All-Electric Porsche 911 At Least 10 Years Away

But a range-topping hybrid Porsche 911 still hasn’t been ruled out.

In a few years, Porsche will be unleashing its first fully electric car with the long-awaited production version of the Mission E Concept sedan to take on Tesla. Due to arrive in 2020, the Mission E will be positioned as a Model S rival. But will we ever see an all-electric Porsche 911 sports car? While the next generation 911 will reportedly embrace electrification, and spawn a plug-in hybrid variant, we won’t be seeing a fully electric 911 for at least a decade according to a report by Autocar.

“With the 911, for the next 10 to 15 years, we will still have a combustion engine,” Porsche CEO Oliver Blume told the publication. “We have combustion engines, then plug-ins as intermediaries, then full EV later on. The future concept of 911 will have plug-in built in, but it’s not decided yet if we offer it: 911 is a core business and we need it to be a pure sports car. When customers want it to be electric, we can be ready.” In the meantime, you can expect to see a lot more plug-in hybrid Porsches as the automaker aims to capitalize on the demand. “We have very good feedback on Panamera plug-in. We have 700hp, eight cylinders: the feedback and sales are good and much better than expected."

"It shows we’re in the right direction to offer very sporty and high-performing Porsches.” Porsche has also won Le Mans three times in a row with plug-in hybrids, so it already has an established reputation for producing electrified powertrains for high-performance cars. With Tesla setting a new performance benchmark with the new Tesla Roadster, automakers will inevitably start to embrace electrification sooner rather than later to compete. According to a report by Bloomberg, a hybrid 911 is coming according to “people familiar with the matter,” which will act as a range-topper just like the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid in the Panamera range.

The next-gen 911 will reportedly be unveiled towards the end of 2018, so the hybrid variant could be introduced a few years into its lifecycle. Bloomberg’s source also claims that Porsche is targeting an electric range of 40 miles on a single charge and is working to make the weight of the battery as light as possible. Potentially, the hybrid 911 could be the most potent Porsche yet.

View the original article here