Porsche is planning to bring a fully electric 718 Boxster and Cayman to market by 2022, according to a new report from Autocar. It's also looking at plug-in and hybrid versions of the current car to sell alongside that EV. Plus Porsche chair Oliver Blume talks about the upcoming electric Macan and the company's plans for the gas model, which right now seem up in the air.
"We have prototypes of the 718 running in electric now, and a hybrid prototype is being built," Blume told the publication. He added that "if you look to the next generation of those cars it is possible, although it is not yet clear whether it would be plug-in hybrid or hybrid."
The automaker is currently working on plans that could see the production versions of the electric Porsches built on the company's upcoming PPE electric architecture, then sold alongside hybrid versions of the current models.
That dual product plan comes from concerns that battery technology has not come far enough to offer pure EV versions with a range of more than 300 km. At least not on the current 718 Boxster and Cayman platform, without extensive changes to the architecture.
A similar move is being made with the upcoming Macan. The next-generation will be fully electric, Porsche announced earlier this year, but the company isn't dropping the gas version right away. "For at least two to three years we will have both. At that point, we can decide whether to upgrade the combustion engines to the new Euro 7 standard, or go full electric. The pace that countries are changing is different – China wants electric now, Russia is in less of a hurry, for instance,” Blume said.
Autocar says that its sources put the mild and plug-in hybrids intended for the 718s as based on those already engineered for the 911. Only they'll be paired with a flat-four instead of the 911's six, using a 48-volt electrical system and a motor integrated into the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox.
You may also like
