Last Wednesday, we broke the news that Porsche was deciding the fate of the electric 718 Boxster/Cayman successor. While our sources have not been able to confirm the outcome of that meeting, Audi has effectively done it for us. Just days after our story ran, an internal memo was leaked from Audi confirming that the next-gen TT—the all-electric corporate cousin being developed on the same platform as the Porsches—is still on. And that comes straight from Audi CEO Gernot Döllner’s mouth.
The way the story is being couched, Audi is going to build its new TT coupe whether Porsche forges ahead with the 718 EV or not. But here’s the thing … There is no Audi TT without the Cayman/Boxster EV. And we mean that in the literal sense. Audi and Porsche aren’t jointly developing the platform; that responsibility fell exclusively to Porsche. Audi’s job is simply to wrap the result in something that looks enough like a TT to satisfy its traditionalists.
Is there a world where Porsche bails on selling the 718 variants but still builds Audi a car? Perhaps, but it’s a stretch. Why? Rather than a traditional platform-sharing scenario, picture instead the Mazda-Fiat situation from a decade ago. If Mazda had bailed on ND Miata development partway through, Fiat couldn’t have simply picked up the pieces and run with it. Without Mazda, there was no Fiat.
No Porsche, no platform; no platform, no Audi. It’s as simple as that.
So, when Döllner sent that memo to his TT engineering team on Monday saying that “The delivery of the platform by Porsche is not in question,” he effectively confirmed that the Porsche still exists by the good told transitive property. The Audi exists, therefore the platform exists. The platform exists, therefore the Porsche exists. Bada-bing, bada-boom.
But because the Audi is going to remain exclusively an EV, Döllner’s confirmation leaves us with a lingering question: What is the status of the ICE variant of that platform? We’ve been hearing things here and there about the 718 Boxster and Cayman being stuck in EV development hell for more than a year now; updates on the gasoline-powered variants have been equally disheartening, and even fewer and farther between. Even if it comes here, the likelihood of it being offered with the 4.0-liter flat-six is vanishingly small; a port of one of Porsche’s turbocharged 3.0s from the 911 is more likely—assuming it fits, anyway. The car wasn’t originally engineered to house a conventional ICE shape amidships.
So, is Porsche still working on an electric 718 successor? All signs point to yes. But if we’re wrong and you have proof, we’d love to see it.
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