Porsche is planning on taking the fight to Tesla with the upcoming production version of the gorgeous Mission E Concept, and they’ve officially started the smack-talking.




Automobile has been talking to some Porsche employees and executives apparently close to the Mission E development work, the concept of which had two electric motors good for 600 horsepower and a projected 0 to 60 time of just 3.5 seconds on an EV range of over 300 miles.


It should be “a true Porsche through and through,” a Porsche engineer told the magazine. But a Porsche engineer would say that.

The juicy bit came when Automobile approached a Porsche product manager, who had a lot of not-so-nice things to say about the Tesla Model S and its Ludicrous mode:

“It’ll be something entirely different than any of its competitors, across the board” a product manager from Porsche adds. “The thing about [Tesla’s] Ludicrous mode is that it’s a façade. Two launches saps the whole battery. That won’t be the case with the Mission E. You’ll be able to run it hard, over and over; the battery will not overheat, the power control module will not overheat, and the seats will not suck.”



Those sound like fighting words.

Tesla’s Ludicrous mode comes with the P90D model but is also available for other models as a $10,000 upgrade. It drops the 0-60 time for the Model S to just 2.8 seconds, and Tesla claims gets the car to 155 mph “20 percent faster.”


As far as Porsche’s claims, we do know Tesla suffers from some poor build quality on both the Model S and Model X, but our own review of the then-P85D only found issues with keeping your phone from flying through the cabin under acceleration, and no battery issues.


There have been reports of Model S batteries overheating on racetracks, so burning rubber in Ludicrous Mode over and over may cause some problems.

The best part about all of this, though, is that we’re going to get to see Porsche try and do better. And, well, its Porsche.