Porsche’s luxury Macan SUV gets an electric makeover

Porsche is adding more electric vehicles to its luxury lineup, this time transforming its Macan SUV into a Tesla Model X-style vehicle. 

On Tuesday, the German company announced the crossover vehicle would be made all-electric after 2020. The smaller SUV joins the electric sports car, the Taycan, expected to launch by the end of this year. Porsche announced its first electric car last year as the $85,000 Mission E, but has since rebranded. The Taycan Cross Turismo will follow.

This is all part of Porsche’s electric plans — by 2025 it aims for half of all Porsches to be electric. Within the next 10 years Porsche says it will make plug-in hybrid vehicles, as well. 

The all-electric Macan will feature the same 800-volt battery tech announced in the Taycan last year and rely on Audi electrification architecture built out for their e-tron crossover EV (Audi and Porsche are both part of the Volkswagen Group), but more specific details about the Macan weren’t released yet. The non-electric version starts at about $50,000. 

The Taycan sports can supposedly can go 300 miles on a charge. The pricier Model X from Tesla starts at $88,000 and its largest battery offers about a 295-mile range — and that’s for a bigger compact SUV.

The Porsche car will be produced at the Leipzig, Germany production plant where the Macan has been produced since 2014. More than 90,000 of the cars are made there each year, but in a few years it’ll be electric ready.

Luxury electric SUVs are trendy as ever — just look at the Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-Pace, Mercedes EQC (coming soon), Tesla Model X, and so many others promised to arrive in the coming years.