1 Jul 2026, Wed

Porsche CEO Promises the 911 Will Never Go Fully Electric, So Put Down the Pitchforks

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If you’ve spent the last couple of years lying awake at night, sweating over the possibility that the Porsche 911 would one day trade its glorious flat-six for a silent stack of batteries, you can finally get some sleep. Porsche CEO Michael Leiters has gone on the record, and the message is about as clear as it gets: there will never be a fully electric 911. None. Not happening. Put the axes and pitchforks back in the garage.

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Leiters made the pledge at Porsche’s Annual General Meeting, where he doubled down on keeping the 911’s internal combustion engine alive for the foreseeable future. It’s the kind of reassurance enthusiasts have been begging for ever since Porsche flirted with an all-electric future and watched a sizable chunk of its faithful nearly lose their minds.

Long Live the Flat-Six

A little context for anyone who tuned out: not long ago, Porsche stirred the pot by announcing it was charging toward an all-electric future. That plan went over about as well as a flat tire on the Nurburgring, and plenty of P-car loyalists made their displeasure loud and clear.

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The backlash made sense. Internal combustion and the experience it delivers are the entire point of a Porsche, and nowhere is that more true than with the 911. Ever since the model arrived in 1963, its calling card has been a rear-mounted, gas-powered boxer-six, an engine layout so rare that Subaru is the only other automaker that bothered to build one. It’s what gives the 911 that unmistakable exhaust note. Stripping it out would be like booking a Caribbean vacation and skipping the beach.

The CEO’s Word on the Matter

Leiters didn’t leave much room for interpretation. He framed the 911’s hybrid setup not as a stopgap but as something far more permanent, calling the performance hybrid powertrain a fundamental building block for the car’s future and flatly restating that there will never be a fully electric 911. He says Porsche stands by that, and after the whiplash of the last few years, that kind of certainty is worth a lot.

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That doesn’t mean electrification is dead at Porsche, though. Leiters made clear the 911’s engine will keep evolving and leaning harder into gas-electric hybridization. The current showcase is the 911 Carrera GTS, which carries Porsche’s first-ever T-Hybrid system, a clever setup that integrates an electric motor into the PDK dual-clutch gearbox and draws power from a 400-volt system, all while ditching the usual outboard auxiliary clutter.

Big picture, Porsche has swapped its all-electric crusade for a multi-energy approach, the same hedge plenty of other automakers have landed on. That means combustion, hybrid, and fully electric models living side by side, with the buyer picking the powertrain instead of having one forced on them. You can already see it playing out across the next-gen Macan and Cayenne SUVs and the 718 Boxster and Spyder. The 911, fittingly, will be the lone Porsche without an EV variant, and honestly, that feels exactly right.

By John Lloyd

John Lloyd writes for The Auto Wire, where he covers the more entertaining corners of the car world—celebrity rides, motorsports drama, and whatever automotive thing happens to be blowing up online that week. He's drawn to where cars meet culture. One day that's breaking down why some celebrity dropped a fortune on a hypercar; the next it's explaining why a particular model is suddenly all over everyone's feed. He likes handing readers the context behind the headline, usually with a little attitude. The way John sees it, cars aren't just transportation—they're status symbols, money pits, lifelong obsessions, and occasionally pure chaos, and that's exactly the stuff worth writing about.

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