[opinion] - hmmm…VW/Audi/Porsche may be in trouble…

[whitex]

hmmm ....

It seems a very informed reporter authored this article.

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[Jasper4S]

lol reminds me of the time I took my cayman through a drive through and the girl was like "wow is that a ferrari" and I was like "yes"

I was at the zoo with my family last year and a crowd of boys (12yo) were screaming that I was driving a Ferrari Wagon. Made me smile.

 

[Tooney]

Stuttgart's Expensive Experiment: Why Porsche's Prices Went Up and Sales Didn't
There's a moment every Porsche buyer now experiences - the moment the configurator stops being a fun little fantasy tool and becomes an existential threat to your financial dignity.
It usually happens right after you've added the wheels you actually like, a paint color that isn't 'Refrigerator White,' and the one safety package that mysteriously contains the other safety package.

Suddenly, a base 911 - formerly the people's sports car, the accessible aspirational coupe - costs roughly the same as a medieval castle. A small one, but still. This didn't happen overnight. It happened quietly. Gradually. Strategically. And almost entirely after 2020, during the tail end of the Oliver Blume era at Porsche - a period defined by two relentless forces.

The first one is a pricing curve that points up, like the Nurburgring's Flugplatz. In contrast, the second one is an electrification strategy that assumes Porsche buyers desperately want an EV in every imaginable body style - even though their actual purchasing habits politely disagree.
. . .
Look at the trajectory. The 911 Carrera - a car once synonymous with 'attainable exotic' - can now be specced at a price that would've bought you a Turbo not all that long ago. The Macan EV, introduced as a mass-market lifeline to the Porsche badge, arrived with a sticker that suggests 'mass-market' was a typo. Even the Taycan - Porsche's electric crown jewel, the car Blume used as both lighthouse and battering ram for the brand's EV transition - sits on dealer lots in numbers that whisper a truth the marketing department would never dare say aloud: The ICE Porsches are still doing the heavy lifting.
. . .
What makes this moment particularly strange is that Porsche has never been more profitable, more influential, or more confident in its own branding. But it achieved that position not through volume EV adoption or futuristic tech moonshots - it got there because its ICE models, the ones Brussels increasingly frowns upon, are still the heartbeat of the brand. The 911, Cayenne, and gas Macan (until recently) are still the quiet heroes keeping the entire EV strategy solvent.
. . .
Porsche still builds great cars. Some might say the best in its history. But greatness has become an optional extra, bundled with inflation, electrification, and a corporate vision that’s sprinting toward a future the market isn’t quite ready to meet. And if you want in - well, that'll be $15,920 for the 'Exclusive Manufaktur Leather Interior.'
. . .
Enter the Taycan. The car that was supposed to be Porsche’s electric Moses, parting the lithium-ion seas and leading the faithful into a promised land of instant torque and silent heroics. And to be fair, the Taycan is a masterpiece of engineering. It drives like a 911 that spent a summer in a tech incubator. It charges quickly, handles brilliantly, and looks more expensive than it already is, which is quite an achievement.

But the Taycan also exposed a truth Porsche wasn’t prepared for: EV enthusiasm and EV purchasing are not the same thing. Everyone loved the idea of a Porsche EV. Fewer people loved the payments. Even fewer loved the range in winter. And the fewest of all loved watching depreciation hit a Taycan like gravity hits a piano.

Yet Porsche doubled down. Hard. Because in the post-Dieselgate landscape of German executive thought, being ahead of the regulatory curve isn't just smart - it's mandatory. Porsche couldn’t afford to be seen as the stubborn, combustion-loving relic while Audi, BMW, and Mercedes showed up to Brussels with a bouquet of zero-emission compliance charts.

So the company went all-in on a strategic blueprint that assumed three things. EV adoption would accelerate exponentially; prices of batteries and rare-earth materials would drop accordingly; EU legislators wouldn’t change direction midair.

