Porsche’s electrical glitch

It might seem like a minor news item in mid-August. But the possibility that Porsche might discontinue production of its Taycan electric model by 2030 is by no means trivial. To be more precise, the rumour reported by the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche should be interpreted as there being no successor to the current Taycan, which in the automotive world amounts to a certified failure. This will come as no surprise to enthusiasts, who have always harboured various doubts about the success of the Stuttgart-based manufacturer’s first electric car, even when it was performing very well after its launch.

First point: never judge a car by its initial sales figures (everyone does well at the start, partly because there are plenty of tricks involved, from company car purchases to pressure on dealerships); secondly: incredibly, the Taycan was selling far better than its less expensive sister model, the Audi e-tron GT – an unprecedented and illogical situation; thirdly: the flood of virtually new, high-performance Taycans being sold at rock-bottom prices on the second-hand market, a fact that demonstrated they had been bought solely to qualify for the buyer list of the far more coveted Porsche 911s. The figures for recent years – partly due to the slump in China – have been grim: from over 40,000 in 2023, sales have fallen to just 6,219 in the first half of this year. In truth, Porsche has been getting back on track for over a year now, significantly scaling back its ambitions in the electric vehicle sector. The latest, significant, course correction was its withdrawal from the Volkswagen Group’s pool for the purposes of calculating average CO₂ emissions, in order to align with the Chinese firm Xpeng, which sells only electric cars in Europe. This move allows Porsche (and Volkswagen too) to produce more petrol-powered cars. But it also serves as confirmation of a misstep in the electric vehicle sector – one that is, unfortunately, widespread across the European automotive industry.