Porsche Workers Agree To Pay Cut To Produce All-Electric Mission E Sports Sedan

Reports indicate Porsche’s workers have agreed to concessions worth several hundred million euros to secure production of an all-electric sports car at the manufacturer’s biggest plant.

At this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, VW’s luxury performance brand unveiled an all-electric sports sedan concept car called the Mission E. The vehicle is said to feature sports car performance and an innovative 800-volt battery technology that charges up to 80 percent in approximately 15 minutes. Additionally, officials claim the car can cover over 310 miles of total driving range on a single charge.

Earlier this month, Porsche said it would spend about $1.10 billion at its base in Zuffenhausen and create in excess of 1,000 jobs there to build its new battery-powered model. However, a source at the company said that wage costs of the 13,000 workers employed at Zuffenhausen are greater than those at Porsche’s other German factory in Leipzig and at a VW plant in Osnabrueck where its Cayman and Cayenne models are assembled.

An anonymous source at the automaker said that in an effort to cut costs, an agreement was made between workers at Zuffenhausen and management to raise the workweek from 34 hours to 35, and to reduce pay increases between 2016 and 2025. Although Porsche has declined to comment on the specifics of the deal, a company representative has confirmed that a dialogue between workers and Porsche has secured the Zuffenhausen facility for production of the Mission E electric sports car.

“Employer and employees have jointly drawn up measures that have led to the decision of producing the Mission E model at Zuffenhausen,” the representative said.

The wage cut agreement between Porsche and its Zuffenhausen employees could also be connected to parent company VW’s decision to cut its research and development budget in the wake of its ongoing diesel emissions scandal.

Will Porsche’s new electric car be a “Tesla killer” as some are suggesting? It’s impossible to know for sure at this point, but the fact that the Mission E isn’t planned to be launched until 2020 could leave the German automaker significantly behind the ever-evolving Tesla in the electric car marketplace. At the same time, it appears that Porsche is committed to launching the Mission E this decade, and its impressive functionality may prove to generate great success in the world of electric cars upon its release.