 

[kempez]

Stuttgart's Expensive Experiment: Why Porsche's Prices Went Up and Sales Didn't
There's a moment every Porsche buyer now experiences - the moment the configurator stops being a fun little fantasy tool and becomes an existential threat to your financial dignity.
It usually happens right after you've added the wheels you actually like, a paint color that isn't 'Refrigerator White,' and the one safety package that mysteriously contains the other safety package.

Suddenly, a base 911 - formerly the people's sports car, the accessible aspirational coupe - costs roughly the same as a medieval castle. A small one, but still. This didn't happen overnight. It happened quietly. Gradually. Strategically. And almost entirely after 2020, during the tail end of the Oliver Blume era at Porsche - a period defined by two relentless forces.

The first one is a pricing curve that points up, like the Nurburgring's Flugplatz. In contrast, the second one is an electrification strategy that assumes Porsche buyers desperately want an EV in every imaginable body style - even though their actual purchasing habits politely disagree.
. . .
Look at the trajectory. The 911 Carrera - a car once synonymous with 'attainable exotic' - can now be specced at a price that would've bought you a Turbo not all that long ago. The Macan EV, introduced as a mass-market lifeline to the Porsche badge, arrived with a sticker that suggests 'mass-market' was a typo. Even the Taycan - Porsche's electric crown jewel, the car Blume used as both lighthouse and battering ram for the brand's EV transition - sits on dealer lots in numbers that whisper a truth the marketing department would never dare say aloud: The ICE Porsches are still doing the heavy lifting.
. . .
What makes this moment particularly strange is that Porsche has never been more profitable, more influential, or more confident in its own branding. But it achieved that position not through volume EV adoption or futuristic tech moonshots - it got there because its ICE models, the ones Brussels increasingly frowns upon, are still the heartbeat of the brand. The 911, Cayenne, and gas Macan (until recently) are still the quiet heroes keeping the entire EV strategy solvent.
. . .
Porsche still builds great cars. Some might say the best in its history. But greatness has become an optional extra, bundled with inflation, electrification, and a corporate vision that’s sprinting toward a future the market isn’t quite ready to meet. And if you want in - well, that'll be $15,920 for the 'Exclusive Manufaktur Leather Interior.'
. . .
Enter the Taycan. The car that was supposed to be Porsche’s electric Moses, parting the lithium-ion seas and leading the faithful into a promised land of instant torque and silent heroics. And to be fair, the Taycan is a masterpiece of engineering. It drives like a 911 that spent a summer in a tech incubator. It charges quickly, handles brilliantly, and looks more expensive than it already is, which is quite an achievement.

But the Taycan also exposed a truth Porsche wasn’t prepared for: EV enthusiasm and EV purchasing are not the same thing. Everyone loved the idea of a Porsche EV. Fewer people loved the payments. Even fewer loved the range in winter. And the fewest of all loved watching depreciation hit a Taycan like gravity hits a piano.

Yet Porsche doubled down. Hard. Because in the post-Dieselgate landscape of German executive thought, being ahead of the regulatory curve isn't just smart - it's mandatory. Porsche couldn’t afford to be seen as the stubborn, combustion-loving relic while Audi, BMW, and Mercedes showed up to Brussels with a bouquet of zero-emission compliance charts.

So the company went all-in on a strategic blueprint that assumed three things. EV adoption would accelerate exponentially; prices of batteries and rare-earth materials would drop accordingly; EU legislators wouldn’t change direction midair.

The first one is a pricing curve that points up, like the Nurburgring's Flugplatz. In contrast, the second one is an electrification strategy that assumes Porsche buyers desperately want an EV in every imaginable body style - even though their actual purchasing habits politely disagree.

This remains one of their big issues IMO. They will experience reduced sales because their EV's are not 'special' enough, or at least perceived to be, to be double and triple the price of other EV's that perform very close to an EV Porsche. That, along with other brands significantly stepping up

Hand in hand with some seriously pricey/joke level APR rates in the current market.

