After twelve years and a journey that started with drivers swapping cars mid-race because a single battery couldn’t last, the 975 RSE is Porsche’s answer to everyone who ever doubted that electric motorsport could be truly, viscerally fast.
There is a detail buried in the history of Formula E that tells you everything about how far the sport has travelled. When the championship launched more than two years ago, teams brought two cars to each race. Not as a spare, but as a necessity. Midway through every race, drivers would pit, climb out of one car and into another, because the battery technology of the era simply could not sustain a full race distance.
Fast forward,literally, to 2026. Porsche’s new 975 RSE produces 600 kW (816 hp) in Attack Mode, hits 100 kph in approximately 1.8 seconds, and is projected to reach 335 kph. Those numbers do not belong to electric motorsport’s cautious past, they come closer and closer to Formula 1’s present. The argument that battery-electric racing is a diluted, compromised sport is gradually diminishing. Or at least that’s what the participants are aiming for with their newest cars.
Nomen est omen
Porsche named the car with characteristic precision. The ‘9’ is the traditional prefix for Porsche’s racing cars. The ’75’ marks 2026 as the 75th anniversary of Porsche Motorsport. ‘RSE’ needs almost no translation in Stuttgart: Rennsport Elektrisch.
The car it replaces, the 99X Electric, has won four world championship titles. It has not yet finished its run. Pascal Wehrlein currently leads both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships, with the 99X contesting its final race in London this August. After that, the 975 RSE debuts in December.
71% more power
In the Attack Mode, the 975 RSE delivers 71% more peak power than its predecessor. Permanent all-wheel drive is new for GEN4; all previous generations were rear-wheel only. Wider tracks, new tyres, and up to 150% more aerodynamic downforce than the GEN3 Evo mean the racing car’s power actually reaches the road.
The figure that matters most to Porsche, though, is drivetrain efficiency above 97%. Thomas Laudenbach, VP of Motorsport, was blunt: “EVs are not only catching up with the standards we are used to; their strengths are becoming increasingly evident, on the track and on the road.”
Agressive driving
That “on the road” reference is no coincidence. Formula E is explicitly designed as an engineering laboratory: manufacturers develop the motor, inverter, gearbox, and software that also appear in their production cars. The 51.25 kWh battery is the one thing no team may touch, as it is standard-supplied across the grid. But everything else is a proxy for the boardroom.
Both Wehrlein and Nico Müller have already had a profound taste of their new racing weapon. Wehrlein pitches it as “a real eye-opener for fans and critics.” Müller was more precise: “I’m a big fan of how aggressively you can drive.”
