Electric Porsche 718 Boxster expected before new-gen Cayman

The first fully electric sports car from Porsche will be the 718 Boxster.

The much-anticipated new-generation ‘983’ electric models will not debut side-by-side, with the drop-top Boxster set to wave the flag for the new-gen EV sports car pairing well before the Cayman coupe arrives.

Porsche’s Björn Förster, who was in Australia recently to showcase the electric GT4 e-Performance prototype vehicle, said that while the electric project he’s put years of his life into is based on the existing 718 Cayman, he expects the Boxster to be seen first.

“Since the bigger innovation is to have an open electric sports car, if it was my company, I would go for the open version first,” he said. “We started way earlier [on the GT4 e-Performance], and we’ve already been touring the market for almost 18 months, and the electric Boxster is coming soon.”

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Image via kolesa.ru

Mr Förster stated that, as is Porsche tradition, the base model electric 718 Boxster will debut initially, followed by a number of other variants.

As such, he said there’s not much chance buyers who are looking for a racing-spec version of the Boxster or Cayman will get that for several years to come, suggesting a timeline of “late in the decade” for a production EV racer.

“At the moment, we will surely not build up a race car on the base model. The base model will be introduced first,” he said.

“So it will need some time for a more performance-oriented version of the 983 [aka new-gen 718 models] will come, and then we will be on the same timeline as the Cayman, maybe,” he said.

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Image via kolesa.ru

As with plenty of EVs, you can expect the new Porsche 718 models to be speedy. In fact, they may be breathing down the neck of the venerable 911, even in low-spec trim levels.

“It’s quite easy to be faster than a 911 with an electric car. As long as the 911 is not electric. But I think we want to hold on to that as long as possible,” said Mr Förster.

“We don’t build cars to make them slower. The [current] Cayman GT4 is faster than a 911… We will never make an electric car slower just to have the right hierarchy,” he said.

Expect the new 718 models to house their battery systems behind the rear seats.

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Porsche Mission R concept

“It makes the balance way better, and also the inertia of the car will be better, the agility of the car will be better,” he said.

“Here we have a weight distribution of 52 percent on the front axle, 48 percent at the rear. Which is nearly 50:50, but not perfect,” he said. “The perfect Porsche has 58 percent in the rear. We’re playing around with that [for the production car].”

The production models may also make use of a 900-volt architecture, allowing them to recharge in as little as 15 minutes at a full-speed 350kW charging station using a Type 2 CCS combination plug.