1 day ago
In an auto industry that spent years charging toward full electrification, Porsche is now making a sharp turn back, and it is doing so out of necessity rather than choice.
After one of the most difficult financial years in its modern history, the company is returning to the fundamentals that long sustained it: gasoline engines, plug-in hybrids, tighter cost control, and a more cautious approach to EV expansion.
The numbers explain why. Porsche said its 2025 financial year was hit by about $4.2 billion in extraordinary expenses tied to product strategy changes, battery-related costs, and U.S. tariffs. Group operating profit fell 92.7% to about $446 million, while return on sales dropped to 1.1%. Deliveries also fell 10.1% to 279,449 vehicles.
The man now leading that reset is Michael Leiters, who officially became Porsche CEO on January 1, 2026, after previously running McLaren Automotive. In his first earnings presentation as chief executive, Leiters made it clear that Porsche now has to become leaner, simplify parts of the lineup, and lean harder on higher-margin products while it rebalances its drivetrain strategy.
That shift is closely tied to the brand’s EV troubles. The Taycan, once positioned as the spearhead of Porsche’s electric future, has struggled badly. Reuters reported that Taycan sales plunged 50% in the first nine months of 2024 in China, and Porsche later said full-year 2025 Taycan deliveries fell another 22% globally to 16,339 cars.
That is not just a model-level slowdown. It is a sign that the market Porsche expected for high-priced EVs has become far more difficult, especially with Chinese rivals moving faster and pricing more aggressively.
An even bigger strategic problem has been the Macan. Porsche had planned to move the model fully into the electric era, even though the Macan had long been one of the company’s biggest volume and profit generators. That decision looked much riskier once EV demand softened. Reuters reported in 2024 that Porsche still planned to end combustion Macan production for non-European markets by 2026, while later company statements acknowledged a broader product realignment and confirmed that new brand-defining combustion models are now back on the table.
The company is no longer pretending that a pure EV transition can carry the whole business on its own timetable. Porsche has now confirmed that the Cayenne Electric will be sold alongside combustion and plug-in hybrid Cayenne models, and it says the Panamera and Cayenne will remain available with combustion engines and plug-in hybrid powertrains well into the 2030s. That is not a minor adjustment. It is a clear admission that flexibility now matters more than ideological purity.
