This may come as a real shocker—heh—for Porsche fans, but the company has confirmed the next-generation Macan will be a fully electric SUV. Before you rush off to place a deposit, though, know that production is only promised to kick off “early in the next decade,” so it’ll be a few years before you can wheel a largely silent Macan. (EV fans not fond of waiting, here’s your sad trombone. Fans of the extremely excellent and decidedly not electrified present-day Macan, here’s one for you, too.) Porsche also stated that the model will be built on the same Leipzig, Germany, assembly line that handles the current model. For those who want an all-electric Porsche sooner, the Taycan will launch later this year, closely followed by the Taycan Cross Turismo (a prototype of which is pictured below).
“Electromobility and Porsche go together perfectly; not just because they share a high-efficiency approach, but especially because of their sporty character,” Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said in a statement. “By 2022 we will be investing more than €6 billion [$6.8 billion] in electric mobility, and by 2025 50 percent of all new Porsche vehicles could have an electric drive system. Nevertheless, over the next 10 years we will focus on a drive mix consisting of even further optimized petrol engines, plug-in hybrid models, and purely electrically operated sports cars.”
Porsche’s future compact SUV will be able to take advantage of the same 800-volt charging technology in as the Taycan. The electrified Macan will roll on the PPE architecture (Premium Platform Electric) being co-developed with Audi. Porsche currently sells more than 90,000 Macans globally per year, and it remains to be seen how the switch to electric drive will affect demand; the model is already pretty pricey in its most potent forms, though, so it’s possible the pricing structure may not change much at all. In the meantime, if you want to go green more quickly you can still consider a Tesla, Jaguar, or Audi for your luxury EV SUV fix.
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