As the electric car market becomes bigger and more populated these days, Porsche is looking for a way to stand out from competition, and a big part of that approach is developing technologies that will allow it to claim the industry’s quickest charging times. The Porsche Taycan electric sports car — it’s Porsche’s first all-electric model ever — is expected to showcase that with the ability to charge 80 percent of its battery in just 15 minutes.
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You can’t blame Porsche for taking this approach. It’s the equivalent of an NBA player focusing on certain skill sets that allow him to be elite in it.
There’s space for automakers like Porsche to survey the landscape and identify the areas they want to focus on. Tesla put its focus on performance and autonomous driving technology. Porsche, it seems, is focusing on charge times.
Porsche Cars North America president and CEO Klaus Zellmer made that clear in a conversation with Fortune. According to Zellmer, the Taycan electric sports car “will be able to charge 80% of its battery in 15 minutes.” That, Zellmer adds, is equal to “filling up your gas tank and having a cup of coffee.”
It sounds like a trivial comparison, but there’s a lot of substance to it, as well. Take Tesla, for example. The American electric car maker takes closer to 30 minutes to achieve the same charge, and that’s if the driver is charging it at one of its supercharger networks. For its part, it takes around 45 minutes for the I-Pace to charge back up to 80 percent capacity. Porsche’s charging times are a lot faster, which should bode well for prospective buyers of the Taycan.
Even if the Taycan has the fastest charge time among all electric car makers in the business, that doesn’t mean that it has everything figured out in this space. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, including the capacity to maintain the 350-kWh charging that the company plans to offer at its network of stations. The goal isn’t so much about being the first to do it or setting the bar for others. The goal is to continuously improve the technology to the point where its easier to maintain across different battery levels.
By comparison, Tesla models require closer to half an hour at a supercharger network to achieve roughly the same charge. Jaguar’s new all-electric SUV, the I-Pace, needs about 45 minutes to charge 80% of its battery. However, experts note that the 350-kWh charging Porsche plans to offer at its network of stations would be difficult to maintain across different battery levels. Porsche is doing that by investing a whopping $7.4 billion to electrify half of its lineup by 2025. Part of that investment is identifying certain aspects of the segment where it can be a class-leader. In Porsche’s mind, that space has been identified, and the automaker is doing its part to make sure that it can elevate itself from the rest of the field.
Further Reading
Read our full review on the 2020 Porsche Taycan.
Read our full review on the 2018 Tesla Model 3.