By Noah
Some 30,000 drivers have made down payments for Porsche’s first electric car, according to the high-end automaker’s chief executive.
Those customers in Europe have plunked down 2,500 euros toward the Porsche Taycan, CEO Oliver Blume told the German newspaper Handelsblatt. The company has locked more than 10,000 of those buyers into concrete orders for the car, he said.
“This number is well above our expectations,” Blume told the paper in an interview published Wednesday, according to a translation.
Porsche plans to start shipping the Taycan to US dealers this month and deliver 20,000 of them next year.
Porsche is facing pressure to compete with electric automaker Tesla as its CEO Elon Musk moves to build a factory in Germany. The forthcoming Berlin-area plant will produce 500,000 vehicles a year, the German newspaper Bild reported Wednesday.
The Taycan requires a much heftier down payment than the refundable $100 pre-order charge for Tesla’s Cybertruck. Musk boasted last month that the company had received 250,000 early orders for the electric pickup.
