Fully Electric Porsche 911 Already Envisioned by Chief Designer
The Taycan sedan is only the beginning of Porsche’s EV offensive. We know that the next-generation 718 and Macan will be battery-powered, but what about the legendary 911?
Don’t hold your breath, because it will be the last Porsche model to go all-electric, CEO Oliver Blume confirmed earlier this year. In fact, if it were up to him, the 911 would always retain a conventional engine. That’s not going to happen, of course, with more and more governments around the globe saying they want to ban ICE-powered vehicles sometime in the next decade.
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A fully electric Porsche 911 likely won’t arrive until 2030 at the earliest. However, the company’s head of design, Michael Mauer, told British website Autocar that he has already conceived how the design of a future zero-emission 911 could work.
He didn’t share any sketches or blueprints, but said the iconic silhouette of today’s 911 will stay. EV technology will give his team more freedom than what will be achievable with the increasingly stringent emissions standards in Europe and elsewhere.
Mauer mentioned as an example the excessively complex exhaust systems that could result in the 911 having a rear overhang of almost two metres in 10-15 years.
“I’m part of the group that went from air-cooling to water-cooling, and now we have turbocharged engines,” he told Autocar. “Maybe an electric 911 is another story, but purely from a design standpoint, an electric 911 is even easier in the future.
According to Mauer, the 911 is 100 percent emotion, but all that emotion doesn’t come just from the flat-six engine sound. Handling, torque and performance are a huge part, too, and those can be delivered by electric motors. The question is: do today’s young drivers—and tomorrow’s customers—really need the sound? Mauer isn’t so sure.
In the shorter term, electrification will happen with the long-promised 911 Hybrid, a prototype of which was spotted recently at the Nürburgring. Remember, the current-generation (992) car was developed from the onset to eventually be able to accommodate a small electric motor in the rear as part of a hybrid setup—probably the same type featured on the 690-horsepower Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. We should have more details in the coming months, so stay tuned.