The Porsche Macan is Porsche’s best-selling vehicle, powered by an internal-combustion engine, a crossover that handles better than it has any right to. It will also be going electric soon, the Financial Times reports.
The FT’s report doesn’t say exactly whether all Macans will be electric or whether just some of them will be, but I’m assuming the latter. That’s for the short-term, at least, because Porsche has said that, eventually, it wants half of its cars to be fully electric.
Porsche is also owned by Volkswagen, which has said they’ll be investing billions in electric cars over the next several years.
The Porsche decision, which will be revealed next Tuesday by the group, shows the carmaker is serious about selling electric vehicles to a mass market.
The all-electric Macan, a sport utility vehicle, will be produced in Leipzig early next decade, the company confirmed to the Financial Times.
Chief executive Oliver Blume said Porsche was aiming for every second car it sold to be “electrified” — pure-electric or hybrid — by 2025, meaning that Porsche’s electric ramp-up is even more ambitious than its parent, the Volkswagen Group.
VW Group is spending €30bn on electrification in the next five years in the hope that one-quarter of its sales will be all-electric by 2025.
Porsche sold 86,000 Macans last year, or about a third of its total sales volume, itself a record. It feels increasingly like we’re in some kind of golden age of car buying, or I should say SUV- and crossover-buying. If you’re old like me, though, you remember the bad times, circa 2008, when gas-guzzlers were swiftly not in vogue because of high gas prices and a recession. I can only think that that the cycle will happen again, but who’s to say when (fine, I will say it, it’ll be later this year, thanks Trump.)
Maybe this is for the better, though. The 2019 base Macan also only makes 248 horsepower from its inline four-cylinder, which is sad. Make this thing electric if only for the instant torque.