The EV transition hits some snags at Porsche and Audi
Audi upends its naming scheme (again), and Porsche plans more engines.
Life isn't so easy for automotive manufacturers right now. Take Porsche, which just published preliminary financial numbers for last year and projections for 2025. While things aren't Tesla levels of bad, they're not exactly great. Sales were down 28 percent in China last year and 3 percent overall. Worse yet, profit margins are just over 10 percent, far below the 18 percent the company was targeting.
As a result, Porsche says it's taking "extensive measures" to improve profitability, including adding more internal combustion and plug-in hybrid vehicles to go with the slow-selling EVs. All told, the company expects to spend $830 million (800 million euros) on expanding its non-battery EV lineup in 2025.
There's a lot of that sort of thing going around. Last year, General Motors and Ford lamented missing where the market actually is with too many too-expensive EVs and not enough hybrids. And over at Porsche's sister brand Audi, a similar realization set in, to the point that the brand developed a new combustion engine vehicle architecture (called PPC) to go alongside the new EV-only PPE platform. That new platform will presumably be welcomed over at Porsche as well.
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