Porsche marks 10k Taycan sales, delivers to USA this year

According to CEO Oliver Blume, Porsche has now marked up 10,000 purchase contracts for its Taycan electric sports car. The first Taycans are scheduled to roll into US dealers before the end of this year.

The next planned market launches are running on schedule. By 2020, there will be more than 20,000 vehicles, more than initially planned. According to Blume, the 10,000 contracts have already been signed, and the number of these is rising continuously. This is not altogether surprising since around 30,000 interested parties have already paid a reservation fee (2,500 euros in Europe), “we are now translating this interest into concrete orders,” said the Porsche boss.

Meanwhile, in Europe, many customers will probably have to wait a few weeks longer before their Taycan is delivered. Porsche itself announced that the new vehicle with all its technology and a new factory would have a flatter start-up curve, which could lead to some shifts in the high demand. Here the German company has prioritised deliveries to the US American market.

In an interview with the German trade news media outlet Handelsblatt, Blume says, “every production ramp-up has its challenges. Taycan is about a new product, completely new technologies, a new factory, a new team and a new structure of suppliers. And legal requirements are increasing worldwide. In this interaction, we have lowered the start-up curve by around 1000 vehicles in the first few months in a quality-oriented manner. It is crucial that we supply the first dealers in the USA with the Taycan this year as planned.”

There are genuine reasons why Porsche would want to deliver first in the USA and not in Germany or Norway – which may be what Blume is referring to with “legal requirements”: If a new electric car is registered in December 2019, the manufacturer will not be able to count on these vehicle registrations to lower its overall CO2 output, since the new, stricter European CO2 limits will not apply until January 2020. Recently, the environmental organisation Transport & Environment claimed that car manufacturers are deliberately delaying the sale of electric cars until the new CO2 limits come into force next year. The Norwegian electric car association Elbilforening has also criticised long waiting lists for electric vehicles and see this as endangering the goal set by the government three years ago of only registering emission-free new cars in Norway from 2025.

In the interview with Handelsblatt, Blume makes it clear that the Taycan and electric cars, in general, are not only a means for the sports car manufacturer to reduce CO2 emissions, but that in future electric vehicles will make up a large part of the business. “In 2025, we will deliver 50 per cent of our vehicles purely electric or with hybrid drive,” says Blume. “The number will rise steadily, and we expect a further decline in combustion engines by 2030.”

handelsblatt.com (in German)