Porsche Might Build New Gas-Powered Macan After All

The gas-powered Porsche Macan may live to see another generation after all. Porsche’s second-best-selling model was previously slated to go all-electric as the automaker slowly transitions global markets away from the outgoing model, but company insiders have reportedly told Autocar that the compact luxury crossover may have an internal-combustion future after all. They cite the company’s 2024 sales setback with electrification headwinds so fierce that some are suggesting Porsche may pull production of the all-electric Taycan from Stuttgart entirely.

Whether or not the EV situation is as dire as insiders let on, it is only one of the bogeys Porsche must account for in allocating resources to the Macan’s future. The obvious stopgap solution would be a Ram Classic-type approach, where the current model is kept alive alongside the new one to capture buyers who aren’t interested in the cost or inconveniences of going electric. There’s a catch there, however. Porsche isn’t simply discontinuing the Macan for being outdated; it has also run afoul of the new cybersecurity regulations that have also cut short home-market sales of the 718 Boxster and Cayman.

In short, the “Macan Classic” approach will work in non-European markets for the time being, but Porsche was not originally planning to produce both an ICE and EV version of the Macan indefinitely. Due to the new cybersecurity provisions, updating the platform for global sales would require completely redesigning its electronic architecture. At that point, why not simply engineer it into the new Macan? After all, Porsche says its platforms can handle it.

Just how much does the Macan matter to Porsche’s bottom line? Between the ICE and EV, Porsche sold more than 101,000 of them in 2024; 82,795 of those were the gasoline variant—a decline of 5% that was more than made up for by the 18,278 all-electric models sold in the same period.

Not only is the Macan Porsche’s second-best-selling nameplate, but it also represents nearly a third of the company’s total sales volume by itself. The Cayenne carves out about the same amount of space, leaving the remaining third to everything else Porsche builds, from the Panamera and Taycan to the various sports cars. Anything that jeopardizes one of the company’s core models is going to be taken seriously.

In light of those ratios, it stands to reason that Porsche sees value in redesigning its compact crossover. The company already has a potential Ram Classic situation brewing with the Cayenne. Will a similar formula work with the younger buyers who will be shopping for Macans? For Porsche product planners, that’s the tough question.

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