Porsche Mission R: A taste of motorsport's bold electric future

And so we get to the Mission R, which Porsche seems very serious about using as the basis for a one-make racing championship, alongside the Carrera Cup, from 2025 or 2026. That would truly make it the first of its kind: while there has been a one-make electric racing championship before, the short-lived Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy used essentially production-spec cars. While that series was canned due to the pandemic, it proved worthwhile for Jaguar: insights from battery cooling for cars in the series led directly to software updates that extended the range of the road-going Jaguar I-Pace.

Any future series for the Mission R would take that to the next level. Like the 911 GT3 Cup, this is effectively a bespoke racer that shares some design principles and traits with a likely road car. It’s effectively the first project that really imagines what customer electric racing might look like.

“Working with Porsche’s design department, we had around nine months to work on the project, so it wasn’t possible to create a completely new mid-engined single-seater with an X-Wing Fighter-style design or something,” says Matthias Scholz, Porsche Motorsport’s GT racing boss. “Not everything on the car was matched to current FIA safety regulations and so on, but we had the intention to make an electric GT racing car that really could race in 2026 or so.”

With the aim to match the GT3 Cup car in terms of performance, Porsche knew that managing weight would be a key challenge for an EV. That’s partly why the car is smaller than the 911, at a similar size to the current Cayman (the steel body of which was used as the prototype’s basis). Porsche maintained the mid-engined feel of the Cayman by putting the 80kWh battery roughly where the petrol engine would normally be.

“We wanted a car that was really low in terms of drag, so the silhouette should be as low and flat as possible, which means you want the driver sitting as low as possible in the car,” says Porsche technical chief Michael Steiner. “That means there’s no space for a battery below the driver. It’s one reason why a lot of super-sports cars today have a mid-engined design. With today’s battery cell technology, the heaviest part of an electric car will be the battery, so by putting it where the engine currently is, packaging- and centre of gravity-wise it’s more or less the same.”

The Mission R is powered by two motors: a 429bhp one on the front axle that’s used largely for energy recuperation and a 644bhp one on the rear axle. Together they offer a consistent 603bhp in standard driving mode, which can be raised to 1073bhp in qualifying mode. The sub-2.5sec 0-62mph time and 186mph top speed are intended to match the current 911 GT3 Cup.

Key to making the Mission R feasible for racing is rapid charging. With an 800V electrical architecture, the Mission R can be charged at rates of up to 350kW, enabling a 5-80% fill in 15 minutes. And the battery has been designed to last for 35-40 minutes – about the length of a current Carrera Cup race. This is a serious electric racer designed to equal the performance of a petrol counterpart.

The carbon-cutting credentials of the Mission R go beyond its powertrain, too: the car also makes extensive use of recycled materials and 3D-printed components, particularly with the natural fibre reinforced plastic (NFRP) composite body.

“This car is a message that we want to do motorsport in the future as well,” says Scholz. “So we’re thinking about how we can do motorsport producing less CO2 for the world.”

The Supercup has switched to environmentally friendly e-fuels this year, and Scholz said that feedback from the teams involved played a part in developing ideas for the Mission R. “When we announced that we would use e-fuels, Supercup teams told us that this would help them to find new partners and sponsors,” he says. “It’s getting more and more difficult for teams to find sponsors and partners for projects that aren’t sustainable or where there’s no sustainable aspect. Sponsors are really looking for a project like this.”

Scholz believes that a Mission R championship could attract a wide variety of entrants. “It’s a really interesting question we wanted to find [the answer to],” he says. “We think it will attract some of our existing, let’s say petrolhead, teams as well as new customers who currently don’t race because it doesn’t fit with their message.”

Scholz is also clear that the Mission R series would run alongside the Carrera Cup; Porsche Motorsport clearly isn’t going to drop one of its biggest successes so quickly. “This concept isn’t intended as a substitute to the Carrera Cup,” says Scholz. “We don’t want to stop racing combustion engines any time soon. This is additional.

“I’m proud of every 911 Carrera Cup car that we produce: our GT cars are beautiful things, and I hope we can race them for as long as possible.” For that to happen, it’s vital that the Mission R series can attract new teams and new drivers – and Scholz hints that Porsche is considering how electric motorsport could use a different format to better suit the technology involved.

“With this project, we don’t stop thinking with the car,” he says. “It’s a question of finding the right race format: we could look at the likes of gymkhana and things that are really different. We don’t just want to copy the Carrera Cup but with electric motors.”