It's only been eight days since we last saw the newest Porsche 911. Back then, the 911 refresh was seen testing at the Nurburgring. Now, another example is up somewhere in northern Europe doing a bit of winter testing. Or maybe some employees are just on a ski holiday? Either way, Stuttgart's 911 test mules are covering some serious mileage.
It also looks like they're doing said mileage with some driver assists reinstalled on the car. When we saw Porsche's facelifted 911 mule at the Nurburgring, the space below the license plate was occupied by nothing but black plastic and air. Now, that void has been filled by sensors of some kind. If we had to guess, they're probably for adaptive cruise control or some such similar feature.
Porsche's mildly restyled strakes still occupy the front nose intakes. These look to function a lot like BMW's grille intakes, which sit either closed or open depending on under-hood temperatures. Also still present is the GT3-style center-exit exhaust and Porsche's odd (but temporary) fog light surrounds that flank the aforementioned grille strakes.
Porsche's strange wheel setup from earlier winter testing is still present as well, but these are simply test wheels and will bear no resemblance to the final offering that will make it to the production car. That said, the prototype you see here is a hybrid model as evidenced by the yellow decals, so Porsche could offer other, unique wheels to set the electrified model apart.
As we already know, the first hybridized 911 won't arrive with a plug-in setup. Porsche's CEO, Oliver Blume, confirmed that the hybridized 911 will instead run on a more traditional hybrid setup, sans charging port. No one knows yet how much power this new 911 will make, but Blume has confirmed that the hybrid will be a range-topper in terms of performance, thereby confirming that performance will exceed the 40 horsepower developed by the current 911 Turbo S. This suggests that power could go to all four wheels, but we should have official confirmation on this as development wraps up and the new sports car draws nearer to market launch.