Porsche reorganises battery activities and halts project

According to its own statements, Porsche intends to focus its battery activities on cell and system development. However, this also means that “previous plans of the Porsche AG subsidiary to expand the production of high-performance batteries will not be pursued,” as Porsche announced. It added: “It is currently planned to continue development as an independent R&D unit.”

The staff employed for the planned production will no longer be needed at Cellforce, at least not all of them. Porsche intends to make the upcoming job cuts “socially responsible.” When the reorganisation was leaked in media reports last week, there was talk of clear-cutting, as around 200 of the 290 employees are likely to lose their jobs. A staff meeting was announced for this Monday.

There, Porsche was at least able to announce a certain prospect: VW’s battery subsidiary PowerCo has offered to “introduce suitable Cellforce Group employees to job opportunities at PowerCo sites.” So anyone who wants to move from Kirchentellinsfurt in Baden-Württemberg to Salzgitter could find a new job in the battery sector, at least in theory.

“[…] due to challenging conditions, particularly in our main markets of the USA and the not yet developed Chinese electric luxury segment, we are reorganising our battery activities and focusing on cell and system development,” says Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, who also heads the VW Group. “For volume reasons and a lack of economies of scale, Porsche is no longer pursuing its own production of battery cells. Electromobility will remain an essential drive technology for our sports cars in the future.”

“With the construction of the factory in Kirchentellinsfurt in 2022, we have set an exclamation mark in the industry and for Germany as a business location. Unfortunately, the market for electric vehicles worldwide has not developed as originally thought. The framework conditions have changed fundamentally and we have to react to them,” stated Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board for Research and Development at Porsche. “It is with great reluctance that we take this step, and we are aware that the employees of the Cellforce Group have put their heart and soul into the development of high-performance batteries. My special thanks go to them. In the end, however, we have to conclude that the planned business model is not economically viable.”

The Cellforce Group was originally founded as a joint venture between Porsche and Customcells to develop and manufacture customised high-performance cells for Porsche’s electric sports cars. However, Porsche took over Cellforce completely in 2023 and raised its ambitions. Instead of expanding production to one or two GWh, there was suddenly talk of up to 20 GWh, but this was reversed by a Porsche board decision in April 2025.

In the current announcement, Steiner says that the plan with Kirchentellinsfurt as a “start-up factory” with a production volume of around 1 GWh and later volume production at another location is “not realistic.” “The Cellforce Group has successfully developed high-performance cells and set up pilot production, but due to a global lack of volumes, it is not possible to scale its own production to the planned cost position. Therefore, the Cellforce Group should concentrate on research and development work in the future,” said Steiner. Porsche expressly wants to ‘continue to use’ the knowledge acquired within the Cellforce Group in recent years. This is also to be done with the V4 Smart, the cylindrical cell production taken over from Varta.

However, it is not only the Cellforce Group’s activities in the battery sector that are being restructured; Porsche also has to break new ground for the planned battery supply chain for the upcoming 718 sports car. This is because Northvolt, the previously designated cell supplier, has gone bankrupt. The battery packs were supposed to be assembled by Finnish supplier Valmet Automotive, which had set up a production facility near Heilbronn specifically for this purpose.

However, according to the German publication Automobilwoche, Porsche has now terminated its contract with Valmet, according to information from a “reliable source.” The Finnish company opened the factory in Kirchardt in 2023 and was supposed to manufacture the battery packs for Porsche production in Stuttgart. However, the market launch of the electric Cayman and electric Boxster has been delayed until 2027 at the earliest, instead of this year as planned.

A Porsche spokesperson told Automobilwoche that the company does not comment on suppliers. Valmet declined to comment on the report. However, the loss of Porsche as an anchor customer for the factory is likely to weigh heavily: currently, no other products are manufactured in Kirchardt apart from a small series of plug-in hybrid batteries for Lamborghini.

porsche.com (Cellforce), automobilwoche.de (in German, Valmet)

This article was first published by Sebastian Schaal for electrive’s German edition.