Now in its eighth generation, the 911 has managed to avoid getting lassoed into Porsche’s on-going electrification program. Company CEO Oliver Blume told Autoblog that it’s still a little bit early to reveal precisely if and when the emblematic model will go hybrid, but he shared with us what the specifications sheet could look like if the long-rumored gasoline-electric variant receives the proverbial green light for production.
“The 911 is a concept of a car prepared for internal combustion engines, and it’s not useful to combine it with pure electric mobility. We believe in purpose-designed cars; either electric mobility or combustion engines, which can be combined with a hybrid system,” he explained, essentially ruling out an electric 911 in the near future.
Porsche hasn’t said no to creating a gasoline-electric version yet, but don’t expect it to launch a 911 with an engine that runs on the fuel-saving Atkinson cycle, a continuously variable transmission, and Toyota Prius-like gas mileage. If it an electric motor enters the equation, its main purpose will be to increase performance.
“To think in the future for the 911, there are good ideas for a special kind of hybrid, a very performance-oriented hybrid where we use, for example, a 400-volt system for our electric motor and for the power electronics, like we use in our plug-in hybrids, with a high power density. We want to have a very high power [output] with very big performance and driving ability. That’s more our less our idea of how to continue with the 911,” he told us.
While a hybrid 911 remains a definite maybe, Blume stressed the model — which he called Porsche’s icon — will retain its internal combustion engine “for a long time to come.” He added Porsche certainly isn’t opposed to the idea of making a battery-powered sports car, however, and he noted the Taycan shows the way forward.
“In the future, there is also space for a very sporty pure electric two-door sports car. We haven’t decided yet, but there will be space, especially because of the driving advantages of electromobility. The acceleration, and the opportunities you have to use electromobility for your chassis and your driving dynamics. There are a lot of opportunities, as you can already see in the Taycan; big opportunities,” he summed up.
