Porsche shutters e-bike, battery, utility software as part of company restructuring

Porsche is closing three of its factories as it struggles with declining sales and declining profits, the German automaker announced Friday.

Automaker battery supplier, The Cellforce teamhe is probably the most injured. This section had already gone through a “renovation” in August After Porsche abandoned plans to manufacture its batteries, it turned Cellforce into a research and development arm. Now, Porsche is said to be pursuing a “technological path to open energy” – company talk that suggests the automaker will rely more on third-party companies for its batteries.

Porsche eBike Performance, which created e-bike driving systemand Cetitec, the Internet provider that served Porsche and the Volkswagen Group, will also be closed.

More than 500 people, who were employed in these three organizations, have lost their jobs.

“We need to refocus on our core business,” said Porsche CEO and Chairman Michael Leiters words. “This is the foundation we need to rebuild. This forces us to go through the pain – including our institutions.”

It’s a message that Leiters, who became CEO earlier this year, first gave in March when the company announced plans to restructure its business. “We will reposition Porsche, making the company leaner, faster and more important,” he said at the time.

Since then, Porsche has pulled itself out of a number of deals, including an agreement reached in April to sell its stake in Bugatti Rimac and Rimac Group to a consortium led by New York-based firm HOF Capital.

Porsche’s electrification efforts got off to a strong start with the Taycan in 2019, but the company soon ran into trouble producing the next EV. The Macan Electric has been delayed by almost two years as software development within Volkswagen’s Carad division has been delayed.

The company as a whole has suffered from declining sales in key markets, including North America, where sales were down 11%, and China, where shipments were down 21%. in the first part of this year. Sales in Europe were also down 18%, although there was a slight increase in Germany.

Porsche is criticized EV adoption because of his problems, although the company continues to fail in China, where electric cars said more than half of the marketsuggests that consumer acceptance of EVs may not be the cause.

The closing of Cellforce marks a financial shift for Porsche’s EV program. The German automaker started the company to design and manufacture batteries that differentiate its EVs from other companies.

“The battery cell is the combustion chamber of the future,” Oliver Blume he said in 2022 when he headed the executive board of Porsche.

After struggling to produce EVs in time, Porsche has changed many of its new cars to revive some of its internal combustion platforms, which were originally designed to be sold in limited quantities by 2030. The company is still planning to release new EVs though, and soon it will sunset the Porsche Macan. Porsche is expected to deliver all Cayenne lightsand several types, to sell this year.