Porsche Realizes Rich People Still Want Gas Cars

Porsche will continue to invest in gas cars. The company admits EV adoption isn't rising as it had hoped. It will give people what they want: gas, hybrid, and electric.

In early 2022, Porsche said electric vehicles would account for more than 80% of total annual sales by the decade's end. That goal is still in place, although the House of Zuffenhausen added an asterisk next to 2030 by saying it'll depend on how customers react to EVs. In a Q&A session with the press during the conference call pretraining to Q3 2024 sales, the German brand admitted things aren't going as planned.

Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke said the situation in China is "challenging" for Porsche and all the European luxury brands. In the United States and Europe, Porsche sees a "slowdown in the BEV transition and the customer demand is not satisfying overall." He mentioned that "a lot of customers in the premium/luxury segment are looking in the direction of combustion engine cars. There's a clear trend in this direction."

This is the part of the Q&A that got really interesting. Meschke said Porsche will give people what they want by refreshing its gas-fueled and plug-in hybrid cars. The executive team is giving the R&D department the flexibility to work on multiple powertrain solutions, including "new combustion-engined derivatives of electrified cars."

Does this mean EVs will also get gas variants? It's too early to say seeing as how the new Macan is built on a dedicated architecture. It rides on the same Premium Platform Electric (PPE) as the Audi A6 and Q6 E-tron models. With the 718 replacement launching in 2025, logic tells us development of the next-gen Boxster and Cayman has already been finalized. The sports car duo is also expected to be an EV-only affair.

Looking further ahead, the three-row SUV codenamed "K1" will also be strictly electric per Porsche's recent statements. The smaller Cayenne will retain V8 power into the 2030s, which means it'll peacefully coexist with a namesake electric model for many years. The same strategy will be applied for the Panamera since the planned EV variant won't spell the end for the ICE model.

Although Porsche remains committed to combustion engines, the harsh reality of 2024 is that the Boxster, Cayman, and Macan have already been axed in Europe due to cybersecurity regulations. The two mid-engined sports cars will be retired globally when production ends by the middle of 2025, with the crossover to die as well about a year later.

If Porsche does plan EV-to-ICE adaptations, there will be compromises in terms of packaging. However, this strategy has paid off for BMW, a luxury brand that won't have a dedicated electric car architecture until 2025 with the first Neue Klasse model.