Walter Röhrl points to a switch on the steering wheel. “Before the car was a boring box, the button makes it a real racing car.” The switch that the two-time rally world champion is referring to is activated by a virtual gearbox in the Porsche 718 Boxster, which is intended to give the driver the feeling that he is driving with a manual gearbox, which is actually unnecessary for electric vehicles. After a sharp right-hand bend on the sports car manufacturer's test track in Weissach near Stuttgart, the 79-year-old then shifted up several gears and accelerated to a speed of 240 kilometers per hour.
The still fully camouflaged prototype of the 718 model, which Porsche plans to officially present at the beginning of 2027 and then produce at its headquarters in Zuffenhausen, is an element of Porsche boss Michael Leiters' new strategy - albeit an atypical one. In the coming years, the sports car manufacturer will focus primarily on the development of vehicles with combustion engines and is examining the development of three new non-electric models.
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“Combustion engines continue to play an extremely relevant role for many Porsche customers around the world,” said Porsche boss Michael Leiters on Tuesday and Wednesday at a capital market day organized by the traditional Baden-Württemberg company in Weissach. “What’s crucial is that we can make the right offer to our customers at the right time.” In the medium term, the operating return on sales (EBIT) should rise from the current 7.8 percent to ten to 15 percent. The long-term strategic goal is a margin of 15 percent. Porsche has now finally said goodbye to a return target of 20 percent. The “Road to Twenty” was the goal of Leiter’s predecessor Oliver Blume when the manufacturer went public in 2022.
Porsche plans to have two-thirds of its sales as combustion engines
The share of cars with conventional or plug-in hybrid drives in total sales will still be around 67 percent after 2030, despite the combustion engine ban that has been decided for 2035, as Leiters explained. This applies regardless of possible changes in regulation. “In any case, we still have four or five years to earn money with these cars,” said Leiters in a meeting with journalists on the sidelines of the event. Last year, around 78 percent of the cars sold by Porsche had a combustion engine.
As part of the combustion engine offensive, the production of a new model has already been decided: the SUV Macan is scheduled to come onto the market in 2028. There could also be a large luxury SUV with seven seats, which Porsche calls Project K1 internally and which is primarily intended for the American market. Porsche is also thinking about further variants of the 911 sports car and has developed a new platform for a super sports car. “We want to use it as the basis for a mid-engine vehicle that is clearly positioned above the 911,” said Leiters.
With these models, the proportion of vehicles that Porsche wants to offer in the top segment by 2030 will increase from 32 percent today to 47 percent - but above all, Leiters hopes that the returns will increase to the same extent. The manufacturer plans to increase the average sales price by around 20 percent by selling more luxury vehicles combined with an expansion of individualization offers and special request programs. "We're not just talking about price increases here, but about increasing added value for the customer - and then about price increases. I think that's very important," explained Leiters.
In return, Porsche is reducing the number of variants offered across the entire program by 20 percent, which increases the number of remaining models, enables better scaling and reduces costs. In this way, Leiters hopes to increase sales of the individual variants by up to 30 percent. All of this should contribute to the long-term strategic goal of an operating return on sales of 15 percent. While sales in the first half of the year fell by 5.1 percent to 17.23 billion euros compared to the previous year, operating profit (EBIT) rose by 33.1 percent to 1.35 billion euros.
In the future, Porsche is also aiming for a medium-term net cash flow margin in the automotive business of ten to twelve percent. The known stress factors have already been taken into account in this planning. The hope in Zuffenhausen is that the combination of increasing profitability and decreasing capital intensity will structurally improve cash conversion. Porsche is aiming for group sales of 41 to 45 billion euros in the medium term.
While the new Macan with a combustion engine will roll off the assembly line in Leipzig and the main plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen will take over production of the 718 model, it is unclear at which locations the further new developments will be located. For the variants of the 911 model and the super sports car, only Zuffenhausen comes into question. The large luxury SUV could go to both Leipzig and VW's multi-brand factory in Bratislava, Slovakia. One possibility would also be for Porsche to bring the Cayenne SUV from Bratislava to Leipzig - and to send the new, larger SUV to Slovakia. “We will decide this based on the financial figures,” explained Leiters. "Whoever makes the best offer, Bratislava or Leipzig, we will take them. That's all."
The company did not comment on the question of how many cars Porsche plans to sell each year in the future. At the beginning of 2025, the manufacturer had already reduced factory capacity and aligned its cost structures to annual production of 250,000 vehicles. Now the break-even point is expected to fall even further: in the future, it will be reached when fewer than 200,000 cars are sold. Based on the half-year figures, Porsche will sell between 230,000 and 240,000 vehicles this year.
Porsche only sees China as a niche market
In the Chinese market, Porsche wants to concentrate only on niches in the future and assumes that the proportion of cars sold in the People's Republic will fall to ten percent of total sales. “We consciously look at China with very conservative assessments,” explained Leiters. “There is a ruinous price war there, which is accompanied by innovation cycles that are not sustainable in the long term – not even for Chinese companies.” Porsche currently sells 15 percent of its cars in China, 35 percent each in Europe and America and 15 percent in the rest of the world.
Leiters once again confirmed the future package agreed with the employees, which, in addition to a socially acceptable reduction of around 9,000 jobs, also includes securing the location of the core workforce until 2035. “We have an agreement and we will stick to it,” explained the Porsche boss. The savings program will reduce the workforce in administration and production by around 25 percent, and the number of management positions by as much as 40 percent. According to the company, personnel costs should be reduced by ten percent, as well as savings in development, purchasing, production organization and sales.
"Structural measures like these are essential. However, structures alone do not improve performance," the Porsche boss continued and announced that the part of the annual bonus for top management that is linked to the individual performance of each employee would increase from ten to 30 percent in the future. “We believe that differences in performance should be reflected more clearly and consistently in the way we compensate managers,” explained Leiters. The same principle applies throughout the entire company. “We want to strengthen the connection between individual contribution and long-term value for the company.”
In the opinion of the Porsche boss, the sports car manufacturer needs this new performance culture - alongside vehicles like the electric 718, which Walter Röhrl initially vilified as a boring box. But the button on the steering wheel almost turns the vehicle into a combustion engine, which Porsche will be relying on in the next few years.
