Porsche to go 80% electric by 2030

By 2030 more than 80% of all new Porsches will be electrified, either as all-electric sports cars or high-performance plug-in hybrids, the German sports car maker says.

Speaking at Porsche’s annual media conference last Friday, chair Oliver Blume said that by 2025 half of all of the brand’s new vehicles will have an electric motor, up from 17% worldwide and one third in Europe last year.

Porsche’s move into a less polluting future follows similar recent announcements by carmakers including Ford, General Motors, Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover, as old-school car manufacturers increasingly join the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Porsche has achieved early success with its new electric Taycan sports car, with 20,015 units sold in 2020 to make it the most successful EV in its class. Half of those sales were to customers who hadn’t previously owned a Porsche.

The electric Taycan Cross Turismo, which made its global debut at the beginning of March, is a milestone car by being the first CO₂-neutral Porsche throughout the use phase, said Blume.

By 2030 Porsche aims to be carbon-neutral throughout the entire production value chain, and to produce as much green energy as its customers consume, he said. The company’s major factories in Zuffenhausen, Weissach and Leipzig have been CO₂-neutral since 2021 through the use of renewable energy and biogas, and the company has earmarked more than €1bn for decarbonisation with wind turbines, solar energy and other climate protection measures over the next decade.

“In the next step, we will also demand this from our suppliers. Anyone who develops battery cells for us must manufacture them exclusively with sustainable energy,” Blume said. “Batteries are still produced in a very energy-intensive way. By obliging our suppliers to use sustainable energy, the carbon footprint will improve significantly. And the battery itself will be more than 90% recyclable in ten years, at the latest.”

Porsche says its EV focus will be on reducing charge times rather than improving range. The Taycan is able to charge to 80% of its capacity in 20 minutes and the target is to halve that to ten minutes in the next few years to improve customer acceptance of EVs.

Porsche will also work on reducing the price of EVs to make them more attractive to buyers. Electromobility adds about €10,000 (roughly R176,565) to the cost of a vehicle, and in the long term the company says it will be able to manage EVs through economies of scale at its usual 14.6% rate of return.

The internal-combustion engine will continue to play a role in the German carmaker’s product plan, catering to the core base of driving enthusiasts who buy Porsches for their emotional appeal.

The iconic 911 won’t become fully electric but continue in the future either as a hybrid, or with a petrol engine that runs on clean e-fuels (synthetic fuels), which permit almost carbon-neutral operation.