a co-driver, complete with a new Porsche Design timepiece - wouldn’t be a new Porsche without one - that offers analogue and digital displays for both race and rally use. Easy to poke fun at; even easier to admire. This interior looks ready to roll, complete with topless steering wheel, six-point harnesses integrated into the monocoque and even a host of cameras to record your new personal best at the touch of a button. And Porsche is still on the fence about building a few - there have been recent supercars sold in their thousands that look less cohesive than this. The Mission X has even been fitted with the new Porsche crest, as if ready to assume its position as the flagship immediately.
“The Porsche Mission X is a technology beacon for the sports car of the future. It picks up the torch of iconic sports cars of decades past: like the 959, the Carrera GT and the 918 Spyder before it, the Mission X provides critical impetus for the evolutionary development of future vehicle concepts,” said Oliver Blume, Chairman of Porsche’s exec board. “Daring to dream and dream cars are two sides of the same coin for us: Porsche has only remained Porsche by constantly changing.” So it feels like a dead-cert for reality, which would mean another milestone in the making - assuming Porsche can meet those lofty development goals and keep it looking this good. Best get thinking of a name…
from this angle it reminded me of a Cadilac Cien US supercar, but looked up the picture its clearly different lol
from this angle it reminded me of a Cadilac Cien US supercar, but looked up the picture its clearly different lol
but great to see Porsche comes with another supercar, wonder what it can do on the Ring, I guess something good, otherwise they would not do it, also maybe they can use a few things of this concept for new models, also some petrol cars :-)
I also wonder about their other targets. More downforce than the GT3RS? I am not sure how given that the GT3RS is already limited by what the tires can take and that's a much lighter car than this will be to begin with. And even if they could develop a new tire with Michelin that would allow that, what is all that extra drag gonna do to the range of the thing, especially if they also use smaller battery to keep the weight down? And fastest around N-ring? Not likely at 2000kg or whatever the final weight might be.
The whole set of targets seems quite unrealistic with today's technology. With 2028's technology - maybe, but I am still not holding my breath.
Looks really good.
If we're playing influences, it reminds me slightly of the Yamaha OX-99 in the front and rear wings and the rounded canopy.
Closer to home, I also see the Panamericana concept in the way the rear of the front wheelarches is done (I feel there's a more recent car like this too, but can't find it)
a very agreeable nineties organic influence, but brought up to date.
In terms of power and weight, the Nevera is 2300 kg but contains a 600kg battery giving a claimed 350 mile range. So if you want 1:1 ratio you could halve the battery size and accept a 175 mile range. Incremental improvements between 2022 and 2027 will probably help too.
If they can hit 1500kg that would be great, as many petrol-powered supercars are in that ballpark anyway.
If Porsche can use that, they can immediately cut the battery weight down by 1/2, from 600kg, to around 300kg, and shave 300kg off the weight as suggested above.
And in another youtube channel (The Electric Viking), it reports 711 wh/kg. I haven't seen that reported elsewhere, so would take that with a pinch of salt. But the 500 wh/kg has been reported in multiple sites, and I've seen Sandy Munro discuss it as well. All of which leads me to believe that the current rate of battery energy density will continue improving, and we'll see smaller and lighter batteries that provide the same range, OR, the same sized batteries but with double (or more) range.
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