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Porsche says half of its sales will be electric by 2023

Porsche, whose presence in the plug-in vehicle market has been pretty minimal, now plans to substantially boost its commitment to electric vehicles in the next few years. The German luxury automaker intends to dedicate up to half its annual production to electric vehicles by 2023, Electrek reported, citing comments CEO Oliver Blume made to German publication Manager Magazin. Specifically, the company says it will be able to produce as many as 60,000 EVs annually from its Zuffenhausen factory in Germany. First and foremost will be Porsche's Mission E, which is slated to debut in 2019. That model will be able to go about 310 miles on a full charge (via the more generous New European Driving Cycle, or NEDC). Porsche first showed off a concept version of that 590-horsepower beast at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2015. The company hasn't hinted at pricing for the car, which will have a 90-kilowatt battery and will jet from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a tidy 3.5 seconds, but expect it to be well into six figures. Porsche also plans an all-electric version of the Macan, its biggest seller. But Porsche's math indicates bigger plans than that. Porsche delivered nearly 238,000 vehicles last year, so an output of 60,000 EVs at Zuffenhausen is only a quarter of the total, not half. You can assume then that Porsche has plans to electrify other models that it hasn't announced yet, built at other factories. It might also be counting hybrids in its "half" projection. Last month, Porsche decided to discontinue its plans for a plug-in hybrid variant of its iconic 911 model, suggesting a temporary pullback of sorts. Then again, in April, reports surfaced that Porsche and Audi, both owned by Volkswagen, were collaborating on vehicle-electrification technology as well as autonomous driving advancement. Porsche's green-car sales have been so thin that Autoblog last year officially pulled the German automaker off of its monthly green-car sales tally. For 2015, the most recent year we tracked, Porsche sold 1,738 plug-in vehicles, about the same as 2014. Related Video: Featured Gallery Porsche Mission E Concept: Frankfurt 2015 View 37 Photos News Source: Electrek, Manager MagazinImage Credit: Drew Phillips Green Audi Porsche Volkswagen Electric mission

Audi R8 E-Tron back on production map thanks to new battery tech?

Contrary to our October 2012 report, it appears Audi's R8 E-Tron program is back on track, if a report from Australia is to be believed. Drive is reporting that the German brand has changed its mind and won't be sacking the program, despite previously stated concerns about the quality and price of batteries for the R8-based EV.
We last saw the R8 E-Tron prototype in the snows of northern Europe, although footage of the car has been non-existent since that wintry test. This new report claims that a small number of R8 E-Trons will see production, which gels with what we heard back in 2012 and supposed earlier this year. Apparently, some new sort of lithium-ion battery technology has allowed for a drastic increase in range, with rumors of the original 130 miles going up to around 250. According to Drive, this makes the project feasible again.
"Our engineers and technicians are further developing the car and its electric drive system. The range has grown significantly, allowing the potential for a small-scale production," an unnamed, but high-ranking Audi employee told the Aussies.

Junkyard Gem: Fully depreciated 2001 Audi A8 L 4.2 Quattro

A great big A8 with a long wheelbase and all-wheel-drive is just the thing for a serious player with an oligarch-grade bankroll and the need to get to important corporate meetings during the worst Colorado snowstorms, and we're betting that's how this 15-year-old A8 L's original owner saw it. The problem with cars like this is that big, complicated, expensive machinery tends to develop big, complicated, expensive problems once the aging process sets in, and third or fourth owners of high-end German luxury cars tend to lack the resources needed to keep those cars going. So, those S-Classes and 7-Series and A8s end up in a place like this when something expensive breaks at age 15. This one, which has a very straight body and decent interior, now sits in its final parking space, among the Daewoo Leganzas and Volvo 850s in the imports section of a Denver self-service yard. If you're good with the wrenches and have some Audi expertise, you can't beat the luxury-per-buck deal of a solid 10-to-15-year-old A8; the price for a runner tends to be about the same as that for a tattered Corolla of the same age. This car's base price was $69,946 in 2001, or just over 95 grand in inflation-adjusted 2016 bucks, and it's packed full of leading-edge engineering that's still fairly advanced today. Related Video: