Porsche is ‘realigning’ its product plans to take into account slowing growth for cars with electric drivetrains.
For enthusiasts, the big news announced at the company’s recent earnings call is the addition of “top ICE derivatives” of the next-generation 718 Boxster and Cayman sports car range.
It’s unclear what petrol engines the 718 will use, but given their positioning towards the pointy end of the model’s drivetrain list, they will probably be six-cylinder boxer engines shared with the 911 lineup.
The electric-only successor to today’s Boxster convertible and Cayman coupe models has been delayed multiple times, reportedly due to battery issues.
Unlike many EVs, where battery cells live in a horizontal layer under the floor, the new 718 has a vertical battery stack behind the passenger compartment to more closely mimic the weight balance of a traditional mid-engine sports car.
We don’t know when the new petrol-powered 718 models will debut, but it will likely be after the electric 718 variants have been launched as Porsche will probably need to do a bit re-engineering of the 718’s unique platform to accommodate the petrol engines and their ancillaries.
Production of Australian-spec 718 Boxster and Cayman models has finished up already, with cars for other markets set to be discontinued soon. On-going delays will likely result in a global availability gap between the end of the current generation and the launch of the new model, initially only with electric drivetrains.
Perhaps more importantly for Porsche’s bottom line, with SUVs now accounting for the majority of its sales, the company is changing the nature of its upcoming three-row flagship SUV to sit above the Cayenne.
Codenamed ‘K1’, the super-sized Porsche was originally planned to be based on the ‘sport’ derivative of Volkswagen Group’s electric-only Scalable Systems Platform (SSP).
K1 will now instead feature petrol and plug-in hybrid drivetrains. This decision likely came about because a large proportion of this class of car is sold in the US and Middle East, where EV adoption lags well behind Europe and China.
As a result, the SSP Sport architecture won’t appear in production until some time in the 2030s, and there will be a €1.8 billion ($A3.2 billion) hit to Porsche’s bottom line. In addition to K1, SSP Sport was also set to underpin the all-electric third-generation Panamera and the second-generation Taycan.
With SSP Sport delayed, the company has given the green light to developing another generation of the petrol and plug-in hybrid iterations of the Panamera sedan and Cayenne SUV.
Despite the axing of the electric K1, Porsche will press ahead of the nearly complete Cayenne EV, which will be launched towards the end of 2025. Although it shares the Cayenne nameplate with the current petrol and plug-in hybrid model, the Cayenne EV will have a unique body, and will utilise Platform Premium Electric like the smaller Macan EV.
As previously announced, Porsche is developing a petrol and plug-in hybrid model to slot in alongside the Macan EV. The new model is codenamed ‘M1’, and will be based on the same Platform Premium Combustion that underpins the Audi Q5.
To help speed M1 into production, Porsche will reportedly use Audi’s front-biased all-wheel drive system rather than engineering its own setup with a rear bias, like it did with the original Macan.