Porsche Mission E

[stopcrazypp]

Right. It will be much better for their brand when they build a sportscar that does not live up to the expectations of their current customers.

Sure it's a tiny market. But Porsche is a nische manufacturer catering to exactly this tiny market. They are not going to have their first BEV car be some kind of compromise. Maybe they will later have some Boxter equivalent with less performance.

Porsche is not longer having a strategy of a niche manufacturer since they launched the Cayenne. When they were planning to do that, the reactions by Porsche enthusiasts are similar to yours' that it was pretty much sacrilege to the brand. The reality is that it fueled growth in the brand by attracting new customers who don't care about the same things as previous ones. Then you have the followup of the Panamera and Macan, which also depart from the traditional Porsche niche.

As for this car, Porsche can take two strategies. They can have less track focus and make it less expensive (like the Boxster you mention) so that pricing is similar to Model S (starting at $70k). Or they can go all out and the pricing will start at more like $150k-$200k.

 

[Auzie]

Porsche plant workers agree to less pay to produce electric car

Reuters, Porsche plant workers agree to less pay to produce electric car

Highlights:

Porsche will spend $1.1b in Zuffenhausen and create more than 1000 jobs to build Mission-E.

13,000 workers at Zuffenhausen agreed to pay cuts and concessions worth several hundred million euros.

The above clearly illustrates one of the reasons why it is so difficult for established ice car makers to switch technologies and why they resist such drastic change for as long as they possibly can.

 

[mspohr]

Reuters, Porsche plant workers agree to less pay to produce electric car

Highlights:

Porsche will spend $1.1b in Zuffenhausen and create more than 1000 jobs to build Mission-E.

13,000 workers at Zuffenhausen agreed to pay cuts and concessions worth several hundred million euros.

View attachment 105735

The above clearly illustrates one of the reasons why it is so difficult for established ice car makers to switch technologies and why they resist such drastic change for as long as they possibly can.

Don't know what this has to do with it being electric. I think all of VW is cutting costs post scandal.

 

[Auzie]

Don't know what this has to do with it being electric. I think all of VW is cutting costs post scandal.

The way I understand the article, excessive cost cutting at Zuffenhausen is meant to support/pay for electric car development.

The fact that VW selected Zuffenhausen (the biggest plant) and that they incorporated pay cuts on Zuffenhausen into future tech funding tells me that they are serious about it. The fact that the one plant seems to bear the brunt of funding is also telling. Sister plants usually operate as independent profit /loss centres and fiercely compete for any new projects.

Employees at Porsche plants in Leipzig or Osnabrueck are likely to be worried as they missed out on the new tech. Forgoing a bit of a pay is a small price to pay for the opportunity to be part of a future tech development. In situation like this, the employees on plants that miss out usually say that 'The writing is on the wall'. I have seen that scenario play out many times in Australia.

VW may have used the scandal as a 'burning platform' to sell necessary sacrifices to its employees and then they used the opportunity and went over and above the scandal sacrifices and introduced the new tech funding sacrifices. Without the scandal, the successful deal with the employees would have been less likely.

 

[mspohr]

The way I understand the article, excessive cost cutting at Zuffenhausen is meant to support/pay for electric car development.

View attachment 105802

The fact that VW selected Zuffenhausen (the biggest plant) and that they incorporated pay cuts on Zuffenhausen into future tech funding tells me that they are serious about it. The fact that the one plant seems to bear the brunt of funding is also telling. Sister plants usually operate as independent profit /loss centres and fiercely compete for any new projects.

Thanks for this insight.
However I can't help wondering if they were really serious about this why they would do it on the cheap rather than doing it right.

 

[glhs272]

This seems to me one of those situations where management... excuse me... CRIMINAL management breaks all kinds of ethical rules and laws, gets caught and ends up with a golden parachute from which to retire comfortably on. Those still in management then get to use the scandal of their creation to use as leverage to take more money out of the workers pockets (of which these euros which will eventually make there way back to management's pockets as executive bonus for good cost cutting) . And I thought "only in America" did things like these happen. I hope I am wrong about that. I would like to see Germany actually punish white collar crime. Follow the money. Those who were paid the most should have to loose the most, like their money and freedom (i.e. jail cell). To do anything less just incentivizes criminal behavior. Off topic rant, sorry.

 

[Auzie]

Thanks for this insight.
However I can't help wondering if they were really serious about this why they would do it on the cheap rather than doing it right.

The way I see it, this maneuver of positioning one plant to have a lower cost base seems to be an attempt of preempting high technology transition costs. Such positioning improves VW chance of transforming a part of their business to a new tech and keeping it break even (if they are lucky) or reducing a loss in a transition period, on Zuffenhausen.

They can then consider either transitioning other plants as well or shedding them off. The future of higher cost base plants will likely hinge on the transition costs at the main plant and many other internal and external variables.

This seems to me one of those situations where management... excuse me... CRIMINAL management breaks all kinds of ethical rules and laws, gets caught and ends up with a golden parachute from which to retire comfortably on. Those still in management then get to use the scandal of their creation to use as leverage to take more money out of the workers pockets (of which these euros which will eventually make there way back to management's pockets as executive bonus for good cost cutting) . And I thought "only in America" did things like these happen. I hope I am wrong about that. I would like to see Germany actually punish white collar crime. Follow the money. Those who were paid the most should have to loose the most, like their money and freedom (i.e. jail cell). To do anything less just incentivizes criminal behavior. Off topic rant, sorry.

