5 Reasons to Wait for the Mission-E Instead of a Tesla
While Porsche's electric Mission-E vehicle is still in its infancy, there are several compelling reasons why you may want to skip buying a Tesla and wait a few years for Stuttgart's lightning bolt of a car.
1. Styling
If there was only one reason to wait for the Porsche Mission-E over a Tesla, it would be for its exotic styling. The Mission-E concept has taken subtle styling cues of the 911, Panamera, and 918 hypercar to give it a low, sleek, and aggressive look. With trick features such as staggered 21/22 inch center-lock carbon fiber wheels, rear-hinged "suicide" doors, and raw carbon side skirts, splitter, and rear diffuser, the car screams performance, yet remains elegant. The Mission-E is unmistakably Porsche, but this concept has allowed designers and engineers to step outside of the box and stretch their boundaries. With respect to Tesla, the Model S styling pales in comparison and would appear to be just another ordinary family sedan if parked next to the Mission-E.
2. Charging
Relatively long travel distances and the ability to quickly recharge the vehicle's battery has been a huge selling point for Tesla, and most would agree that a worthy competitor would have to boast equivalent specs in order to cut into Tesla's market share. The Porsche is said to be able to travel 310 miles on a single charge which would put it on par with Tesla's top of the line P100D when equipped with the heavier 21 inch wheels, but has the ability to charge in half of the time of the Model S. Porsche CEO Oliver Blume claims the Mission-E will use an 800 volt charging system that will allow it to charge to over 80% in a mere 15 minutes, thus giving it an additional 250 miles of driving range. Even cooler is that the car will be capable of inductive charging that will allow owners to simply drive onto a charging pad to replenish the battery (think Samsung Galaxy wireless phone charging). As an alternative, owners can still charge the traditional way at the charging port via cable as pictured above.
3. Handling
While critics of the Mission-E argue that it is a full second slower than the Tesla in a sprint to 60-mph, performance cannot be judged on straight line acceleration alone. A huge part of any performance vehicle is its handling capabilities, and the Mission-E is supposed to be able to slice through corners with the best of them. Porsche claims the vehicle will feature rear axle steering as introduced on the 918 Spyder. The system uses electromagnetic actuators that effectively turn the rear wheels approximately 3 degrees in either direction depending on the speed of the vehicle and steering wheel input. Additionally, the Mission-E will be all-wheel drive and incorporate torque vectoring to allow power to be sent to any one wheel at a time. So while the Tesla may leap out on the Porsche during a short, straight line sprint, the Porsche should easily waltz away from the Tesla when a curve or two is thrown into the mix.
4. Cutting Edge Technology
Although Tesla has no shortage of technology packed into their car, Porsche's Mission-E intends to raise the bar a notch higher. Pre-production concepts show the car having no exterior mirrors, but instead using cameras to display rear and side views of the car in the lower corners of the windshield via small heads-up display type screens. There are also plans to implement eye-tracking technology to aid the driver in cycling through the dash menus and displaying vehicle information via the gauges. The orientation of all vehicle-related information on the dash, including the HUD, is supposed to shift in relation to the driver's seating/body position to ensure that their eyes are the focal point of all information being displayed. We can also expect a tablet-sized infotainment screen on the center console much like the one found on the 918 Spyder. There are bound to be more tech features packed into the Mission-E that we do not yet know about, but the list thus far is mighty impressive.
5. Exclusivity
Part of the allure of owning a sports car is that it is not your run of the mill family car, but something out of the ordinary that not everyone in the neighborhood will be driving. The Tesla Model S has been hugely popular and as a result has become the best-selling electric car in the world. Tesla sold over 50,000 units in 2015 and was projected to double their production for 2016, so it is safe to say there are a lot of Model S cars running around. Unfortunately, with so many Teslas out and about on the highways using the same unchanged body style since its first year of production, seeing one has become less of a rarity, especially in populous cities. By contrast, Porsche only plans to sell approximately 20,000 Mission-E cars on a worldwide scale per year, therefore the chances of you crossing paths with another should be pretty slim for at least the first few years of production.
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