Porsche may be known for its sports cars, but SUVs pay the company’s bills. Last year, Americans bought more Macan SUVs than 911s, 718s, Panameras, and Taycans combined. The crew in Stuttgart knows what butters their bread.
And they’ve committed to going carbon neutral by 2030.
So, the first electric Porsche SUV is a big deal. They need to get it right.
That first electric sport utility, we’ve learned, will be a version of the Macan. Porsche has released images of the Macan EV in testing and given a few details on its specifications. The electric Macan will be “launched onto the market in 2023,” Porsche says. The company has not yet discussed its price.
“The all-electric Macan will be the sportiest model in its segment,” says Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board for Research and Development at Porsche. The car will sit on an electric platform developed with Audi. It will use an 800-volt architecture similar to the Taycan EV to enable fast charging. But it will have “significantly more” range, Steiner says. “We learned range and range anxiety is an issue in some markets.”
Our testers found the otherwise excellent Taycan’s 227-mile range to be an issue. The Tesla Model S, the best-selling EV in the Taycan’s price range, pegs its range at up to 412 miles.
Porsche has handled much of the testing digitally but is now sending the Macan EV out into the streets. The prototypes appear largely similar to the current Macan from the front. In profile, they feature a sharply sloped roofline at the rear. But test vehicles rarely show exactly what the finished product will look like. These also feature fake exhaust ports, which will almost certainly disappear before it goes on sale.
An electric Macan, we should note, doesn’t mean the gasoline-powered model is going away. “Demand for electric vehicles continues to rise, but the pace of change varies considerably across the world. That’s why we’re going to launch another conventionally powered successor to the current Macan in the course of 2021,” Steiner says.
