Battery suppliers battle to meet demand for Porsche’s Panamera

Battery suppliers are struggling to cope with buoyant demand for Porsche’s Panamera hybrid sedan, the sports car maker said, in a sign that the shift of its parent Volkswagen (VW) to cleaner vehicles may be paying off.

It also shows the challenges involved.

The share of Panamera hybrids, which combine a conventional internal-combustion engine with electric propulsion, of the model’s total output has doubled in the past 12 months, said Gerd Rupp, head of Porsche’s Leipzig plant in Germany, where the car is assembled.

“At present we are able to meet customer demand well,” he said in an interview, adding that about 8,000 Panamera hybrids would be built this year.

“But there are limits because we are dependent on the capacities of battery suppliers.”

“As a buyer we had originally projected different volumes [of battery systems needed],” Rupp said. “The effects can be seen in longer delivery times of currently three to four months for Panamera hybrid models.”

Following its diesel emissions scandal in 2015, VW announced a huge investment in electric and self-driving vehicles, gambling that demand was finally about to take off.

The success of the strategy has become all the more important, with new European regulations set to penalize carmakers that do not curb their carbon emissions.

Porsche’s stablemate Audi has said it could face 1 billion euros ($1.18 billion) of fines if its average fleet emissions ex- ceeded EU limits by 11 grams per kilometer.

Porsche, a key contributor to VW’s profit, is spending about 1 billion euros on its first battery-only model called Mission E, and it is also considering a purely electric version of its top-selling Macan sport utility vehicle (SUV) to help lower carbon emissions across its fleet, which includes big emitters such as the Cayenne and 911 Turbo versions.

Production of an all-electric vehicle at Leipzig, where more than 4,000 staff make the Panamera and Macan models for VW’s ultra-luxury Bentley brand, would require “a larger three-digit million-euro” investment in an all-new body shop, Rupp said.

“The chances for producing a fully electric Porsche in Leipzig are good,” he said, predicting a decision in the first half of 2018