Porsche’s first electric car to be called Taycan

Porsche has announced the production version of the Mission E electric car concept will be called the Taycan. The announcement was made as part of Porsche’s 70th anniversary celebrations in the carmaker’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

The name translates loosely as "lively, young horse" from a Eurasian dialect- a nod to the firm's crest, which has featured a leaping horse since 1952. Along with the name, Porsche also hinted at some specifications and details of the final production model. Particularly noteworthy is that the Taycan’s 800V charging technology will enable 100km of range with just 4 min of charge. The Taycan will have an electric system output upwards of 600hp and a possible range of more than 500km on a full charge.  Porsche has also confirmed a sub-3.5 sec 0-100kph and a sub-12 sec 0-200kph acceleration time for the Taycan, but exact data has not been disclosed as yet.  

The all-wheel-drive Taycan use two electric motors – one on each axle – drawing their power from lithium ion batteries mounted in the floor. The four-door, four-seat Taycan's floor-mounted batteries point to an extremely low centre of gravity and handling to match more focused performance machines. The central location of the batteries and twin-motor set-up will also give the car's technical architecture a better front-rear weight balance than combustion-engined cars.

The future Tesla Model S rival's J1 structure is one of three new electric car platforms being developed within Porsche's parent company, the Volkswagen Group. The J1 structure is described as being different in construction to the C-BEV platform planned to underpin sister brand Audi’s forthcoming E-tron SUV, which is due for reveal later this year.

Our colleagues at Autocar UK have learnt the Taycan will have Level 4 autonomous driving technology (self-driving in nearly all situations, with driver attention not required), but will not go the full autonomous way.

The Taycan will be the first of Porsche’s electric models but the carmaker has big plans to go the electric way. By 2022, Porsche will invest 6 billion Euros in its electric vehicle programme with 500 million Euros being spent in the development of derivatives of the Taycan.