Porsche announced in December 2015 that the Mission E concept, the luxury car maker's first all-electric vehicle, was given the green light by the supervisory board and would be launched by 2020.
The Mission E would allow Porsche to compete with Tesla Motors head on, with the vehicle expected to crank out more than 600 horsepower, go from 0 to 62 miles per hour in below 3.5 seconds, and have a range of up to 310 miles.
In an interview with Automobile magazine, an engineer from Porsche, despite not directly involved in the development of the Mission E, claimed that the electric vehicle will be "something special." In addition, there is a lot of work that is being poured into the Mission E to ensure that it will be "a true Porsche through and through."
The statements made by a Porsche product manager, however, are the more eyebrow-raising ones.
After claiming that the Mission E will be completely different from all of its competitors, the executive went on to say that the Ludicrous mode of Tesla Motors is nothing more than a "facade."
For the uninitiated, the Ludicrous mode, which Tesla Motors offers as an option to its customers, allows vehicles to travel at unbelievable acceleration rates, going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just 2.8 seconds. By activating the feature on the Tesla Model S, the vehicle will accelerate at a force equal to 1.1 G, meaning that drivers and passengers will feel that they are going faster than falling.
According to the Porsche executive, two launches on Ludicrous mode drains the battery of the Tesla Model S, which will not be the case with Porsche's upcoming electric vehicle.
The product manager adds that with the Mission E, drivers will be able to run the vehicle hard repeatedly, with the battery and power control module in no danger of overheating. The executive even went on to take a jab at the seats of the Tesla Model S, as they supposedly "suck."
While it could be considered unprofessional for a Porsche executive to launch such verbal attacks on Tesla Motors and its offerings, there is some truth in his statement. Mashable confirmed that activating Ludicrous mode was a huge drain on the Tesla Model S battery, and that the seats were indeed not the most supportive ones ever installed in a vehicle.
All that said, with years to go before Porsche releases the Mission E, the question remains whether the electric vehicle will still be as "special" by then as it is being described now, or if Tesla Motors and other car manufacturers will have already reached greater heights with their electric vehicle technology.
