First electric Porsche already sold out

Porsche’s first full battery-electric model has Taycan the record for pre-orders for any Porsche product ever, company CEO Oliver Blume has confirmed.

As excitement builds in the lead-up to the launch of the Porsche Taycan electric sports sedan later this year, Blume admitted there was concern for the company’s ability to meet public demand.

“We have 20,000 pre-orders already,” Blume confirmed.

“No Porsche has ever had 20,000 pre orders. Not ever.

“Half a year before [it goes on sale], we have 20,000 pre-orders because we were entering a totally new segment.”

Porsche originally planned only a production rate of 20,000-25,000 Taycans a year (about eight per cent of its current volume) from its hemmed-in production site at its Zuffenhausen headquarters in Stuttgart.

But Porsche is already considering how to squeeze more production out of its new facility, before the Taycan is launched later this year.

The new factory-within-a-factory dots the body, paint and axle shops around Porsche’s existing site and connects them to the four-level assembly plant via a 900-metre covered conveyer.

“We have to think about our capacity at Zuffenhausen and how to improve it,” Blume admitted.

Factory Planning manager, David Thor Tryggvason, admitted the €700 million Taycan plant was limited because it was squeezed inside the existing Porsche 911 production plant at its Zuffenhausen HQ.

“The complexity is very high due to the lack of space and we had to build the assembly hall on four levels,” he said.

“Our plan is 20,000-25,000 cars at the site but we can ramp that up a bit. We have the capacity to have our overhang capacity within the Volkswagen Group. There is the possibility within VAG to provide capacity for overhang.”

Indeed, Porsche director of finance and IT, Lutz Meschke, admitted last year there are contingency plans in case of a “euphoria moment” such as this.

Those plans include spilling some production to Audi’s Böllinger Höfe e-tron (and R8) plant near Neckarsulm, even though Porsche’s spill production has traditionally moved to Valmet in Finland.

Due on sale in Australia from mid-2020, the 450kW Taycan will compete not only with the Tesla Model S, but with its sister car, Audi’s e-tron GT, and Mercedes-Benz’s upcoming EQS, based on Benz’s first dedicated EV platform.

While the initial cars will come with all-wheel drive, there will also be a rear-drive variant, and Porsche plans to use its power electronics to make the car handle more like a rear-drive car than an AWD model.

Porsche’s initial electric sedan, which will be joined by a crossover version previewed by the Mission E Cross Turismo concept, will use permanent-magnet synchronous electric motors mounted on each of its axles, while Audi’s e-tron uses asynchronous motors.

The Taycan’s centre-of-gravity is 80mm lower than the 911’s, with 400 lithium-ion pouch cells, with up to 300kW of safe charging power.

It’s shorter than it looks in photos, but will still stretch to about 4850mm long and 1990mm wide, making it almost 200mm shorter than the Panamera but 53mm wider. It’s also shorter, but wider, than the Model S from California.

The Porsche Taycan is scarcely related to the Audi e-tron, which is based on the C-BEV architecture developed at Ingolstadt.

The Taycan (and the e-tron GT) sits on its own in-house J1 architecture, built from high-strength steel, carbon-fibre and aluminium, which will be used only for the Taycan and its variants, plus the e-tron GT.

It does, though, form the basis of the PPE (Premium Platform Electric) EV architecture that will be used across all of the Volkswagen Group’s premium brands, including Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and possibly even Bugatti.

The Taycan has a long wheelbase for its overall length, with an incredibly short rear overhang. Porsche also slashed battery capacity from inside the battery pack to create what it calls “foot garages” for the rear passengers.

The rear seat pans in the 4+1 arrangement are moulded into the body itself, so the seat hip point will be very low.