Electric Porsche Macan has been postponed

15 October 2022

Porsche had an interesting couple of weeks, with its IPO off to a good start initially and now its shares falling down together with the rest of the markets, several automotive publications uncovered the unpleasant news about Macan EV.

Porsche Macan EV will be the second all-electric car from the company, after the Taycan which became a runaway success. Macan is still Porsche’s best selling model but only due to manufacturing delays with the Taycan. The company took a long time to develop the electric version of its smaller SUV knowing very well it had all the hallmarks of becoming an instant success with customers.

Just before the IPO, Porsche shared an extensive investment memorandum with potential customers. Autocar managed to get hold of the 820 page document and after spending some time with it, came across production plans for the Macan. Not a good news - Porsche confirmed to its investors that the Macan is on hold until the beginning of 2024 at least.

The blame was squarely laid at the feet of the Cariad team, a VW Group’s software development division. The Team is responsible for the upcoming E3 1.2 platform that all future VW group’s electric vehicles are supposed to be running on - that includes Porsche Macan. There are further delays from third party contractors as well and Porsche admitted it has no control over those at all.

The 2024 manufacturing start is still optimistic according to the memorandum and may as well be delayed even further but at this point the company does not have any more information. Porsche Macan’s twin from Audi, the Q6 e-tron will be affected by this delay as well.

Now we are getting a better picture of how bad the Cariad situation really is, it cost Herbert Diess his job with the VW and there is no sign of the trouble going away. VW has enlisted help from Horizon Robotics via a new joint venture with the Chinese self-driving software and hardware specialist.

It will be a while before this cooperation bears any fruit, for now any hopes of having an electric Macan next year, turned into an impossible dream. It just shows how important the software is for new cars and how legacy automakers ignored it and now are paying the price.

Via (in Dutch)