Porsche is putting a new hypercar along the lines of the 918 Spyder on hold as it looks to electrify its core lineup, CEO Oliver Blume has revealed.
Following the company's annual general meeting held in Stuttgart, Germany, last Friday, Blume told a group of reporters that a new hypercar is planned but not before 2025, Autocar reported.
“Before 2025, we won’t have a hypercar,” he said. “Later on, it might be possible.”
Porsche has never set a timetable as to when it will launch its next hypercar. The Carrera GT stormed onto the scene in 2004 and the 918 Spyder arrived almost 10 years later. The wait for the next one will be even longer, it seems.
2015 Porsche 918 Spyder
There was hope that Porsche could use a canceled Formula One power unit as a possible basis for a new hypercar, though additional comments made by Blume indicate that Porsche will likely wait until battery technology develops to the point where it could be used in an electric hypercar.
“The battery will be the cylinder of tomorrow, so we still have to investigate high-power, high-density cells,” he said. “We will invest in these cells, and when we have the right cell for a high-power car, then will come the point, but I don’t think about this car before the second half of the decade.”
Porsche last week announced it is researching high-performance batteries, in particular lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes instead of graphite, which the company said is able to deliver a higher energy density and better fast-charging capability. Porsche's Volkswagen Group parent is also investing in development of solid-state batteries which are estimated to be ready after 2025, so one of these technologies could conceivably end up in Porsche's next hypercar.
Shown main is one of the bevy of concepts designed by Porsche and featured in its book “Porsche Unseen” released last year. Called the Vision 920, it was designed in 2019 purely as an exercise to imagine a successor to the 919 Hybrid race car, either as a road-going hypercar or a race car for a customer racing program.
