Porsche descendant hires Porsche execs for new EV sports car company
A descendant of the founder of Porsche is pushing ahead with plans to set up his own electrified sports car brand and is hiring ex-Porsche executives to do it.
Anton ‘Toni’ Piech, the great-grandson of Ferdinand Porsche and son of former VW Group leader Ferdinand Piech, intends to have a two-seat sports car with revolutionary fast-charging capability on-sale in late 2022.
To help him do it, he’s this week announced the recruitment of former Porsche and Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller as chairman of the board of Piech Automotive and former Porsche marketing director Andreas Heinke as co-CEO.
They’ve been joined by other executives who include BMW and Tesla in their automotive CVs.
Peter Thiel – a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook – has also been revealed as a backer and the company is pursuing a further funding round to get its first car into production.
The first model from Piech Automotive was previewed by the Mark Zero coupe concept at the 2019 Geneva auto show.
The design of the car has been finalised, and the company is now commissioning the first prototypes, securing vehicle development partners and is commencing construction of an engineering facility in Memmingen, Germany.
To be followed into production by a four-seater and an SUV, the sports car will showcase a battery and charging technology developed by a Hong Kong company Desten Group that Piech claims can recharge to 80 per cent of battery capacity and achieve a 400km range after just four minutes 40 seconds.
The vehicle’s maximum range is expected to be 500km (WLTP). The battery pack uses a chemistry that only required air cooling, helping lower the weight of the Mark Zero to 1800kg.
The retail price of the production sports car is expected to start at 170,000 Euros, or $279,000.
Toni Piech, 42, was involved in the media industry before following the family tradition and moving into the auto industry in 2016. Hi co-founder is Rea Stark Rajcic, a Swiss designer and entrepreneur.
Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian-German automotive engineer who designed the Volkswagen Beetle before World War 2. He established his eponymous engineering company in 1931 and produced the first sports car to carry his own name, the Porsche 356, in 1948. He died in 1951.
Ferdinand Piech rose through the ranks at Porsche and eventually became chairman of the Volkswagen Group, in which the Porsche and Piech families have a controlling investment. A brilliant engineer, he died in 2019.
Mueller ran the Porsche brand from 2010 to 2015 and then the overall VW Group from 2015 to 2018 in the wake of the disastrous dieselgate emissions scandal, which has cost the company billions of dollars globally and triggered its wholesale move into electrical vehicles.
“I was immediately enthusiastic about the mission of the two founders, because it is more compelling and more visionary than all the new approaches I have encountered during my work in the automotive industry,” Mueller said in a press release.
“I am proud to be involved in the business – it has the potential to herald a new chapter for modern mobility and shape the future of the automobile. It is an endeavour that will receive my wholehearted support.”
