Porsche Claims the Taycan Is Already Taken

by Tim Healey

Updated: May 6th, 2019 Published: December 10th, 2018

porsche claims the taycan is already taken

If you want a Porsche Taycan EV, you may end up waiting even longer than planned.

Unless you’ve already raised your hand, that is.

Production is a year or more away, but Porsche USA’s top boss is already saying that if all preorders are turned into sales, the car is already sold out for year one. This, despite the company’s CEO saying that production will increase to account for the number of preorders.

It’s unclear if Porsche USA CEO Klaus Zellmer means that it will only be the USA market that sells out, or the global market.

Initial reports suggested a production run of 20,000 vehicles per year, but it’s possible that the number could be bumped up to 30,000. Those figures would also include the Taycan Sport Turismo. Porsche is giving its Zuffenhausen plant a dedicated assembly line and paint shop for the EV.

Autoblog reports that Porsche received about 3,000 preorders with refundable deposits of around $2,250 in Norway alone — a country that seems to love EVs. Porsche typically sells 600 cars per year in Norway.

Porsche also claims that many of these hand-raisers aren’t coming from the usual competitive suspects such as Audi and BMW, but from Tesla, with Zellmer saying it’s the number one brand for conquest buyers. He also said more than half of the hand-raisers either have never owned a Porsche or currently don’t.

The Taycan will compete against the Model S, so that feels like a shot across the bow. Maybe the future won’t consist of horsepower wars, with EV bragging rights on the line instead.

Porsche has about 200 American dealers and the allotments may be 50 Taycans per. As Autoblog points out, that means about 10,000 units could be sold on our shores.

Tesla versus Porsche could make for entertaining sales drama.

[Image: Porsche/YouTube]

#Porsche #PorscheTaycan #Taycan #Tesla

Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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2 comments

SCE to AUX on Dec 10, 2018

"Tesla versus Porsche could make for entertaining sales drama." That's for sure. Tesla currently has the installed base and the volume, but the Taycan's volume would at least be a threat. Plus, Porsche has taken pains to capitalize on the weaknesses of the Model S, namely its inability to run the Nürburgring without going into safe mode. Not that anyone will utilize such capability, but it speaks to the modernity of the Taycan's drivetrain to be able to do that. And, its 800V charging capability (hopefully with expanding infrastructure) will help. It's worth pointing out that if Porsche can indeed sell 10k Taycans per year in the US, that would be 1/6 of its total volume here - not insignificant.

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Loopy55 on Dec 11, 2018

There are lot of people in SoCal dying for an alternative to buying into the Tesla cult.

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