Enlarge / On the left, the 2024 Porsche Macan 4, on the right, the 2024 Porsche Macan Turbo. Both are electric. (credit: Porsche)

This morning, Porsche unveiled its next Macan SUV. It has dropped internal combustion engines in the process—the new Macan is entirely battery electric, built on a dedicated EV platform. We've been following the car's development for some time, but today's news fills in a lot of the gaps, and it's the first time we've seen the Macan not covered in camouflage. Porsche is launching with two specifications. There's a Macan 4 that starts at $78,800, and a Macan Turbo starting at $105,300.

Last year Ars took a dive into the engineering that has gone into the new Macan and its underlying architecture, a new platform called PPE or Premium Platform Electric. Developed together with Audi, it uses an 800 V powertrain that's an incremental improvement upon the one you'd find in a Porsche Taycan.

We also already know it's fun to drive , especially the Macan Turbo. Rear-wheel steering makes it very nimble, and the two-valve dampers do a good job of making you think the car weighs less than it does. The Macan 4 isn't a slouch and can send up to 402 hp (300 kW) and 479 lb-ft (650 Nm) to its wheels, so launching up a highway on-ramp to 60 mph should take 4.9 seconds.

Enlarge / Porsche's all-electric Macan is almost on sale. (credit: Porsche)

Porsche provided flights from Washington to Leipzig and accommodation so we could visit the Porsche factory and learn about the new Macan, as well as try out the new Panamera . Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LEIPZIG, Germany—The Porsche Macan has carved out a rather solid reputation for itself over the years, bringing hot hatch-like driving fun to the premium midsize crossover segment. Next year there's an all-new Macan, an entirely electric one that makes use of a new EV platform shared with corporate sibling Audi. Earlier this summer we spent a few hours driving prototype Macan EVs around Los Angeles , but at the time Porsche was being tight-lipped in terms of technical details. Now, on a visit to the factory in Germany where the cars will be made, we've learned a little more.

PPE

The new Macan is one of the first EVs to utilize Premium Platform Electric, which Porsche is developing together with Audi . Other PPE-based EVs due in the near future include the Audi Q6 e-tron SUV, A6 e-tron sedan , and maybe even a station wagon , and if you click some of those links you'll find deadlines that have come and gone sometime in the past.

That's because development of PPE hasn't gone quite as smoothly as everyone at Volkswagen Group would have hoped. A significant factor in that has been software-related trouble at CARIAD, VW Group's new software division . But the first PPE cars are headed to market soon, and in the case of the Macan, with more than 1.8 million miles (3 million km) of testing under its tires.

Enlarge / The 2024 Porsche Macan is still months away from going on sale, but Porsche let us drive the prototype in Los Angeles this summer. (credit: Porsche)

Porsche provided flights from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles and two nights in a hotel so we could drive the prototype Macan. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.—Porsche's plans to electrify 80 percent of its product range by 2030 requires the German automaker to offer more than just Taycans. Other than the 911, which probably won't be a battery-electric vehicle (unless and) until solid-state batteries alter the energy-to-mass calculations, that means everything else in the lineup will need to trade engine, exhaust, and fuel tank for a battery pack and an electric motor or two. And it's starting with its second-best-selling model, the Macan crossover.

An all-new Macan arrives in showrooms next year for model year 2024 and will confusingly coexist for some time alongside the current gas-burning Macan, which recently went through its midlife refresh. The new version is entirely electric, however, and will be built on a new 800 V architecture called Premium Platform Electric, being developed by Porsche together with its corporate sibling, Audi.

Spy shots of barely disguised Macan EVs have been circulating for some time as Porsche puts on its finishing touches. Some of those test cars have even been spotted here in the US; a couple of years ago, it decided to develop local market prototypes. For our market, that means things like making sure the satellite radio works and that the advanced driver assistance system (or ADAS) can read our road signs and knows that on US highways, faster traffic rarely sticks to the leftmost lane.

Enlarge / The exterior clues that this is a Porsche 718 GT4 ePerformance and not a 718 GT4 Clubsport are subtle; it's 140 mm (5.5 inches) wider, and the headlight projectors look more like a Taycan's than a Cayman's. But it's an all-electric car with more than a thousand horsepower on tap. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Porsche provided a flight from DC to Milan and back, and plus two nights in a hotel so we could get briefed on VW Group's next EV platform. We also saw the reveal of its new Formula E car, which you were able to read about last week . Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

FRANCIACORTA, ITALY—The auto industry is in the midst of a mass transformation as we move towards product lineups that are mostly or even entirely electric. Some are handling this transformation better than others, as supply chain problems caused by the pandemic and invasion of Ukraine add further complications. Witness the sorry state of Jaguar, which cancelled an electric replacement for the XJ sedan at the last minute, or the repeated electric vehicle-related missteps we've seen from Toyota , Honda , and Mazda of late.

There appear to be no such woes at Porsche, however. In 2019 it debuted the Taycan , a four-door electric sportscar that remains one of the best EVs on sale . Since then it's added new Taycan variants, two different flavors of EV wagon included, all built in a factory in Zuffenhausen, Germany that's already carbon-neutral . (Porsche's Zuffenhausen factory uses a very heavy mix of renewable energy and biogas from waste materials, and has been independently certified by Germany's DGNB.)

But Porsche isn't resting on its laurels. Fine though the Taycan is, it really is just the start of the OEM's electrified journey—as long as you aren't counting some of Ferdinand Porsche's very earliest vehicles, like the Egger-Lohner C2 Phaeton of 1898 . Future battery EVs from Porsche will use an all-new flexible architecture called PPE—for premium platform electric—which the company is developing together with fellow VW Group sibling Audi (with Porsche taking the lead here).