It is quite difficult to assign a responsibility for past events when there are frequent management changes, people move in and out of jobs quickly.

Somehow when the responsibility is shared, it gets disproportionally diluted and very few people can be held accountable. Agree with you that it could be fair to correlate responsibility to employee's pay size.

 

[dauger]

Porsche is upping their ante to "one billion dollars" (Dr. Evil style?)

Porsche is Spending $1 Billion on Its Electric Sports Car - Fortune

But is that really enough? I commented on the article.

 

[Spidy]

Porsche is upping their ante to "one billion dollars" (Dr. Evil style?)

Porsche is Spending $1 Billion on Its Electric Sports Car - Fortune

But is that really enough? I commented on the article.

Your comment is just hilarious. Did the article make any claim about Porsche being leading in electric cars?

And you know you can batteries? You know like they buy half the parts of the car from suppliers?

 

[dsm363]

They are coming really late to the game but the concept car looks great. Of course we will see if the production car looks like it but it's a start. 2020 is a long time from now though. I'm hoping the new Tesla Roadster is out by then.

The talk about the 800V charging network seems fishy too. Does anyone know exactly how this would work? Wouldn't Porsche have to build out their own network similar to what Tesla is doing? Not impossible of course but no one else seems willing to do that.

 

[Oba]

The talk about the 800V charging network seems fishy too. Does anyone know exactly how this would work? Wouldn't Porsche have to build out their own network similar to what Tesla is doing? Not impossible of course but no one else seems willing to do that.

It's actually worse than that... 800 volts would make it incompatible with every existing public DC charger in the world... every one.

No simple adaptor is going to fix that. Of course, the car could have some simple charging configuration between uber fast 800v, and the rest of them (with an adaptor).

 

[hiroshiy]

I'm just guessing, but Porsche could build a battery with two modules, and connect those modules in series to charge at very rare 800V stations, and in parallel to charge at CCS stations.

However I agree that it sounds fishy to use 800V voltage to show the speed of charge. 800V "sounds" fast, in reality the voltage almost doesn't matter. The 800V copy is devaluing Porsche brand. At least for me.

 

[RDoc]

I've never understood this 800V fast charging talk. Battery charging rate is limited by how fast it can be charged without permanent damage not voltage. That's the point to tapering the charge rate. Unless Porsche is going to use some new chemistry, I don't see how they can radically lessen charging time without cooking the battery.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I've never understood this 800V fast charging talk. Battery charging rate is limited by how fast it can be charged without permanent damage not voltage. That's the point to tapering the charge rate. Unless Porsche is going to use some new chemistry, I don't see how they can radically lessen charging time without cooking the battery.

A 800V pack has value because of the low current limits of the connectors being proposed (other than Tesla). Right now the official limits are 200A (both for CHAdeMO and CCS), which means with a 400V charging voltage: 400V*200A = 80kW limit. Raising voltage to 800V*200A = 160kW, which gets them to the "150kW" goal without increasing the size of the cables and connector pins.

The issue however as mentioned is that there is no backwards compatibility with the current chargers if you rely on increasing the voltage. Almost all of them max out at 500V.

 

[RDoc]

A 800V pack has value because of the low current limits of the connectors being proposed (other than Tesla). Right now the official limits are 200A (both for CHAdeMO and CCS), which means with a 400V charging voltage: 400V*200A = 80kW limit. Raising voltage to 800V*200A = 160kW, which gets them to the "150kW" goal without increasing the size of the cables and connector pins.

The issue however as mentioned is that there is no backwards compatibility with the current chargers if you rely on increasing the voltage. Almost all of them max out at 500V.

But that still won't get them to 80% charge (400 km) in 15 minutes. 400 km will require about 75 kWh, so that's 28 minutes at 160 kW if there's no taper.

 

[stopcrazypp]

But that still won't get them to 80% charge (400 km) in 15 minutes. 400 km will require about 75 kWh, so that's 28 minutes at 160 kW if there's no taper.

Actually they said the battery pack is 90kWh so that brings it down to 72kWh. However, you are right that the math doesn't work out. It needs 288 kW. Looking back at the announcement, Porsche actually announced 300kW charging. The 150kW is for the Audi e-tron.

If it is 300kW they need that 800V even more. That is 375A even at 800V.

 

[RDoc]

Actually they said the battery pack is 90kWh so that brings it down to 72kWh. However, you are right that the math doesn't work out. It needs 288 kW. Looking back at the announcement, Porsche actually announced 300kW charging. The 150kW is for the Audi e-tron.

If it is 300kW they need that 800V even more. That is 375A even at 800V.

But then we're back to how do you charge the battery that fast without cooking it? At least with current batteries, I don't believe there's a way to charge to 80% in 15 minutes and still have reasonable longevity.

 

[RichardL]

Is it not possible that it could have that capability for a very fast charge (for marketing reasons), but they will tell you to never actually do it (for longevity reasons)?

 

[green1]

I think it's more likely a case of they haven't actually figured it out yet, and they're saying whatever they want in the press release because it's all vapourware anyway...

 

[svp6]

I think it's more likely a case of they haven't actually figured it out yet, and they're saying whatever they want in the press release because it's all vapourware anyway...

I would think Porsche leadership sees the stats on 100-150K car sales - just like all of us. Tesla is in #1 position, and surely they would not mind taking that away. I am convinced they will put an effort to create a rival, and knowing Porsche, it should be a good car. Whether it is going to compete with what Tesla will have to offer at that future time remains to be seen. Same goes for MB, BMW and Audi....