The Porsche Macan, which accounts for half of the company’s sales, is about to go electric in Australia with a much higher price tag, but the sports car specialist says it believes it will “fit the market”.
Porsche Australia says it is not worried about replacing its best-selling model with an electric car in the new Porsche Macan 2025. The SUV will be all-electric, and will arrive in Australia just weeks after final shipments of its petrol predecessor, which is $40,000 cheaper and accounts for almost half of Porsche’s sales last year.
While elsewhere there will be a significant overlap between old and new Macans, in Australia it may be a matter of months, with petrol production ending between July and September, before the electric model arrives between October and December.
Almost half of all new Porsches delivered in Australia last year were Macans, while just 10 percent of passenger car and SUV sales were electric.
“With this new Macan, we firmly believe this car will fit the market,” Porsche Cars Australia CEO Daniel Schmollinger told local media.
“We started three years ago with the Taycan, and obviously there were some doubts about whether the Taycan was the right product for the market, especially in Australia, which is petrol-oriented. The success we have had with the Taycan over the last three years has been truly extraordinary. It has exceeded our expectations.
“Based on this, we firmly believe that the Macan Electric will follow this path and also be very successful.”
Matthias Becker, regional vice president of overseas and emerging markets at Porsche, told the assembled media that the company has registered more than 10,000 customer orders worldwide for the electric Macan, even though most customers have not yet seen the car in person.
Executives said the company is committed to its electric car rollout plan, which aims for 80 percent of Porsche sales to be all-electric by 2030.
Schmollinger noted there is plenty of room for improvement in Australia’s electric car charging network.
“We are in a very strong position in that our customers charge a lot at home. At the same time, in Australia we really need to work together on charging infrastructure,” he said.
However, with the new driving range of the Macan and Taycan, which are more than 600 kilometers, autonomy will not be a problem.
Porsche Macan sales in Australia totaled 2,925 last year, up from 2,737 the year before, representing 48 percent of the 6,052 Porsches delivered locally in 2023.
Porsche’s top executive foreshadowed a late surge in demand from buyers for the latest internal combustion engine Macan, as well as the latest 718 Boxster and Cayman gasoline sports cars, as production of these models ends at the same time.
“We are in a very strong position in that after-sales service is a major focus for our customers,” Schmollinger said.
He said Porsche Australia has a “good allocation” of the electric Macan for Australia, but warned “it’s about supply and demand, so we won’t flood the market.”
The future of Porsche’s electric vehicles in Australia looks bright, with demand expected to grow steadily as infrastructure and availability of models improve.
