“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.
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