"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
In 2021, Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said, “The battery cell is the combustion chamber of the future.” That quote came when he announced that the brand was investing millions of dollars in a new company called Cellforce. The company was formed to produce high-performance battery cells for Porsche. Now, according to a report by Reuters, Porsche has cancelled plans to build their own batteries and are laying off two-thirds of the Cellforce staff.
A lot has changed in the electric car vehicle market since 2021. EV adoption has slowed, and many manufacturers are pulling back their previous EV targets. This has resulted in Blume singing a different tune in 2025. “Porsche is not pursuing its own battery cell production for reasons of volume and lack of economies of scale,” said Blume on August 25.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that about 200 of the nearly 300 jobs at Cellforce will be cut. Some of those jobs could potentially be shifted to Volkwagen’s battery unit PowerCo.
This is a dramatic shift from a few years ago. When Cellforce was announced Porsche was expecting a production plant that would produce enough high-performance batteries for 1000 vehicles every year. Now, it seems that for at least the foreseeable future, Porsche will continue to rely on batteries produced in China.
According to a report from Mobile China, the Porsche Macan EV uses batteries made by the Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL). With Porsche scrapping their plans to build their own batteries they will continue to rely on an outside supplier.
Porsche has a number of new all-electric vehicles in the pipeline, including a Cayenne EV and the next-generation 718 lineup. Despite this, the volume just doesn’t seem to be there for the investment in making their own batteries worthwhile.
“Due to a lack of volume worldwide, it is not possible to scale up its own production to the planned cost position,” said Michael Steiner, Porsche executive board member for research and development. This may seem like good news for fans of internal combustion engines, but a company losing millions of dollars and reducing headcount is never a good sign of overall brand health. Those losses mean less cash on hand to develop new performance cars of all sorts, not just EVs.
You Might Also Like
Comments