Even Porsche is said to be working on at least a hybrid 911. Having just moved down to a 4-cylinder, you can see the effects of MPG and clean-air legislation in many countries are having on the manufacturers.
Not just Porsche's 911 - Porsche is seriously putting forth effort to strike down Tesla's sales - as evidenced by the recent Frankfurt auto show; Porsche Mission E Concept puts Tesla Model S in its sights [w/video] [UPDATE] Unlike the BMW i8 though - Porsche's concept is all electric. IMO, no country is going to want to invest in an 800v charging system, so, we'll see how much of this is hot air down the road. Porshe's 919 is killing the competition on the 24hr Lemans circuit, so they're likely gathering valuable data that may translate over to the urban driver. .
Oh no! "Beta" ware again. For youngsters, in the early days of personal computers, companies were notorious for announcing "Beta" software that was going to put older, established software out of business and releasing 'damaged' copies. Once the targeted company or software suffered a severe fiscal impact, the "Beta" samples were the last ever seen. To quote someone,"It was Huge!" Bob Wilson
Aren't all show cars beta? Where the heck are the new Prius, the new Volt, the new Tesla? How long have each been show cars, concepts, teasers, vaporware or whatever you want to call them. Until you can getbuy one in podunkville, they are all still beta. (Said as one who remembers loading an alfa from 20+ floppies onto a 286 for 24+ hours. Still got the T-shirt to prove it.)
CARB's fast fueling is 95% in 15 minutes. Then removed the position of batery swap, because, well Mary Nichols needed an excuse to give fcv 5 credit bonus (a leaf ) I believe this is a VW group marking technology, to make that requirement look foolish. Really I can see vw group put up a dozen 800 V fast chargers in germany (maybe in partnership with tesla?) and 4 in California on travel routes. The big thing will to get them in tracks for track day. I'm sure COTA (the F1 track, that does ev racing too) would put in a few 800V plugs to get the porsche's to pay to use the track here. The fast charging is mainly politics against fcv claim that it can't be done.
