Porsche Plugs In

Porsche is testing electric versions of the Boxster, pictured here, with an eye to building electric sportscars.

Image: Porsche

The Tesla Roadster may soon have some competition for coolest electric sports car on the block.

Porsche announced today that it was planning to bring out its own electric sports car.

But it may be a while before the German sports car is on the road competing with the likes of Tesla Motors, which already has an electric sports car that can blast past 100 miles per hour. The German car maker, now a subsidiary of Volkswagen, isn’t rushing its electric Boxsters onto the street.

"We will definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future," Michael Macht, CEO of Porsche AG, said in a release. "But such a concept only makes sense if it offers performance and a cruising range comparable to that of a sports car today."

Right now, three all-electric Boxsters are being test-driven daily as a step toward bringing out an all-electric sports car.

While no date has been set for an electric Porsche, Volkswagen, like its worldwide automaking peers, has definite dates for other electric models. The conglomerate plans to roll out an electric Audi in 2012 and an electric Volkswagen in 2013.

Volkswagen has plenty of company when it comes to such plans for the next couple of years.

Tesla, of course, already has been selling its roadster for a couple of years, and is planning to build an electric sedan in the next couple of years. It also plans to partner with the world’s largest automaker, Toyota, to build electric cars in the future at Tesla’s Northern California factory.

Of the major automakers, Nissan and General Motors are ahead of the rest when it comes to all-electric or almost-all-electric cars. Nissan is coming out with its all-electric Leaf this year. GM is rolling out its Chevrolet Volt extended range hybrid. Ford is rolling out an electric version of its Focus next year.

Unlike the Leaf, or the Tesla for that matter, GM’s car will run on batteries, but be augmented by a gasoline engine which will kick in when the battery runs low on electricity. That should extend the range of the Volt, one of the big strikes against electric cars.

The Leaf’s expected range is about 100 miles (correction, this article originally stated the Leaf's range as 40 miles per charge), while the Tesla Roadster can go about 240 miles on a charge. And charging an electric car takes hours.

That’s one of the biggest strikes against the new technology, along with its expense. The batteries used to power electric cars drive the cost of the vehicles higher, and infrastructure for charging them is scarce.

In fact, at least one company, Better Place, headquartered in the Silicon Valley, is trying to create infrastructure for electric cars from scratch. The idea behind Better Place is that you can pull into a Better Place station and swap your spent battery for a fully charged one quickly.

Correction: This article originally stated the Nissan Leaf's range per charge as about 40 miles. The Leaf will go about 100 miles on a charge.