Sometimes, it seems like everything is going electric in the automotive world this decade. Aston Martin plans to be 100 percent electric on the road by 2030; Jaguar will do so by 2025; an electric Ford Mustang may arrive even sooner than that, at least according to one report.
But there will be at least one iconic holdout: the Porsche 911. In a new interview, Porsche CEO Oliver Blume told Autoblog that "the 911 will be a combustion car" at least through the end of the decade.
Porsche hasn't shied away from electric propulsion. The company produces the excellent Taycan, and they're partnering on performance EVs with Rimac. Their best-selling vehicle, the Macan, will go all-electric for its next generation.
The trouble with electrifying the 911, according to Blume, is that an electric version wouldn't drive like a traditional rear-engined 911.
"The concept of the 911 doesn't allow a fully electric car, because we have the engine in the rear, and to put the weight of the battery in the rear, you wouldn't be able to drive the car," Blume told Autoblog.
What Porsche will do with the 911 this decade is build a hybrid version. Blume confirmed that Porsche is working on "very sporty hybridization" for the 911 along the lines of the Le Mans-winning 919 race car, and that setup could arrive with the next-gen 911.
Will the eventual hybrid 911 be viewed as a sacrilege? By some, perhaps. The same was said about water-cooling and the PDK automatic, and Porsche's icon has stayed popular through all those changes. Once you've accepted those changes, it's not that much of a leap from combustion to hybrid power — and it likely won't be that far from hybrid to full electric. And, hey, Porsche may have some synthetic e-fuel soon to make running vintage 911s much cleaner.
