The Porsche 911 is a true icon and one that will be sorely missed when internal combustion becomes outlawed. However, the good people in Stuttgart are doing their absolute best to keep it around as long as possible, and although that means we won't be getting a free-breathing boxer motor in the next 911, the good news is that it will continue to be powered by a combustion engine. The bad news is that a hybrid version is coming, but this isn't as sacrilegious as it first appears. Porsche has said that electrification will be employed only to bolster performance, not to increase efficiency, so we should still get an engaging drive.
Recent reports have suggested that this new 911 hybrid will produce more power than even a Turbo S, and as the new spy shots you see here confirm, Porsche is working very hard to ensure that the electrified 911 will drive as well as its traditional counterparts. Our earlier spy shots showed the novel 911 testing in the cold of the Arctic, and while we have more of the same, we also have photographs of another hybrid prototype being tested at the Nurburgring. The biggest turn-off for Porsche buyers will be if they get into a new-age, hybridized Porsche only to discover that it feels generic, dull, and heavy, so Stuttgart's finest are engineering as many of the traditional 911's characteristics into this car as possible.
In any case, this won't be a plug-in hybrid. As we mentioned earlier, Porsche wants to use electrification technology to bolster performance in the 911 hybrid. Supporting this is the promise of motorsport-derived know-how from racers like the 919 hybrid, but that's pretty much all we know for now. Power figures and efficiency estimates will follow the car's global debut, which is still some way off, but if you don't care for any sort of electrified Porsche, don't give up the faith just yet - the hardcore 911 GT3 RS is still in the works, and we're confident that Porsche will continue to produce the best sports cars in the world well into the future, regardless of what they're powered by.