Sports car manufacturer What Porsche is planning for the electric future

Status: 06/22/2021 9:24 a.m.

As a rule, Porsche tests new technology first on the race track – including a new high-tech battery. Because there are no suitable batteries on the world market, Porsche will produce them in-house in the future.

From Tim Diekmann, SWR

If you sit in the new Porsche Taycan, you don’t have to do without the usual sound. Although the first fully electric Porsche should glide almost silently across the street, it sounds either like a bubbling sports car or – when accelerating – like an intergalactic rocket. Porsche calls this “Electric Sport Sound” – because the Swabian car manufacturer does not want to deliver its newest vehicle completely without sports car noises. The luxury sports car, which Porsche sold 20,000 times worldwide last year, is only supposed to be the beginning of an electromobility initiative.

High-tech battery made in Germany

In just two years, every third Porsche should be equipped with an electric motor – as a hybrid or fully electric. For this, Porsche needs lots of powerful batteries. But they are hard to find on the world market, says Porsche boss Oliver Blume: “We need high-performance cells for our electric sports cars. But we can’t find them anywhere at the moment. That’s why we develop and build these cells ourselves.” The first battery cells are expected to roll off the assembly line from 2024, initially for around 1,000 vehicles per year. “The focus will initially be on small series for racing and high-performance vehicles. In the future, however, this is not just about racing cars,” explains Blume at the official presentation at the Porsche Development Center in Weissach. In the first step, innovative technologies are usually only developed for a limited high-tech application, “but once the innovations have proven themselves there, they will gradually establish themselves across the board. That must be our goal. At Porsche, that’s what we call it Principle: from motorsport to series production. ”

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For battery cell production, the Stuttgart-based company is working with the German company Customcells, which it claims to be a world leader in the development of lithium-ion battery cells. The joint venture operates under the name Cellforce Group.

According to automotive expert Stefan Bratzel from the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch-Gladbach, it is logical that, after Volkswagen, Porsche is now also relying on the production of its own battery cells: “The battery cell accounts for the largest part of the car’s added value, and it has a lot of innovation potential . Automobile manufacturers who develop competencies in this area have a long-term competitive advantage. ” According to Bratzel, Porsche should not chase after the competition for the US electric car manufacturer Tesla, but rather must lead the way as an innovator.

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New battery technology promises many advantages

According to the head of electrochemical energy technologies at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research in Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), Markus Hölzle, the batteries as we know them today should still develop their potential: “Everything can, must and will be improved Above all, however, the cost of battery cells must be reduced further. And the energy density must also increase so that the batteries become more compact. ” The ability to recharge quickly is also important. To do this, Porsche wants to work with so-called silicon anodes, which “has two major advantages over the previously used carbon: it improves the ability to charge quickly and increases the energy content,” explains Hölzle. But now Porsche must first show that they can do it.

But while Porsche is still planning the future, competitor Tesla is already building the world’s largest battery cell factory in Grünheide near Berlin and promises a production capacity of 100 gigawatt hours per year, a thousand times as much as Porsche’s subsidiary Cellforce Group.

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Climate neutral by 2030?

The focus on e-mobility and the setting of climate targets is an important step for the brand, emphasizes car expert Bratzel. “Porsche is a brand that nobody really needs, but many people want to have it because of its positive image. And I believe that it is becoming more and more important for the Porsche clientele in particular to say: ‘I have a sports car and still drive in a climate-friendly way . ‘”

Climate protection has long since become an image factor. This also shows the ambitious goal of the Swabian car manufacturer to be “balance sheet CO2-neutral” by 2030 and thus earlier than Daimler (planned for 2039) or Volkswagen (planned for 2050).

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Environmentalists are skeptical

The environmental protection organization Greenpeace is skeptical whether Porsche will really be climate-neutral by 2030. “Unfortunately, ‘climate-neutral’ on the balance sheet ‘usually means that in the end generously cheap CO2 credits are bought from offsetting projects instead of consistently reducing CO2,” says Benjamin Gehrs from Greenpeace. With its large SUVs, Porsche consumes an unnecessarily large amount of resources. Porsche must also get out of the business with climate-damaging diesels and gasoline engines faster and more consistently than before.

So will the Porsche 911 possibly soon hit the streets as an electric car? Unlikely. In addition to battery cell technology, Porsche is also working on the development of synthetic fuels, so-called eFuels, which are to be produced using renewable electricity. Artificial sports car sound, as in the Taycan, is then unnecessary. At Porsche, the first step is to advance research in the field of battery cell development. The federal and state governments support the project with 60 million euros