In the EXA-DUNE project we strive to (i) develop and implement numerical algorithms for solving PDE problems efficiently on heterogeneous architectures, (ii) provide corresponding domain-specific abstractions that allow application scientists to effectively use these methods, and (iii) demonstrate performance on porous media flow problems. In this paper, we present first results on the hybrid parallelisation of assembly and sparse linear algebra, the implementation of multiscale finite element methods and the SIMD performance of high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods within an application scenario.