The Porsche 718, a mid-engine roadster that injects the automaker’s motorsport history into a modern package, will go fully electric by 2025.
Announced at Porsche’s annual meeting, the 718 EV is part of the company’s ambitious and recently expanded plans to electrify its fleet. The company said Friday it now wants 80% of all new sales to be fully electric vehicles by 2030.
“Because of the different transformation rates in the different regions of the world, we have a very flexible engine strategy,” said Blume. “We are going for emotional combustion engines, powerful plug-in hybrids, sporty hybrids and also fully electric cars.” He added that some models will be offered in different parallel powertrains, and emphasized that the 911 will continue to be offered as an internal combustion engine.
The Porsche 718 EV, which will be the third all-electric vehicle in its portfolio, follows the all-electric Taycan that debuted in 2019 and the upcoming Macan.
The new sales target cannot be met due to the increasing popularity of the Taycan and its numerous variants. An all-electric Macan and the 718 EV will help close that gap, business leaders said in a briefing ahead of the annual meeting. The company also said Friday that its plan includes building its own network of EV charging stations with lounge-like areas where customers can work or have coffee while waiting for their batteries to charge.
The Macan, as previously planned, will launch in Europe for the first time in 2023, followed by the US in 2024. The 718 EV will debut in 2025, said Porsche CEO Oliver Blume. The Macan will be based on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) platform, an architecture that Porsche and Audi first began developing in 2018.
Porsche is developing a special configuration for the 718 EV, Blume said, adding that it will also have an 800-volt system like the Taycan that will enable some of the fast charging speeds in the industry.
That will not be Porsche’s only challenge. Blume said his strategy is to use many of the same components in the 718 and 911 to produce the two vehicles on the same production line.
“So it’s a different platform, but with the same modules, as on our two-door sports car, the 911,” he added.
Porsche said it also plans to produce a hybrid variant of the iconic 911 sports car. This will not be a plug-in hybrid, but a sporty hybrid, similar to the technology in the Porsche 919 hybrid that raced and won at Le Mans.
This post Porsche is turning its mid-engine 718 roadster into an EV by 2025 TechCrunch
was original published at “https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/18/porsche-is-turning-its-mid-engine-718-roadster-into-an-ev-by-2025/”
