Porsche (POAHY  ) will double production of its Taycan model, the carmaker's first electric vehicle, from 20,000 to 40,000.

"Porsche has doubled the planned quantities for its first purely electric sports car Taycan because of the foreseeable strong demand," said a report by Automobilwoche.

"We had been ready for it," said Andrew Lennon, manager of product communications for Porsche. "We had the ability to increase capacity from the beginning, and executives recently made the decision to go ahead."

The new model will give Tesla tough competition in an increasingly crowded electric car market. Other players include Jaguar's (TTM  ) I-Pace, which was released last year, Audi's (AUDVF  ) upcoming e-tron sport utility vehicle and Ford (F  ), which is going to dish out a high-performance vehicle inspired by its trademark Mustang sports vehicle.

"Typically, if we look at our source of business, people coming from other brands, it's Audi, BMW, or Mercedes," said Porsche Cars North America CEO Klaus Zellmer. "The no. 1 brand now is Tesla. That's pretty interesting, to see that people that were curious about the Tesla for very good reasons obviously don't stop being curious."

Porsche is ramping up production to meet increasing demand and consumer enthusiasm stemming from existing pre-orders. In Norway alone, there were 3,000 reservations made for the car when normally there are only 600.

In terms of specs, "the Taycan will sport a 0-62 MPH time of 3.5 seconds and will boast a top speed well over 155 MPH. What's more, the Taycan will have a range of 310 miles and will be able to recharge up to 250 miles in just 20 minutes at a Porsche high-voltage supercharger."

These features make it well-matched with Tesla's (TSLA  ) Model S. Even price points are similar, starting from around $80,000. The Taycan will be Porsche's third largest production venture, behind the Cayenne and Macan respectively.