The Porsche 718 is going electric. For real, this time. Porsche originally announced that it had plans to transition its entry-level sports car from gas to battery power in 2022, but the recent cooling of the electric vehicle market led to speculation that it would backtrack and redesign the next generation with internal combustion engine powertrains.
However, it put the rumors to rest during its Capital Markets Day event, where it laid out is business plan through 2035 and reconfirmed that battery-electric versions of the Boxster and Cayman will enter production in 2027.
It also recently took journalists for rides in disguised prototypes to show off their performance and divulge a couple of details about the car, including one that will sound familiar to owners of the first-generation Tesla Roadster.
While most of today’s EVs have batteries mounted under their floors, the electric 718 is built on what Porsche calls the E-Core platform, which locates the pack behind the seats, right where the motor is in the current 718.
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This allowed Porsche to keep the passenger-compartment floor as low as possible while retaining a mid-engine handling balance. According to Car and Driver, the electric model has 55.2% of the weight over the rear axle compared to the gas car’s 59.8%.
The original Roadster that went on sale in 2008 also had its battery pack in this location, but out of necessity. The car was built on the same chassis as the mid-engine Lotus Elise and Tesla essentially swapped its entire electric powertrain into the same space as the Elise’s four-cylinder engine and transmission. It wasn’t an optimal design, but it was cost-effective and worked to prove the viability of both long-distance electric cars and electric sports cars. The rest, of course, is history.
Tesla is on the verge of finally unveiling the second-generation Roadster, which is a ground-up electric car design, on Oct. 15. There’s no telling how much it will look like the last Roadster prototype that debuted in 2017, but it will be propelled by more than an electric motor this time around.
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Along with likely three of those, the car will be offered with an optional SpaceX cold gas thruster package that will improve its acceleration and allow it to fly to some extent. Interestingly, the idea for it came up after the 2+2 concept’s unveiling, and the original plan was to swap the rear seats for the tanks and equipment needed for the thrusters. Whether or not that’s still the case will be revealed on Oct. 15, if the weather permits it. The event was initially scheduled for Oct. 1, but severe storms with high winds were forecast for the area, so Tesla delayed it by two weeks for safety. As of this writing, stray, but not persistent, thunderstorms are expected on Oct. 15.
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