Porsche limbers up for Cayenne Electric unveiling

How important is Porsche's second all-electric SUV? How long is a piece of string?

By PH Staff / Monday, 10 November 2025 / Loading comments

If it feels like you already know many important things about the Cayenne Electric, then you do. Its maker has been banging on about it for yonks (the video below is already four months old) and has already told us much about the battery-powered model that will join the Taycan and Macan in the Porsche ranks come next year. Nevertheless, it has held back some important details - not least how it looks without its half-hearted disguise - so confirmation that the covers will finally come off next week is significant enough for Porsche fans. And downright pivotal for the firm itself.

We won’t rake over the coals of its strategy reversal when it comes to electric cars in general (suffice it to say that every man and his dog knows by now that Porsche’s intention to sell many, many EVs has now been walked back to the point where it will sell just some) but the Cayenne, for so long the sales volume powerhouse, will surely be treated as a bellwether for the brand’s immediate future. Were it to strike a chord with buyers, as any large SUV is intended to, Porsche can point to a resilience in what seems like faltering demand for upmarket battery power. If it doesn’t, it can at least console itself that the decision to cancel an even larger, chintzier electric crossover was the correct one.

At any rate, the manufacturer (along with its new CEO) will be clutching its pearls behind the scenes, and fervently hoping that a 108kWh battery and a power output certain to put the current 739hp Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid in the shade, is enough to fire the public’s imagination. To that end, the new model will get two unveilings: a digital one on November 19th, and then a public one at an Icons of Porsche festival in Dubai. Unsurprisingly, the firm is promising to ‘set new standards in the SUV segment’, much as it did back in 2002 when the original Cayenne launched to much fanfare. And derision. Followed by wild success.

Porsche would cheerily accept the former if it were promptly succeeded by the latter, though it is already at pains in its short missive to remind buyers that the Electric derivative will complement the existing range of combustion-engined and plug-in hybrid variants. Not the original long-term solution, of course, but precisely the kind of fits-all-sizes sticking plaster that it has been forced to find in response to customer demand. In layout, size, look, power and proposition, the Cayenne Electric will be neatly differentiated from its more conventional siblings. If it is even half as popular, Porsche will consider itself onto something.