Porsche, and by proxy, the rest of the Volkswagen Group, may be moving to expel all diesel engines from its line-up sooner than expected, according to a new timeline exposed - perhaps inadvertently - by the Zuffenhausen automaker’s CEO Oliver Blume.
Soon, because there will be no more diesel or petrol engines allows on the road, and the world will then ostensibly be propelled by world where either #1 everyone drives each other, and #2 a world where nobody drives - autonomy circumvented by having an abundance of ride sharing cars available at most given time and place.
In an interview at the Nurburgring Circuit in Germany, a question posed to the Chief Executive by Reuters revealed accelerated plans to cull the number of diesel cars they produce. As Porsche is the most high profile of all the makes under VW and use only one diesel mill across both the Panamera, Macan and Cayenne, its relatively low volume but large mindshare would make it an early first mover.
By 2020, the report continues, Porsche may not have a single diesel-powered machine rolling off their production car assembly lines. In its place? The world isn’t all too sure - at least in the immediate term. Clearly, electrification of some kind is the direction the future is leaning, and this could be a way to inject the cause with some new vigour.
Petrol-electric hybrids that that produce far less greenhouse gases and other harmful airborne pollutants than diesels are an obvious answer, we hear you plead. While this is true in an ideal world, the truth is that the prices of material and construction expertise required to produce the new and additional components for these kinds of powertrains still remain beyond the reach of the regular (Porsche) buyer who prioritises other attributes besides speed and acceleration, at least without some generous government tax breaks and rebates.
It’s unclear to see what moves Porsche make immediately following this announcement to meet its own internal deadline to abandon diesel altogether except for focusing to engineer better versions of their petrol engines as well as the hybrid subsystems augment it. By the time 2020 comes and goes, we might not even have remembered exactly why we were causing a big stir about a major automaker - like Porsche - going petrol-only (+hybrid or full-EV).
As of 2017, roughly 15 percent of Porsche’s global sales volume belong to units that run on diesel - a relatively small fraction considering BMW’s equivalent figure stands at 35 percent and Audi’s at nearly two-thirds.
An all-new Cayenne SUV is due to break cover at the Frankfurt Motor Show this September, equipped with a powertrain spread similar to that of the second-generation Panamera, including a diesel option. However, if these reports prove true, it could be the last new Porsche to model to not burn petrol exclusively (if at all).
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