Porsche says no to autonomous cars: ‘One wants to drive a Porsche by oneself’

Porsche CEO Oliver Blume is not a fan of autonomous cars. As the leader of one of the most celebrated performance brands in automotive history, the executive clearly understands the value of staying true to one’s roots, and in a recent interview, he said his company has no plans to go driverless.

“One wants to drive a Porsche by oneself,” Blume told German newspaper Westfalen-Blatt, courtesy of Reuters. “An iPhone belongs in your pocket, not on the road.”

Other automakers like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are fully embracing autonomous technology, but Blume sees Porsche as a driver-oriented company first and foremost. The brand has bent to market pressure before though, as evidenced by its best-selling Cayenne SUV, the Macan crossover, and the Panamera sedan. As cool as hardcore sports cars are, selling a handful of 911 GT3s every year won’t quite cover Porsche’s utility bills.

So while we won’t be terribly shocked if a self-driving Porsche shows up sometime in the distant future, Blume is steadfast in his commitment to purity for now. According to him, an autonomous Porsche is as alluring as using a “Rolex for boiling eggs.” Apparently, Blume is not one to sugarcoat things.

Despite its reluctance to jump on the self-driving train, Porsche is not completely stuck in the past. The brand recently confirmed that the all-electric Mission E will go into production toward the end of the decade, which means some version of the sleek, 600-horsepower concept shown above is headed for public roads. The manufacturer will invest a whopping 700 million euros (approximately $764 million) into the project, which comes at a perfect time given Volkswagen Group’s ongoing Dieselgate fiasco.

Similarly, a plug-in hybrid version of the iconic 911 is expected to arrive by 2018. Read more about the story here.