Porsche’s electric future now has room for a gasoline comeback. The company is preparing a combustion-powered successor to the original Macan, with 2028 identified as the target, after demand failed to shift toward the electric model as smoothly as hoped. Recent comments from chief executive Michael Leiters reinforce that direction, but “the gas Macan is coming back” needs an important qualification: Porsche is developing a replacement, not simply restarting the outgoing vehicle unchanged.
The stakes extend beyond an engine choice. Porsche must retain customers who still want gasoline power while giving its electric SUVs a chance to succeed—and avoid losing buyers during the transition.
A Comeback, but Not a Simple Restart
The clearest part of Porsche’s message is the return of a gasoline-powered offering in the Macan’s market segment. The company confirmed plans for a combustion-engine successor in 2025, and the Financial Times reported in late September 2026 that Leiters intends to bring a petrol version back by 2028. That reinforces an existing product decision rather than announcing an immediate return to dealerships. For owners attached to the original formula, the direction is encouraging, but the calendar still matters.
The name requires more caution. Coverage has often called the project a new gas Macan, while earlier reporting described a separate successor that could receive another name. Those descriptions should not be mistaken for a complete production announcement. Final branding, specifications and individual market schedules are separate questions from whether Porsche intends to sell another gasoline-powered compact SUV. The comeback is therefore clearest as a return of customer choice, not a promise that the outgoing Macan will simply reappear with a few cosmetic changes.
The Sales Split Explains the Change of Direction
Porsche’s first-half 2026 delivery figures show why abandoning gasoline in this segment became difficult to defend. Between January and June, the company delivered 35,315 Macans worldwide: 19,695 with combustion engines and 15,620 with electric power. Calculated from those totals, gasoline represented roughly 56% of Macan deliveries. The older vehicle was still outselling its electric counterpart even though the combustion version was no longer offered in the European Union.
The combined Macan total fell 22% from the same period in 2025. Porsche attributed the decline to several factors, including slower-than-expected electric-vehicle adoption, a strong comparison period and the expiration of U.S. incentives for electric and hybrid vehicles. Those explanations matter: deliveries are not a controlled experiment proving that every missing sale reflects opposition to batteries. Nevertheless, the commercial warning is clear. Removing the powertrain responsible for more than half of Macan deliveries creates a substantial retention risk unless enough of those customers willingly switch to the EV.
The Electric Macan Also Has a Real Customer Base
The current setback should not erase the electric Macan’s earlier results. Across the full 2025 calendar year, Porsche delivered 84,328 Macans, making the range its best-selling model line. Electric versions accounted for 45,367 deliveries, ahead of the gasoline model’s 38,961. In other words, the electric version represented more than half of global Macan deliveries that year, even though gasoline regained the lead in the first half of 2026.
That contrast makes the story more useful than a simple declaration that nobody wants an electric Porsche. There is a substantial audience for the product; the question is whether that audience can sustain the entire compact-SUV business without a combustion alternative. Porsche also reported that fully electric vehicles represented 22.2% of its worldwide deliveries in 2025. The strategic challenge is therefore to serve two sizeable customer groups rather than treat either one as irrelevant. Bringing back gasoline addresses the customers an EV-only offering may leave behind; it does not make existing electric-Macan buyers disappear.
The Showroom Gap Is the Immediate Problem
The original gasoline Macan’s production was scheduled to finish at the end of July 2026, according to Porsche’s half-year delivery update. With its successor targeted for 2028, the timetable leaves a gap that unsold inventory can only partly bridge. Road & Track reported that Porsche expected remaining vehicles to support sales into 2027 in certain regions. That is not a guarantee of uninterrupted supply, or of finding a particular engine, colour or specification.
There is also an important difference between a factory cutoff and the last retail sale. A vehicle can remain available from a dealer after production ends, while a preferred version may disappear much earlier. Consider an owner whose lease expires in 2027: waiting for the replacement could mean extending ownership, choosing the electric Macan or shopping elsewhere. A promised future model cannot, by itself, solve that immediate need for transport. For Porsche, the challenge is keeping the relationship intact until the promised gasoline alternative reaches the showroom.
Buyers Are Weighing More Than Acceleration
The obstacles to EV adoption are not necessarily objections to electric motors. J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Electric Vehicle Consideration Study found that charging-station availability remained the leading reason shoppers rejected an EV, cited by 46% of those rejecting one. Charging time followed at 44%, with purchase price at 42%. The study covered 8,154 prospective buyers and lessees, measuring purchase consideration rather than completed sales. Its findings concern the wider American market, not Porsche customers specifically, but they help explain why impressive performance figures cannot settle every buying decision.
