Porsche, Employees Make Painful Sacrifices For Mission E

Porsche Mission E concept (Credit: Porsche )

Let’s face it: kicking the internal combustion engine habit isn’t going to be easy or cheap. The price of progress will be significant, and it’s just beginning. Porsche and its employees are feeling the pinch right now, according to reports from Reuters and German car magazine Automobilwoche.

To build the all-electric Mission E at the Porsche plant in Zuffenhausen, workers have agreed to various concessions, instead of opting to have the vehicle built at another plant. Part of the agreement is that instead of putting in a whopping 34 hours a week, workers will labor for 35 hours. They’ll also be sacrificing part of a pay increase plan that’s being phased in between now and 2025. All in all, the plant’s workers are giving up several hundred million euros.

Porsche’s making sacrifices as well. It’s pouring about one billion euro into getting the Zuffenhausen facility ready for the Mission E. That involves creating about 1,000 new jobs, so there is an upside.

While right now it looks like Porsche’s giving up a lot to make a single vehicle, the entire company stands to benefit big in the long run. Supposedly, the production version of the Mission E will be on the market by 2020. Its battery will reach an 80 percent charge in just 15 minutes, which is half the time the Tesla Model S takes currently. An inductive charging feature would also make plugging in the car at home unnecessary.

These moves would make Porsche a leader in one of the hottest areas of the auto market, putting it ahead of the competition and maybe helping keep it there for decades. That could end up paying off for everyone involved in this venture.

Right now Porsche and its employees aren’t commenting on details of this deal. It’s possible that workers stand to gain some sort of an upswing with the successful production of the Mission E, or when it reaches certain sales metrics. That would explain why the workers are willing to forgo some pay to have the car built at that specific factory.