Mission S revealed: This new Porsche supercar isn’t electric

Porsche is taking on Ferrari, McLaren and Lamborghini with the Mission S, a concept that previews a mid-engined supercar to sit above the 911.

Revealed in New York, the Mission S is intended to be a driver-focused supercar, with no distracting dashboard touchscreen, and a physical key in place of the usual start/stop button of other contemporary Porsches.

Instead of a touchscreen and infotainment system, Porsche encourages drivers to fit their smartphone to an integrated mount, or focus purely on the driving instead.

Porsche hasn’t said anything about the performance of the Mission S, but describes it as mid-engined – and not electric, unlike the Mission X, a battery-powered hypercar concept that was revealed in 2023 but never went into production. Intended to be a successor to the Carrera GT and 918 Spyder, that project was seemingly canceled before getting off the ground, as rivals Ferrari and McLaren both shunned a fully-electric approach in favour of hybrid-assisted V6 engines for their respective F80 and W1 hypercars.

The Mission S will likely be seen as a course-correction from Porsche, which halted the Mission X but continued to pursue the all-electric Taycan, Macan and Cayenne, with electric versions of its Boxster and Cayman still in development.

Since electric hypercars like the Lotus Evija and Rimac Nevera have failed to sell in meaningful numbers, it’s perhaps no surprise that Porsche backed away from the electric Mission X and is instead focused on the Mission S.

As a side note, while this isn’t a production car ready to go on sale, Porsche changed little to the Mission E concept before it became the taycan. Hopefully it’ll take a similar approach here, and much of the Mission S will remain when the production version arrives.

Dr Michael Leiters, chairman of the executive board of Porsche AG, said: “The Mission S provides a glimpse of the ideas and design features that will shape Porsche in the coming years. At the same time, Mission S represents a mid-engined super sports car platform positioned above the 911 – not as a one-off hypercar, but as a permanent and versatile addition to our customer offering”.

Porsche’s decision to reveal the Mission S on a pier in Queens, New York is significant. The first pictures of the mid-engined Porsche 550 Spyder – the company’s first super sports car – were taken on the same pier back in 1953.

As well as sharing its design DNA with the Mission X, the new Mission S draws inspiration from the 919 Street Concept, a 2017 design exercise from Porsche that envisioned a road-legal version of its Le Mans-winning 919 race car. It is expected to sit above Porsche’s sprawling 911 range, but not occupy the flagship status of the 918 Spyder, thus leaving room for a future limited-edition hypercar to fill that spot later.

Another call-back on the Mission S is a circular fan mounted to the top of the engine bay and reminiscent of the Porsche 917’s radiator fan.

Inside, the stripped-out interior has two seats and is seriously drover-focused. A central analogue rev counter sits directly behind the steering wheel, flanked in traditional Porsche fashion by four sub-dials. The simple steering wheel has tactile switchgear, including gear shift paddles and a central button marked “On your own” – potentially a reference to when the driver assist systems are deactivated.

There are five-point harnesses for both seats, a set of physical climate controls, and a pronounced gear shifter. While this isn’t a manual car, the shifter can be used to switch between the usual drive, park, neutral and reverse, but also be pushed forwards or backwards to shift through the semi-automatic gearbox.

On the lack of a dashboard display, Porsche said it “has deliberately chosen not to include a permanently integrated centre display or a fixed passenger display in the dashboard. Instead, a retractable smartphone system compatible with MagSafe technology has been designed for use as needed.

"The user’s personal smartphone can serve as a navigation or information display if desired. A clearly structured and streamlined My Porsche App provides access to all functions and also allows users to select digitally rendered, historically inspired designs for the circular instruments.”

Porsche has not revealed what engine the Mission S will have, nor what sort of performance we can expect from the production version. We also don’t know when that car is likely to go on sale, or what it will cost. Given its position above the 911 family, the eventual production car could be priced anywhere from around £200,000 and head deep into six-figure territory.