Here’s What An Electric Porsche Macan Could Do For Porsche

With a few carefully placed capabilities, the soon-to-be electric Porsche Macan may prove to be an industry juggernaut.

We all knew that an electric everything was coming from Porsche, including an EV version of the Macan. But then, a few days ago, a picture from Porsche’s “Unseen” catalog of prototypes rewarded the careful-eye of several viewers - a possible electric Macan was seen in the background.

This sped up the hype for the presumed 2022 launch of the car and gave journalists a sneak-peek at what it may look like. We’ll probably have a full year to contemplate the electric Macan before its launch but it’s worth taking a gander into what we hope to see, what we don’t, and how it will affect Porsche.

What We Want To See

The Macan started its life in 2014 as Porsche’s mass-market and affordable SUV. A year later, Porsche sold roughly 80,000 Macans, beating the previous sales leader, Cayenne, by around 7,000 units. The Macan continues to lead Porsche's sales and there is a key reason for that. It is cheap for a high-end brand SUV.

The cheapest, and only, electric Mercedes SUV, the EQC 400, starts at over $67,000 and goes up from there. The current base price of a Macan is $52,100. That $15K difference is huge in the auto industry, that’s the difference between a Mustang GT and a Shelby GT350.

We want to see the electric Macan remain below the luxury SUV standard. We say it so often but American’s buy more SUVs and trucks than any other car, they also like their German cars. So, if Porsche can out-price their fellow Germans, they could land a big win.

We also want to see the 2-speed automatic transmission from the Taycan make its way into the Macan EV. More and more commuters are switching to electric cars to eliminate their gas bills, and their 2-speed electric unit will make those commutes even better.

Electric motors struggle at higher speeds because they can only spin up so fast, but the 2-speed transmission makes all that insane electric torque usable again once it shifts. Better range and better passing ability become a reality with that transmission.

Porsche also intends to improve its electric charging abilities with the new platform they co-developed with Audi, PPE. The eventual EV Macan will sit on this platform and be able to charge an extra 60 miles in 4 minutes and 250 miles in just 20 minutes. A combination of the 2-speed transmission and faster charging would be a suburban holy grail, and probably a drag race demon.

What We Don’t Want To See

To be blunt, EVs tend to be ugly. Exceptions to this sentiment are the Tesla Model S, Audi E-Tron, Porsche Taycan, Lucid Air, and a few others. Point is, futuristic technology begets futuristic design language and companies love to wow their audience with crazy-looking EVs.

We don’t want to see a neon covered spacecraft of a Macan, and luckily, we don’t think Porsche does either. They hit the design nail on the head with the Taycan, so hopefully, they follow suit with an already classy-looking SUV.

One big complaint with the Taycan was its back-seat legroom. An EVs battery placement historically benefits legroom as they sit under the floorboards. So, the saying “swung and missed” is almost too generous, Porsche didn’t even get in the batter’s box with this one.

Essentially, we want the Macan to crush the legroom category and redeem its more expensive sibling, the Taycan.

Max Larsen is the Porsche reporter at Torque News. Since he was 15 years old Max was building old cars and selling them for profit, spawning his love for cars. He has been around Porsches his entire life. His grandpa had several 911s and he owned a Porsche 944 when he was younger, which made the auto-shop class cars a lot simpler. Reading old car magazines and seeing press cars at shows gave him the passion to write and pursue the industry. He is currently studying for Journalism at Western Washington University and writing for the racing team there locally. Follow Max on Torque News Porsche and on Twitter at @maxlarsencars. Search Torque News Porsche for daily Porsche news coverage by our expert automotive reporters.