Luxury car manufacturer Porsche is building up its workforce to work on a new electric vehicle project.
According to reporting by Reuters, the company will hire at least 1400 people to develop its Mission E electric vehicle.
This number represents a significant increase on earlier plans, showing that the project is being prioritized by Porsche.
The jobs themselves will be at the company’s Zuffenhausen manufacturing facility in southern Germany. They will reportedly be made up of around 900 production staff, 300 salaried workers and 200 engineers.
The Mission E is a low-profile luxury sports car billed as a potential competitor to Tesla’s successful Model S.
It is able to travel up to 500km on a single battery charge, and features high-performance specs, such as a 250km/h top speed a 0-100km/h acceleration in 3.5 seconds.
The 4-seater vehicle will define Porsche’s “vision of e-mobility” according the concept car’s release information.
According to German media reports, the vehicle is being designed at the Porsche Development Center in Weissach. Additional reporting suggests prototype vehicles are already undergoing road tests.
While billed as a Model S competitor, the Mission E will not roll off the production line until at least 2019.
However, Porsche believes at this point there will be enough demand for EVs that it will be able to sustain a production level of around 15,000 Mission E vehicles per year.
Volkswagen Group pushes for EVs
Porsche’s prioritization of the Mission E is one more piece of parent company Volkswagen Group’s efforts to be a market leader in EVs.
In June the company announced plans to build a massive lithium-ion battery manufacturing complex on the scale of Tesla’s Gigafactory.
As well it presented its vision of offering 20 different EV models by 2020 across its VW, Porsche and Audi brands.
The company also reportedly set an ambitious sales target of 1 million electrified vehicles sold by 2025.
