An Electrifyingly Good Time

Porsche's all-electric concept proves the race cars of the future don't have to suck

- By Mac Morrison. Photography by Renz Dimaandal

A week before Porsche let us behind the wheel of its Mission R race car concept, it mandated we partake in “high-voltage” training via video conference with the company’s engineering team in Germany. The gist of the call: green lights good, red lights bad. If the relevant red lights illuminate inside the cockpit, stay in the seat and wait for help. If you’re outside the car and see red glowing from the roof-mounted module, hang back and don’t touch the Mission R. The exception: If the steering wheel display goes full DEFCON red, stop immediately.

That red message on the wheel indicates a disastrous battery pack thermal meltdown, so undo your safety harness, get out, and run away, hopefully before the car is reduced to a spectacular multimillion-dollar fireball. Porsche values the Mission R at something like $10 million because this is a one-off concept, and automaker bean counters tend to assign astronomical figures to such things, just as they do to development mules.

Receiving these instructions reminded me of a time more than a decade ago when I took a back-seat ride in an aerobatic plane as part of a Red Bull Air Race promotion. As a stranger strapped a parachute to my body, the pilot said something like, “This is never going to happen, but if it does and you hear me say, 'Eject!' three times, undo your belts, stand up, jump out, wait five seconds, and pull that ripcord. If you're still in the plane after the third ‘eject,' don't look for me, because I won't be.