Porsche eyes electric future
BY DAVID HASSALL | 23rd Mar 2009
Although a Porsche EV would be at least a decade or two away, the company has taken a close look at the American-built Tesla plug-in electric sportscar and is using its controlling interest in Volkswagen to ensure it is well-placed to move in whatever direction the market and alternative technologies move.
An electric-powered Porsche would take the German company back to its roots as company founder Ferdinand Porsche pioneered electric drive in 1899.
Porsche Cars Australia managing director Michael Winkler told GoAuto last week Porsche was looking at plug-in EV technology, but that it was too early to speculate about building a complete car at this stage.
“The harsh reality is that fossil fuels are going to run out one day and we will still all want individual transport, so we have to look at alternatives,” Mr Winkler told us. “If you want to be in business, you have to.
“I can assure you at this point there are no plans to make an electric car. Those plans do not exist.
“What does exist … every car company and every development centre has a group of people who try to think 20 or 30 years into the future and do what they call pre-development, and those guys think of every possibility.
“That is one of the key reasons for (Porsche’s) investment in the Volkswagen company, realising that developing new technologies like that is so immensely expensive that a small company like ours would be struggling to do that on its own.
“The core technology is very expensive to develop and the synergies you get with an investment like that (in VW) is a huge advantage for us.”
One of the first results of this association will be the launch in late 2010 of Porsche’s first hybrid vehicle, using a petrol-electric drivetrain developed with VW and stablemate Audi.
The VW Group’s hybrid system employs an electric motor between the vehicle’s conventional transmission and engine, and will first appear in the Porsche Cayenne SUV before going into the similar Audi Q7 and VW Touareg, then the forthcoming four-door Panamera, which is built on the same front-engined platform.
Mr Winkler said it was important for Porsche to be involved in developing alternative drivetrains to ensure they met the expectations of Porsche customers in the future, when legislation may force all car-makers to build EVs.
He said it would be acceptable to share technology such as hybrid and electric drivetrains with other brands, provided they were adapted to ensure that the final car was built and drove like a Porsche.
“The principles for those sort of alternative systems are not important to our customer – I don’t think our customer cares about the way the electric motor is hooked to the petrol motor (in a hybrid) – but that mechanism needs to be specifically Porsche,” he said.
“It’s more about what the characteristics are like in the actual application of those systems.” Could an EV still meet the core brand values that Porsche sets for itself, such as dynamic performance, desirability and even sound? “If, in 15 or 20 years’ time, this is accepted technology for cars, then why not?” said Mr Winkler.
“It really depends on where the general trend is going. As long as whatever we do in the future is brand adequate – and brand adequate means agile, fun, has power delivery in line with what our customer expects in a sportscar – then it doesn’t matter.
“I would strongly suggest that, in 15 or 20 years’ time, electric cars and even hybrids will be much more prevalent on the roads, and someone is going to legislate sound into the cars simply to make sure that pedestrians are aware (of them). You will have more pedestrian accidents with these quiet cars.” Ferdinand Porsche, who famously designed the first VW Beetle and was the patriarch of the Porsche dynasty, is credited with developing the world’s first EV in 1898 when he was an employee of the now-defunct Austrian-based Lohner automobile company.
The innovative one-off Lohner-Porsche had electric motors fitted to each front wheel hub, without transmissions, but was burdened with 1800kg of lead acid batteries that soon ran out of power.
Prof Porsche’s solution two years later was to install a normal petrol engine that powered a generator and kept the batteries charged, making it the world’s first hybrid car. More than 300 examples were sold.
In a separate development, noted Bavarian-based Porsche specialist tuning house Ruf has produced a plug-in electric 911 with a 270kW electric motor in place of the standard flat-six petrol engine.
With a massive 950Nm of torque, the unfortunately named Ruf Greenster is claimed to weigh the same as a Carrera 4 and accelerate from 0-100km/h in 5.0 seconds.
A prototype was shown at the Geneva motor show earlier this month, and Ruf says the production version will be released next year with two smaller motors in place of the prototype’s single centrally mounted motor, priced at around €180,000 ($A355,000).
German technology company Siemens supplied the drive systems for the Targa-top Ruf prototype, which has a quoted average range of 200km.
Read more:
Porsche banks on new models for recoveryFirst details: Porsche’s Cayenne S Hybrid