Porsche Adds Petrol Engine to EV Boxster and Delays Electric SUV

Porsche is ‘recalibrating’ its product plans to factor in slowing growth for vehicles with electric powertrains.

For enthusiasts the headline from the company’s recent earnings call is the inclusion of “top ICE derivatives” in the next-generation 718 range.

It’s unclear which petrol engines the 718 will adopt, but given their placement toward the upper end of the model’s drivetrain lineup, they will likely be six-cylinder boxer units shared with the 911 roster.

The all-electric successor to today’s Boxster convertible and Cayman coupe has been pushed back several times, reportedly because of battery complications.

Unlike many EVs, where cells sit in a flat layer under the floor, the new 718 uses a vertical battery stack behind the cabin to better replicate the weight distribution of a classic mid-engine sports car.

We don’t know when the new petrol 718 variants will arrive, but it will probably be after the electric 718 models have launched since Porsche will likely need to re-engineer the 718’s distinctive platform to accommodate the petrol engines and their ancillaries.

Production of Australian-spec 718 Boxster and Cayman models has already wrapped, with cars for other markets due to finish soon. Continued delays will likely create a worldwide availability gap between the end of the current generation and the debut of the new model, initially offered only with electric drivetrains.

Perhaps more crucial for Porsche’s profits, with SUVs now making up the majority of sales, the firm is altering the character of its three-row SUV so it sits above the Cayenne.

Codenamed ‘K1’, the supersized Porsche was originally intended to use the “sport” variant of Volkswagen Group’s electric-only Scalable Systems Platform (SSP).

K1 will now instead be offered with petrol and plug-in hybrid drivetrains. That choice probably reflects that a large share of vehicles in this segment are sold in the US and Middle East, where EV uptake trails Europe and China.

As a consequence, the SSP Sport architecture won’t reach production until sometime in the 2030s, and Porsche will take a €1.8 billion ($A3.2 billion) hit to its results. Besides K1, SSP Sport was also supposed to underpin an all-electric third-generation Panamera and a second-generation Taycan.

With SSP Sport delayed, the company has approved development of another generation of the petrol and plug-in hybrid versions of the Panamera sedan and Cayenne SUV.

Despite shelving the electric K1, Porsche will continue with the nearly finished Cayenne EV, which is slated to launch toward the end of 2025. Although it carries the Cayenne name along with the petrol and plug-in hybrid variants, the Cayenne EV will feature a distinct body and utilises Platform Premium Electric, like the smaller Macan EV.

As previously announced, Porsche is developing a petrol and plug-in hybrid model to sit alongside the Macan EV. The new vehicle is codenamed ‘M1’, and will be built on the same Platform Premium Combustion that underlies the Audi Q5.

To accelerate M1’s entry into production, Porsche will reportedly adopt Audi’s front-biased all-wheel drive system rather than engineering its own rear-biased setup, as it did with the original Macan.