Tesla's dominance in the EV market could soon face another test in the form of a battery-powered Porsche sedan.
The vehicle, bagged as the Porsche 717 currently, is being developed on Volkswagen's latest MSB architecture under development for the next Bentley Continental and Panamera Mk2, according to CAR magazine.
Based on an artist's impression of the vehicle, the Porsche 717 will be a four-door, four-seater with obvious 911 overtones.
Porsche already has two plug-in hybrid electric vehicles available for sale, one based on the Cayenne SUV and the other on the Panamera. It's limited-edition 918 hypercar is already sold out, of course, so the next step for Porsche would be a battery-electric vehicle.
The CAR report says that the 717 won't use the battery pack as part of the structural floorpan like the Model S does, however.
"Instead of a single, square-mattress-shaped energy cell which is relatively easy to cool and to connect, the battery arrangement proposed for the 717 looks more like a mountain range with the centre tunnel acting as peak ridge, with a pair of tall bulkhead walls and smaller agglomerations in the sills, the footwell and the overhangs," the magazine reported.
The report also claims that the Porsche won't be a crossover nor a SUV, and all 717 models will feature four-wheel-drive, four-wheel torque vectoring and four-wheel steering.
Porsche has set a goal to release a sedan that comes in 400, 500 and 600 horsepower variants, with an average driving range target of well over 300 miles. There is just one electric motor per axle, which could either feature an electrically-controlled air suspension system or be steel-sprung.
So when will the car be released? We have no idea right now. There is a good chance Porsche will have the vehicle ready by 2019, though nothing is set in stone yet.
Check back at AutoWorldNews as more information on the Porsche 717 gets released.
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