Porsche 911: company chief says sports car will not go electric

Porsche has no intention of switching its iconic 911 sports car over to an all-electric powertrain.

According to Evo, Porsche chief executive Oliver Blume is “adamant” that the 911 “will remain an internal combustion model” and that all future electric Porsches will be “built from the ground up” with EV-only production platforms.

Blume added that the 911 will continue to be a drivers’ car and the iconic model is “no place for fully autonomous driving features”, the magazine reports.

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Blume’s comments, made at the launch of the Cayenne Coupe yesterday, will no doubt come as a relief to fans of the 911’s flat-six combustion engine.

However, it doesn’t mean that electrification - in the form of a hybrid system - won’t appear on the 911 in the near future.

While the current 992-generation sports car is powered by a non-electrified 3.0-litre turbocharged flat-six engine, the car’s production platform is capable of housing hybrid technology, Autocar reports.

But in an interview with CNet last week, Porsche’s marketing head Detlev von Platen said that a hybrid version of the 911 will only arrive when the market demands it.

“It has not been decided yet, and the one who will decide will be our customers, but we are ready for that,” he said. “We could imagine having [a hybrid] 911 in the course of the lifecycle.”