Porsche’s best-selling Macan SUV is going all-electric

Porsche plans to turn its best-selling U.S. vehicle, the Macan SUV, into an electric vehicle following the introduction of its first EVs, the Taycan and its crossover cousin, the Cross Tourismo.

Production of the next-generation all-electric Porsche Macan will begin early in the next decade, the company announced Tuesday. It will be produced in Leipzig, Germany, the same factory where the current gas-powered Macan is manufactured.

The Taycan, the company’s first all-electric vehicle, will launch at the end of 2019. The Taycan Cross Turismo will follow shortly afterwards.

Porsche says it decided to turn the next-generation Macan into an electric vehicle because it creates the “opportunity to produce fully electric vehicles on the existing production line.”

It’s also a bet on U.S. drivers. The Macan compact crossover was Porsche’s best-selling vehicle in the U.S. The company delivered more than 23,500 Macan SUVs in 2018, up 9.7 percent from the previous year.

The Macan compact SUV will also feature 800-volt architecture, just like the Taycan. This will allow the vehicle to take a 350 kW charge, which translates to about 60 miles of range, in just four minutes on certain fast chargers.

The model will be based on the PPE architecture (Premium Platform Electric) developed in collaboration with Audi AG, according to Porsche.

“Electromobility and Porsche go together perfectly; not just because they share a high-efficiency approach, but especially because of their sporty character,” Porsche AG board chairman Oliver Blume said in a statement.

Blume added that the company plans to investment more than €6 billion, or more than $6.8 billion, into “electric mobility” by 2022. By 2025, 50 percent of all new Porsche vehicles could have an electric drive system, Blume said.

Porsche isn’t backing away from gas-powered vehicles altogether. At least in the short term.

Over the next decade, the company “will focus on a drive mix consisting of even further optimized petrol engines, plug-in hybrid models, and purely electrically operated sports cars,” Blume said. “Our aim is to take a pioneering role in technology, and for this reason we will continue to consistently align the company with the mobility of the future.”