What was Porsche thinking? Ironically, at the auto show in Shanghai, where vehicles with combustion engines came across more like dinosaurs, where instead one electric model after the other was unveiled, the Stuttgart sports car manufacturer showed: the new Cayenne. An SUV with a six or eight-cylinder combustion engine. Well, it is also available as a hybrid, with which you can drive up to 90 kilometers with electricity with a very gentle gas foot. Only: who does that anyway? It didn’t really look like the future.
But if you look at the present, then Porsche is perhaps not all that wrong with its strategy, with the thick combustion engines and the SUVs. Because the figures presented by the company on Wednesday are quite impressive. This is mainly due to the fact that a lot of sheet metal, a lot of horsepower and, above all, combustion engines are still in great demand. As soon as Porsche had more semiconductors and other important car parts available again, sales figures in the first quarter rose by 18 percent to almost 80,000 vehicles.
And that’s not all: the listed VW subsidiary increased its sales and operating profit by more than a quarter. Around ten billion euros in sales, which is 25.5 percent more than in the same period last year. In addition: 1.8 billion euros in profit, which is also 25.4 percent more than in the first quarter of 2022. The sports car manufacturer not only sells more cars, but also earns really well on every vehicle. A car costing 100,000 euros currently costs around 18,000 euros.
High margins – high prices, especially for e-cars
The crux of the matter is that business is doing so well mainly because there are still a lot of wealthy people who want big combustion engines. Porsche makes no secret of this and breaks down the sales figures on request. The smaller SUV Macan: up 30 percent. The large SUV Cayenne: up 23 percent. And the 911, for which it is still not entirely certain whether it will ever have an electric counterpart, sold significantly better than at the beginning of 2022.
It’s not just like that for Porsche. Mercedes also relies primarily on large, expensive cars and recently reported record profits, while BMW’s good figures also come mainly from combustion engines. Because with all the transformation efforts, the proportion of electric cars among German manufacturers is usually not even in the double digits. After all, Porsche manages an e-share of 11.4 percent with the Taycan electric sports car. It is still very much in demand, according to Zuffenhausen. Only: The Taycan needs a particularly large number of chips, which is why production is still not quite up to speed.
Selling as many combustion engines as possible that are as expensive as possible – that is currently the formula for success for German premium car manufacturers. However, it will still be a few years before they earn as much on an electric model as on a petrol engine. “In the medium term” they want to create it, according to Porsche. That could be three or more like five years. In any case, the sports car manufacturer will be faster than the entire VW group. Because for Porsche customers it shouldn’t be so tragic if the prices for the cars rise.
That is exactly what will happen soon: In the second half of the year, Porsche wants to increase prices in Europe and the USA by between four and eight percent. It is even more expensive for those interested in electric cars. With the introduction of further electric models, customers should pay significantly more than for the respective combustion versions. With the eMacan, which is expected next year, the difference is between ten and 15 percent.
By 2030, Porsche confirmed again on Wednesday, 80 percent of all new cars from the brand should be purely electric. So maybe it’s just a last run on the discontinued combustion model that’s happening right now. Or the hope of some that the engines with e-fuels in the tank will roar for many years to come.