Porsche confirms Boxster EV and new seven-seat SUV | GRR
Porsche has already made its mark on the high-performance electric car market with the Taycan and its myriad of variants, but now the marque is getting ready to take one step further – or four, in fact.
Bosses in Stuttgart have made no secret of Porsche’s plans for electrification over the last few years, dropping the odd hint to the media here and there. But at the brand’s annual press conference earlier today, it laid out what’s coming and when in official terms. Put simply, three well-known Porsche models are going fully electric, and there’s an all-new name coming to the fold, too.
Leading the charge will be the next-generation Macan, adopting electric power via the PPE platform developed jointly with Audi. We’ve known about this one for some time now, but Porsche has said that the car is now on the ‘home straight’, and it will be delivered in 2024. As such, expect to see the new Macan some point later this year.
After Porsche electrifies its smallest SUV, the next model on the agenda will be a fully-electric version of the 718 sportscar, which CEO Oliver Blume has said is “planned for the middle of the decade.” It’s expected to make use of a bespoke electric architecture based heavily on the Mission R prototype, though Porsche flat-combustion purists shouldn’t be too despondent – the 718 as we know it today won’t disappear yet, and the two will be sold in parallel to each other for a while.
Later this year, we’ll see a comprehensive facelift for the third-generation Cayenne which will include three plug-in hybrid versions. However, Porsche has also teased the fourth-generation version of its game-changing SUV. Like the Macan, it’s going fully electric, and we’ll see it not long after the 718.
But the big news? An entirely new model to sit above the Cayenne is planned. Described by Blume as a “new all-electric SUV with a performance-focused character”, it will see Porsche take a step into the ultra-luxury territory occupied by VW Group stablemate Bentley. No other details have been confirmed, save for it will use a new platform being developed by Porsche, called SSP Sport.
It’s all part of a plan to make 80% of Porsche sales fully electric by 2030. But Porsche is hopeful that the combustion engine won’t die under its watch. E-fuels are still of massive interest to those running the show in Stuttgart, and Blume thinks that they will play a “useful role” in keeping its existing cars on the road for some time or could even be used in brand-new cars with internal combustion engines after 2035, if legislation allows. Watch this space.