Luxury sports carmaker Porsche has announced that it will no longer invest in vehicles fueled by diesel, preferring instead to concentrate its efforts on the growing electric mobility market.
Currently Porsche offers three models of diesel vehicles in Australia – the Cayenne and Macan SUVs, and the Panamera sedan – with the Cayenne and Panamera also offered as plug-in hybrids.
The sports carmaker is also introducing its first all-electric car next year- the Taycan, the manufacture of which the company says is totally carbon neutral.
By 2025, the company also says one out of two new Porsche’s ‘could’ have an electric or hybrid drive.
In the carmaker’s home country of Germany, there are already many cities where diesel bans for older vehicles have commenced, with Hamburg leading the way.
Despite a European emissions study released earlier this year suggesting that even newer diesel vehicles are ‘bad polluters’, the German automaker diplomatically stated to the press they are not ‘demonising diesel’.
But then, diesel has only ever played a smaller role in Porsche’s sports car offerings, with only 12% of their worldwide portfolio consisting of diesel-fueled cars.
“We as a sports car manufacturer, however, for whom diesel has always played a secondary role, have come to the conclusion that we would like our future to be diesel-free.
“Naturally we will continue to look after our existing diesel customers with the professionalism they expect,” says Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche AG.
Although the carmaker will continue to offer petrol-fueled vehicles for the foreseeable future (‘purist, emotional and powerful sports cars will …continue to play an important role’), the luxury carmaker surely sees the writing on the wall.
“Our aim is to occupy the technological vanguard – we are intensifying our focus on the core of our brand while consistently aligning our company with the mobility of the future,” says Blume.
The German luxury carmaker announced in May of this year that they plan to double investment in electromobility to €6billion by 2022, with €500million earmarked for variants of its concept Mission E, and €1billion to electrify existing models.
The remainder would be spent on expansion of sites, investment in material assets, and development of related technologies such as infrastructure and smart mobility.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model 3 and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.