The study also found that 25% of new-vehicle shoppers were very likely to consider an EV, up one percentage point from 2025. Interest can therefore coexist with hesitation. A buyer with convenient home charging may see an electric SUV very differently from someone living in an apartment without a dependable charging option. Neither situation establishes which powertrain is universally better. It does explain why requiring every Macan customer to make the same transition, on the same timetable, risks leaving practical ownership needs unanswered.
A New Gas SUV Must Still Drive Like a Porsche
A shared engineering foundation could help Porsche develop the replacement without starting every component from scratch. CarsDirect, citing Automotive News, reported that the SUV is expected to use Audi’s Premium Platform Combustion architecture, which also supports the Q5. That remains reported product information rather than a complete Porsche specification sheet. It does not establish which engines, suspension systems or performance figures customers will ultimately be offered.
Leiters has stressed that the vehicle must justify its badge. “We have to make sure that this is a real Porsche,” he said when asked about accelerating its arrival, according to the same reporting. His explanation linked the development timetable to new technology and the work required to prepare it for production. The distinction matters commercially: restoring gasoline power would solve only one part of the problem. The replacement must also give buyers a convincing reason to choose a Porsche rather than another SUV sharing similar components. Simply arriving sooner would not guarantee that.
The Electric Macan Remains Part of the Plan
The electric Macan is not being written out of Porsche’s future. Its official technical material describes a 100-kWh battery with approximately 95 kWh of usable capacity, an 800-volt electrical architecture and DC charging at up to 270 kW. Porsche quotes roughly 21 minutes to charge from 10% to 80% at a suitable fast charger. The expanded electric range also includes a GTS version, evidence that the company has continued developing the battery-powered model alongside its gasoline replacement plans.
Those capabilities deserve to be judged accurately. A 10%–80% charging figure is not an empty-to-full refill, and the maximum charging rate is not available from every charger. Porsche’s own documentation describes different performance on lower-voltage equipment. For a customer whose routes and charging arrangements suit the vehicle, the electric Macan can remain a credible option. The strategic correction is not that batteries have suddenly become useless. It is that a technically capable EV does not automatically replace the ownership experience every gasoline customer wants.
The Financial Reset Is Bigger Than One Model
Porsche’s willingness to revisit its product plan is easier to understand against its financial results. Porsche AG reported group operating profit of €413 million for 2025, down from €5.64 billion in 2024. Approximately €3.9 billion in extraordinary expenses included product-strategy changes, resizing the company, battery-related costs and U.S. tariffs. Those categories make it misleading to describe the earnings collapse as the cost of the electric Macan alone.
The picture improved in the first half of 2026, when group operating profit reached €1.35 billion and the operating margin rose to 7.8%, compared with 5.5% a year earlier. Porsche credited cost control, pricing and product mix, while lower net charges for strategic realignment also helped. Those charges fell to approximately €100 million, compared with around €800 million a year earlier. That recovery arrived before the proposed gasoline successor, so it cannot be credited to a vehicle still in development. The new SUV is better understood as one part of a longer-term attempt to rebuild profitability: preserve desirable products, reduce avoidable complexity and stop assuming that one powertrain strategy will suit every customer.
Three Powertrains, Rather Than One Winner
Porsche’s wider direction is now explicitly built around combustion engines, hybrids and fully electric vehicles. At its June 2026 annual meeting, Leiters confirmed investment in all three and said hybrid technology should not be treated merely as a temporary bridge. That helps define the reversal correctly. The abandoned assumption concerns an electric-only replacement strategy in an important market segment, not a retreat from an entirely electric Porsche lineup, which never existed.
The larger Cayenne illustrates the alternative. Porsche introduced its electric version alongside existing gasoline and plug-in-hybrid models, and said development of the combustion and hybrid versions would continue well into the 2030s. This gives the company a practical example of adding electrification without immediately removing established choices. It also creates a harder management task: funding several technologies while keeping the range understandable and profitable. The approach is not automatically cheaper or simpler. Its appeal is flexibility—allowing customers to choose a powertrain without first having to leave the brand.
The Next Test Is What Reaches the Showroom
The next meaningful milestone is not another promise that gasoline has a future. It is a clearer picture of the replacement itself: its final name, powertrain range, market rollout and the price customers will actually pay. Porsche scheduled a Capital Markets Day for October 7, 2026, to explain its wider strategy in greater detail. That provides an opportunity for clarification, but it should not be presented as a guaranteed reveal of the new compact SUV.
For buyers, the reported 2028 target is a planning signal rather than a delivery appointment. For Porsche, the test will be whether the new model arrives with enough distinction and appeal to retain customers who were not ready to go electric. The sales evidence supports offering another choice, but it does not guarantee the comeback will succeed. Porsche still has to build the vehicle, manage the transition and persuade people to buy it. The important lesson is less about gasoline defeating electricity than about customers setting a pace that product plans must respect.
