Porsche plans hero hybrid Panamera with more than 500kW

The Porsche Turbo S E-Hybrid is not dead.

While Porsche’s new (or heavily updated and facelifted) Panamera was revealed this week, the brand’s Panamera product VP says there’s more to come for Panamera, namely the hybridised version of the beastly twin-turbo V8-powered Turbo S.

While the new Turbo S currently tops the range with a respectable 463kW and 820Nm, the previous Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid boasted 500kW.

2021 Porsche Panamera Australian details and pricing

“There will be more to come. Just wait some weeks or some months,” says Porsche vice president product line Panamera Thomas Friemuth.

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“The product line will, as you know from the past, have three hybrids. So, the base hybrid and the Turbo S E-Hybrid will come in the next month.”

While the Turbo S set an impressive 7:29.81 lap at the Nürburgring, Friemuth says the electrified version will be more powerful, but not as fast on most circuits.

“The Turbo S E-Hybrid, on a track like the Nurburgring, will not be faster. It has more horsepower but in terms of the weight of the car, at the Nürburgring, the conventional Turbo S is faster. This can differ from racetrack to racetrack.

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“I can’t say much about is because we haven’t launched it yet, but be sure we will increase the main data.”

Friemuth did, however, confirm the electric motors in each Panamera model will be good for 100kW, meaning if added to the 463kW Turbo S’s 4.0-litre V8, the new Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid could have more than 550kW. This will place it among Porsche’s most powerful road cars ever, topping even the 911 991.2 GT2 RS which has 515kW.

Could there be more new versions of the Porsche Panamera?

Rumours of a two-door or cabriolet Panamera have circled for some time now, and Friemuth was by his own admission unable to put an end to the discussion.

“We have not finally decided yet,” he told MOTOR.

“We have been discussing this topic for several years, as you could imagine, since our competitors also have two-door cars. We’re not finally ready yet to decide whether to do this or not.

“We have quite a nice two-door car in our programme… it’s called 911.”

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While he admits it’s not too late in the Panamera’s current model cycle to introduce something of the sort, he says the Panamera won’t likely become any more focused as a sports car than its GTS variant.

When we asked if there was something he would personally like to create as an addition to the Panamera range, Friemuth said “yes, I have a lot of ideas.”

We pushed to see if he was willing to share any but were told “not really.”

For now, the idea of a Porsche 944 successor remains an unknown.