Will Everrati’s all-electric Porsche 911 save our favourite sportscar from extinction?

Porsche 911s, like all other internal combustion-engined vehicles, are becoming extinct. Fortunately, Everrati has devised a strategy to save everyone’s favorite sportscar from extinction. Simon de Burton visited their Oxfordshire headquarters to learn more…

In some ways, I wish I hadn’t come across Everrati. For the past 16 years, I’ve extolled the virtues of my 1981 Porsche 911, a ‘cooking’ model lacking Fuchs wheels, a whale tail spoiler, or any of the other ‘Sport Pack’ options. It doesn’t even have leather seats, but ‘berber’ wool ones, and, worst of all, it’s a Targa, which many purists despise.

I bought it after looking at several 911s in my price range that had the ‘right’ specs but were all in ‘wrong’ condition. My car was officially the wrong specification, but it turned out to be in excellent condition and has given me more than 50,000 miles of pleasure driving.

Make no mistake about it: I adore it. And, with its screaming flat six engine, decent fuel economy, superb build quality, ‘occasional’ rear seating and that versatile Targa top, I concur with the answer given by German industrial designer Dieter Rams when he was asked why he drove a 911: “Simply because it is the most efficient means yet devised to travel from A – B by road”. And, despite having piloted many a 21st-century supercar, I still believe my 911 is perfectly quick enough in the’real world’.

Or at least I did until last week. That’s when Everrati founder Justin Lunny invited Classic Driver to take the wheel of the’restomod’ 911 964 Carrera 2 pictured here, which foregoes the standard, 3.6 litre petrol engine in favor of a single electric motor producing the equivalent of around 500 bhp and 500 Nm of torque from, er, zero revs.

Everrati’s headquarters are located at the former Upper Heyford RAF base in Oxfordshire, which later became the home of America’s European F-111 strike force, along with a few other fledgling businesses in the vehicle electrification world. When the USAF left in 1994, they left behind the vast ‘hardened’ aircraft shelters that had housed the planes (one of which Everrati is now based) and, more importantly, a pair of three-mile runways that are ideal for a spot of automotive drag racing.

Much is made of how quick electric cars can be off the line, but in the spirit of a true comparison, we brought along Classic Driver friend James Edgerton’s nicely preserved, entirely stock 964 C2, which – despite having covered more than 200,000 miles – remains every bit as quick as any ICE-powered 911 should be.

Sitting on the start line in the complete silence of the Everrati version, I expected some side-by-side action before the electric car edged ahead. In reality, Edgerton’s 964 was completely annihilated by the Everrati, which had barely gotten into second gear by the time the Everrati was 400 yards up the runway.

The acceleration is certainly ‘blistering,’ but the Everrati 911 is about much more than simply being able to go fast in a straight line by swapping gasoline for electricity, because it has been meticulously developed from the ground up with all the attention to detail that would be expected of an OEM vehicle.

Windsor-based Lunny’s decision to launch Everrati in 2019 (originally called Ionic before Hyundai complained that it was too similar to its own ‘Ioniq’ model) stemmed first and foremost from seeing the electrified Jaguar E-Type ‘Zero’ in which newlywed Prince Harry drove his bride away from Windsor Castle the year before.

Despite already believing that something technically better could be accomplished, Lunny – armed with ample funds from a stellar fintech career – was inspired to start his own electric car company by his young daughter’s concern about the planet’s future.

And, as a sign of his intent, he hired none other than Mike Kerr as director of engineering – a long-time 964 owner with an impressive automotive CV that includes work for Cosworth Racing in the mid-1990s, more than five years as head of powertrain and drive line at McLaren, and two years with Lotus developing the all-electric Evija.

Kerr’s decision to join Everrati lends significant credibility to the project, and he told Classic Driver that one of the aspects of the business that appealed to him was that it aims to do the job properly. “The whole ethos is about getting the development absolutely right before putting the cars into full production,” he explains.

“Unlike many firms that are converting cars to EV, we haven’t gone down the route of using second hand Tesla batteries but have developed a base powertrain using brand new battery modules and a single electric motor with an integrated inverter and its own, bespoke control unit. We have a torque-biasing differential to improve traction, as well as separate cooling systems for the motor and battery packs, with heat exchangers built into the rear bumper.

“The goal has always been to keep as much of the 911’s analogue feel as possible, and by installing 16 battery modules in the back and eight in the front, we’ve replicated the 60-40 weight split, so the car drives and handles very similarly to the original. We basically gave it a heart transplant while keeping its original personality.”

And, having driven the Everatti 911 on B roads, A roads, in town, on highways, and on that hooligan-friendly three-mile runway, I can honestly say that it not only matches, but even improves on the traditional 911 experience.

It’s not cheap, at around £250,000 – or £200,000 for the 440 bhp ‘Pure’ model – plus the cost of a donor car (which Everrati must approve as being suitably sound before beginning a conversion). However, the end result should be an electric 911 for life, with a realistic range of up to 180 miles between charges costing around £8.50 each.

The vast majority of the cost is accounted for by a meticulous restoration process that results in an almost new bodyshell and upgraded running gear, with the electric powertrain and its installation accounting for around £60,000 – 70,000 of the total cost.

Even if those twin, mid-mounted tailpipes are ‘pretend’ units designed to lend extra authenticity to the synthesised exhaust note that can be switched on and off depending on the driver’s mood, no one can deny that the wide-bodied Everrati version looks superb.

The car’s livery is also significant because it distinguishes Everrati as the only electric vehicle manufacturer in the world to have been granted official permission to use Gulf Oil’s famous colors, which sees the company as a worthy promoter of its growing range of EV lubricants.

While the celebrated ‘blue and orange’ caught the attention of many 911 fans on the road, it was the electric car owners we met at the charging station who did the most double takes when we pulled up, opened the wing-mounted fuel flap, and casually plugged-in.

“That’s incredible,” said the owner of a VW iD3. “I didn’t realize Porsche made an electric 911.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “However, if you drove this one, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was made in Stuttgart…”

Tom Shaxson photographs for Classic Driver 2022

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