IN BLUME

BY 2025, HALF OF THE CARS PORSCHE SELLS WILL BE ELECTRIFIED, SAYS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OLIVER BLUME

- PHIL MCNAMARA

FOR A SPORTS CAR COMPANY that has wrought some of the world’s finest combustion engines, Porsche is embracing the electrified future with almighty zeal. And the figurehead of this push is Oliver Blume, coming up for five years as company CEO, a towering, silver-haired 51-year-old engineer who introduces himself with an informal ‘Call me Oliver’.

There’s a progressive and youthful feel about Porsche, and not just because the board are more Generation X than Baby Boomers. Porsche has launched a Digital division, with outposts in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, investing €1 billion (AUD$1.6b) in future tech for connected and ‘highly-automated’ cars, start-ups and online services.

But that’s dwarfed by the €9 billion (AUD$15b) being poured into pure electric and hybrid powertrains, with the goal of electrifying 50 per cent of all Porsche sales by 2025. Yup, half.

“It’s a very realistic figure because of our electrification strategy,” says Blume. The CEO name-checks three pure EVs due on the market by 2022: the Taycan sports coupe for which he has 15,000 firm orders; the Taycan Cross Turismo, a jacked-up shooting brake, scheduled before year’s end; and a zero-emission Macan SUV. “We can get to 50 per cent independently of the 911 and 718 [going electric],” he asserts.