Porsche Won't Build A 918 Successor Until Technology Gets Better

Some people may not realize it, but the hypercar holy trinity cars are actually all about to be yesterday's news. The McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 were the undisputed kings of speed, but a new range of cars from McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin and Red Bull will be the next generation of the hypercar holy trinity. We have already seen what the AMG Project One and the Aston Martin Vakyrie will look like, and it seems as though this generation of hypercars will focus on bringing F1 technology to the road.

Porsche will eventually jump back into the hypercar market, but it could be a while. In an interview with Autocar, Porsche said that it would like to build an all-electric supercar, but the weight of modern batteries would make the car too heavy. Porsche R&D boss Michael Steiner said "A future super-sports is a matter of technology. If we were to do it now, it would be a hybrid. But we have already done that with the 918." If Porsche were to build an all-electric supercar, it would have to be able to beat the 918 around the Nurburgring. Steiner said that this may be possible, but the batteries may get damaged on such a long track lap.

Steiner warned that a charge would have to be drawn quickly from the batteries, which would cause cell damage and shorten the lifespan of the car. Even though 918 buyers are pretty wealthy, Steiner said he doesn't his customers are "ready to treat the battery as a replaceable item, yet." A solution to this would be solid-state batteries, but these are still in development are still several years from production. Porsche followed up the Carrera GT after nine years, but the wait for the next car in this line could be an even longer wait. Unless we see some breakthroughs in battery technology, we won't be getting a new hypercar from Porsche for a while.