The Porsche ‘#DrivingTomorrow’ pop-up exhibition at Jewel Changi Airport, Singapore, is a celebration of the marque’s history and innovation, and sheds some light on what it intends for the future. It opened on 18 December 2020 and runs until 16 January 2021, and there is no admission charge.
Porsche’s earliest electric motoring efforts come earlier than most may think – in 1898, in fact, when founder Ferdinand Porsche dabbled in electrically powered vehicles. At the time, the young Austrian-German engineer was working for the coachbuilder Jacob Lohner and developed the battery-powered Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton, which could be said to be the first-ever Porsche car.
Porsche would, of course, go on to create the company which bears his name in 1931 and has had many milestones since. One such is the Porsche 356 from 1948, the company’s first production automobile, a two-door two-seater sports car powered by a 1.1-litre air-cooled flat-four engine – rear-engine and rear-wheel drive, of course.
An actual 356 is on display as part of the exhibition, and it shares the spotlight with the much more recent Porsche Taycan. This represents the cutting-edge of sports cars today, an all-electric vehicle that posits a digital, sustainable future – in support of the latter, the Taycan’s production process at the Zuffenhause plant in Germany is carbon-neutral. The Taycan’s power starts at 400bhp (the Turbo S model can hit 750bhp) and a range in the hundreds of kilometres; it is a long way off the Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton, which reported had a maximum of 5bhp and a range of about 80km.
Other sections of the exhibition include details on Porsche’s ongoing commitment to the environment through supporting R&D efforts and clean energy programmes. It also proposes that one way to cut down on waste is to simply make a good car that will last for decades – as a matter of fact, more than 70 per cent of all Porsche vehicles ever made are still roadworthy.
