Porsche 911 Reimagined As A More Compact All-Electric Sports Car

Gone is the lightness of the 911

While the Porsche 911 remains relatively lightweight compared to its modern rivals, the car has grown exponentially in size and gained impressive poundage. This is especially true for the 992 generation, which is much wider than the 991. The Porsche 992 has a 13 mm wider front track while the rear track is a whopping, 50 mm wider. There are no more narrow-body and wide-body models. All Porsche 992 models come with a wide body although the Turbo and GT3 models are still slightly wider than Carrera variants.

The current heaviest Porsche 911 is the 992.2 Targa 4S. Interestingly enough, Porsche’s ingenious T-Hybrid powertrain only added around 110 pounds of weight despite featuring a larger engine and an electric motor. Depending on the variant, the Porsche 992 can weigh up to 3,847 pounds, which is still a lot less than the 5,000-plus weight figure of the Porsche Panamera Turbo Hybrid, but substantially more than the original 911, which tipped the scales at 2,370 pounds.

Porsche design boss wants to go back to simpler times

While interviewed by the DRIVE, Porsche’s design boss, Michael Mauer expressed a desire to go back to the old days when the Porsche 911 was smaller. It was with the 996 generation that things started heading in the direction we are now – it was bigger, water-cooled, and tried to be too modern for its own good. Mauer reckons that smaller packaging would help return the 911 to its core roots, instead of relying heavily on modern tech to provide driver enjoyment. While Porsche sports cars like the 911 benefit from impressive engineering and motorsport know-how, what buyers truly want is a more organic driver feel, not reliant on technology that adds weight.

“Personally, I would love to create a smaller sports car, to see what the possibilities are in terms of packaging,” Mauer told the Drive.

Why a compact Porsche 911 would make more sense as an E.V.

Despite growing in size (and weight) with each generation, the Porsche 911 is still a tight squeeze in terms of how the powertrain is packaged. A 911’s engine bay isn’t exactly spacious and due to the inherent features of Porsche’s iconic boxer engine, which is why a scaled-down 911 with proportions similar to its earlier generations could make more sense as an E.V. sports car.

EVs are typically heavier than their ICE-powered counterparts and that comes down to the battery pack, which can weigh as much as 700 pounds. That said, solid-state battery technology is evolving and this type of battery is a lot more power-dense while at the same time, compact. The electric motors, themselves, are much lighter than an internal combustion engine. They also take up much less space than a combustion engine, especially if we look at the hub-motor design that more manufacturers are gradually beginning to adopt. These two technologies would ensure that a future Porsche 911 E.V. will be, both, lightweight and compact.

Can the Porsche 911 exist as, both a combustion-powered model and an E.V.?

The fact Porsche wants to keep the 911 combustion-powered for as long as possible speaks tomes. They could have gone straight for a fully-electric model, but they, instead went with a lightweight, hybrid system. Porsche is doing the opposite with the next-generation 718, which will be getting an E.V. variant, in 2025, marking the end of the combustion-powered, mid-engine Porsche. Like the 996, this would have been too much of a deviation from the classic 911 formula to deal with, at once.

Porsche would, likely, keep the combustion 911 for as long as possible while simultaneously giving us a taste of the first fully-electric 911. Die-hard fans would never go for an E.V. 911, and given Porsche’s efforts in hydrogen and synthetic fuels, there is no reason to completely replace the flat-six-powered 911 with an E.V. You may be worried that a scaled-down E.V. model could dilute the 911 lineup, which is why, the E.V. sports car should feature a distinctive design that separates it from the "classic". Perhaps, Taycan-style headlights like on the upcoming 718 E.V.? It may also be a good idea for the compact 911 E.V. to arrive under a different name. Perhaps, it’s time for the 912 nameplate to be revived?