With its pure-electric powertrain and up to four digital displays in the cockpit, the Porsche Taycan is arguably Porsche's most cutting-edge production vehicle to-date. It calls for an equally cutting-edge showroom experience.

Enter virtual reality, or VR. Porsche is using virtual reality technology to let potential buyers experience the Taycan digitally, up close and "in person," using a VR application available in both German and English. Basically, customers can head to their local Porsche dealership, don a pair of VR goggles, and view the high-tech battery-electric Porsche within a virtual showroom.

Porsche's "Taycan Virtual Experience," as it's been dubbed, has tremendous implications for the way car sales are conducted in general. In this case, Porsche says, the application allows potential buyers to tour the car in markets even before it's launched - or at the least, where one hasn't yet reached the showroom.

But even beyond that, rendering the car virtually allows customers to view it in any of the available colors, and to see visualizations of information that just wouldn't be demonstrable without VR tech. the Taycan Virtual Experience, for instance, includes a simulated aerodynamics feature that allows users to control the airflow over the car body, and see the result superimposed over the car in real time.

"The Taycan is the beginning of a new era at Porsche - and it is only appropriate that we have created a modern digital application so that our electric sports car can be experienced virtually," says Porsche's Head of Customer Relations, Robert Ader. "The information needs of our customers in the dealerships are enormous - we can now meet these needs with the VR Experience even before the physical market launch."

Languages beyond German and English will be added soon as the Porsche Taycan launches in additional markets, the German sports car manufacturer says, and a team is hard at work rolling out a virtual car configuration feature.

Porsche's Taycan Virtual Experience could be a sign of things to come in the new car market, and really, we wouldn't be at all surprised if in the future, there were scores of dealer showrooms with no cars in them at all - only VR headsets.