Porsche to produce first all-electric sports car in its bid to battle Tesla

Porsche will add more than 1,400 new jobs as it revs up development of its first all-electric sports car — to challenge Tesla — and plans an initial annual production volume of more than 15,000 vehicles a year.

Some 900 positions will be created in production, 300 in development and 200 in administration for the project, dubbed “J1,” personnel chief Andreas Haffner said at a news conference in the brand’s hometown of Stuttgart, Germany.

Porsche is also seeking about 100 information-technology specialists, 50 digital experts and more apprentices, part of an industrywide hiring push as carmakers try to compete with the likes of Google and Apple in connected-car technology.

“One can, in fact, describe what is going on now as a ‘war for talent,’” Haffner said.

Porsche has doubled its global workforce in the past six years, to 26,200 employees, to keep up with booming demand for the Cayenne and Macan SUVs.

Porsche is spending about US$1.1 billion to introduce its first battery-powered sports car in 2019, a cornerstone of Volkswagen’s broader push to move beyond its emissions-cheating crisis by offering more low- and zero-emission vehicles.

Based on the low-slung Mission E concept shown at last September’s Frankfurt auto show, the electric car will be produced at a new facility near the storied factory in Stuttgart’s Zuffenhausen district, where Porsche makes the 911 sports car.

At the briefing, works council chief and supervisory board member, Uwe Hueck, said Porsche’s labour unions favour crosstown neighbour Robert Bosch GmbH to supply the battery technology for the sports car.

“I’m stubborn,” he said, adding a final decision must be made soon to avoid delays. Porsche has also been weighing a bid from Panasonic to provide the long-range battery for the car, people familiar with the matter said earlier this year.

Final assembly of the battery systems will be done in-house at one of the new production facilities in Zuffenhausen, and parts manufacturing for the new car will be flexible to offset swings in demand between electric vehicles and traditional-combustion engines, Hueck said.