“We believe Porsche is at the sweet spot of the luxury car BEV transition.” So said Lutz Meschke, then chief financial officer of Porsche, at the company’s bullish capital markets day in 2022.
Back then, optimism abounded among executives that the storied Volkswagen Group brand could springboard from its successful launch of the Taycan saloon into an electric, high-tech expansion that would allow margin-swelling price increases and send its soon-to-be-listed stock soaring.
Roll forward just three years and the brand’s electric dream is now in tatters.
Porsche’s goal for EVs to account for more than 80% of its sales is long dead; future electric models have been axed; and Meschke is old news after leaving, along with many of the other board members who confidently delivered the 2022 plan to investors and analysts assembled at the company’s impressive R&D centre in Weissach, Germany.
Meanwhile, Oliver Blume’s dual role as CEO of both Porsche and the wider Volkswagen Group is under scrutiny like never before.
Porsche has been rolling back its 2022 promises for a while now, including the decision to return to combustion engines for a Macan replacement due in 2028 and extending the life of the Cayenne and Panamera into the 2030s.
But on 19 September, the brand announced its biggest bonfire of the 2022 plans yet: it will delay the development of its planned high-tech electric platform until “well into the 2030s”. The SSP Sport, a luxury performance version of the wider Volkswagen Group electric Scalable Systems Platform, was to give Porsche the technological leadership it needed to see off rivals, especially in China, and command the higher prices it wanted.
The platform was scheduled to underpin the ‘K1’ large electric SUV as well as replacements for the Taycan and Panamera.
Now those plans are in the bin and Porsche has dropped the SSP Sport for the time being to focus on the launch the K1 as a combustion-engined model arriving in the early 2030s.
No new electric car is now planned after next year’s Cayenne EV and the 718 Boxster/Cayman EV sports car duo, which themselves will have a combustion-engined version for ‘top’ models in another reversal.
“We have seen a clear drop in demand for exclusive battery-electric cars,” Blume said on the 19 September call to investors.
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