The depreciation can be swallowed by customers if you can get them into a replacement for a not-totally unreasonable cost

 

[Tooney]

Crisis at Volkswagen: Is Oliver Blume losing support?
However, at a time when Blume has stepped down as CEO of Porsche, officially at his own request, in order to concentrate on the Group, a recent report in the Handelsblatt newspaper is causing a stir because the timing of the statements made there is explosive. Blume’s support among the Porsche-Piëch family is said to be crumbling. “The family is appalled by the state of the entire Volkswagen Group,” a “close advisor to the family” is quoted as saying in the article. Regarding Blume’s work as VW boss, it states: “A lot has to change.”
. . .
The truth probably lies somewhere in between – Blume’s work is viewed critically, but he is not being openly criticised either. One thing is clear: Porsche has gone from being a former profit machine to a cause for concern, with returns recently standing at just 0.2 per cent. This is said to have cost the company the trust of the families. “In retrospect, the sports car manufacturer’s electric strategy is considered a mistake by the owner family,” it says.

 

[D00notD00d]

If you can’t beat them ….

 

[Tooney]

Porsche's Key Fob Configurator Is Unhinged

 

[Tooney]

Porsche Management Seeks Further Massive Cost Savings

 

[chun]

Porsche Management Seeks Further Massive Cost Savings

I propose a software update that displays a “the cold is a feature not a bug” for when you try to defog your windows and it doesn’t work because the 7th heater broke.

Software fixes for hardware problems seems to have saved them a lot of money with the batteries

 

[D00notD00d]

Porsche Management Seeks Further Massive Cost Savings

Standard playbook when profits/share price falls - reduce staff benefits and numbers, replace expensive staff with cheaper less experienced people. Without realistic efficiency plans, those things are not always correlated. Using less expensive and less experienced staff in dealers doesn’t seem to be working.

This article mentions only 911/718/Taycan plants plus the development centre. No mention here of the Leipzig Macan/Panamera plant or the Cayenne plant in Slovakia. I wonder how their profitability compares.

 

[Der-Schwabe]

Musical chairs in Stuttgart:

" Mercedes-AMG has found its next boss, and the choice sends a pretty loud signal about where the brand thinks the future lies. Stefan Weckbach, a former Porsche executive with deep EV credentials, will take over as CEO of AMG from July 1, 2026, while also becoming head of Mercedes-Benz’s Top End Vehicle (TEV) Group. (...) Weckbach spent years at Porsche in senior product roles and was heavily involved in the development of the Taycan "

Ex-Porsche Taycan Head Is AMG's New CEO

AMG’s New CEO Hire Tells You Exactly Where The Brand Is Headed

 

[D00notD00d]

 

[SoccerMan94043]

Porsche Management Seeks Further Massive Cost Savings

Typical. When Leadership fails (and it's always Leadership failure), the regular Joe pays the price.

 

[Tooney]

Porsche Admits Chinese Automakers Are Innovating at 'Breathtaking' Pace
But it's fighting back with a renewed dedication to gas engines.

 

[Tooney]

Billionaire Porsche clan’s thirst for cash collides with Volkswagen’s woes

Synopsis
Europe's most powerful automotive dynasty faces mounting financial strains as Volkswagen's performance deteriorates. Hans Michel Piëch, who borrowed heavily to acquire family shares, may feel pressure to maintain loan payments if dividends decline. The clan's reliance on steady payouts threatens to hinder necessary changes for the sprawling auto empire's competitiveness.
. . .
In a period of transformational change — with VW beset by technological upheaval, flagging demand in major markets and new rivals like Tesla Inc. and BYD Co. — the family’s interest in maintaining dividends threatens to stall bigger changes to make the sprawling auto empire more competitive.

“Volkswagen is a governance mess,” said Serden Ozcan, professor of corporate transformation at Germany’s WHU business school in Dusseldorf. “The company needs to do the unthinkable, which is to break stuff apart and divest as much as possible. I don’t think the family is ready for that.”

The clan’s stake in Porsche Holding is now worth about $7 billion, down more than $3 billion since the Porsche AG sportscar maker was listed in late 2022. At least $1 billion in dividends over that period has helped cushion the blow, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Money is unlikely to continue to flow like in the past. Already this year, the proceeds paid out by Porsche Holding declined 25%, and the Porsche brand has said its dividend will be “significantly lower” next year.

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