Porsche Mission X: electric sequel to 918 and Carrera GT

Porsche is celebrating 75 years since it launched the famous 356, and it does so in a particularly spectacular way. In Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, the curtain has been drawn on this impressive Porsche Mission X. You don’t have to look at it for long to see where it would fit in the ranking with the brand. This is, of course, Porsche’s contemporary interpretation of a hypercar at the top of the food chain. The Mission X therefore fits perfectly into the pedigree of the 959, Carrera GT and 918 Spyder.

Bloody fast, but how fast exactly?

However, there is a big difference between those historic sporty flagships and this Mission X. Where its predecessors had a thick fuel engine on board, the Mission X has to do without internal combustion. As you could have felt on your clogs in 2023, the Mission X is fully electric. Unfortunately, Porsche is not yet revealing details about the powertrain, but it does highlight a special detail about the recharging of the Mission X. Thanks to an improved 900 V architecture, recharging must be no less than twice as fast as with the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. So you could charge an equally large battery from 10 to 80 percent in roughly 10 minutes. There is a good chance that Porsche will also take a look behind the scenes at Rimac for the powertrain. After all, Porsche has a significant interest in Bugatti-Rimac.

Porsche Mission X.

There are more impressive things. For example, Porsche states that the Mission X should be able to become the fastest street-legal car on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife. That means he has to beat the Mercedes-AMG One. That more than 1,000 hp hybrid hypercar managed to conquer the Green Hell in 6:35.183. The Porsche Mission X could take on that battle thanks to a horsepower-to-weight ratio of 1:1. Impressive. The hypercar is helped in the corners by aerodynamic cleverness, which, according to Porsche, should generate more downforce than is the case with the 911 GT3 RS.

Porsche Mission X is quite production ready

You already hear it; Porsche has clear goals for the Mission X and it is therefore not inconceivable that we are dealing with a very production-ready car here. This is what the Mission X also looks like. Its basic shape is clearly a contemporary follow-up to the Porsche 918 Spyder, with a strong touch of Le Mans hypercar influences. What about the gull-wing doors, for example. Also special are the side windows, which extend to the top of the doors and thus give the Porsche Mission X a partial glass roof. This is inspired by the legendary 917 with which Porsche won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970 and 1971.

Porsche Mission X.

Just behind the two seats is a glass panel on the Mission X, under which you can see the battery pack of the electric hypercar. Normally you would expect a big combustion engine here, but times change. The driver of the Mission X looks at a steering wheel that seems to come straight from racing and otherwise only has a digital set of instruments in front of him. If desired, the passenger can also hang a ‘stopwatch module’ on the dashboard, but that is where the information transmitters stop immediately.

The Porsche Mission X comes with its dimensions quite close to its spiritual predecessor, the 918 Spyder. It is about 4.5 meters long and 2 meters wide. Just a bit shorter, but slightly wider than the 918 (4.64 m by 1.94 m). The Mission X is also a fraction higher; 1.2 meters versus 1.17 meters on the 918 Spyder. The wheelbase of 2.73 m is the same. The Porsche Mission X has 20-inch wheels at the front and 21-inch wheels at the rear. Will we eventually see those wheels in action? Well, maybe not exactly these copies, but chances are that Porsche will eventually come up with a production version of the Mission X. It probably won’t appear before 2025.