Porsche is swearing off a potential self-driving sports car but is open to the prospect of adopting some levels of autonomy in its next-generation range of vehicles.
While speaking with Autocar, Porsche chief executive Oliver Blume said that future Porsche models will be manually driven, sticking to the German company’s core DNA.
“When you buy a Porsche, you will drive it yourself, full stop. At the moment we do not think about a full version of robotic driving, we are thinking about features to combine with the real Porsche genes, so at the end you still have a real Porsche.
“For example, when you are going to work in the morning and you are in a traffic jam, there is a possibility to read the newspaper. When you go to a restaurant and you cannot find somewhere to park, the car will find somewhere to park itself and then fetch you after you leave the restaurant,” Blume said.
While Porsche is shunning fully autonomous vehicles, Blume reiterated that the brand will embrace electrification. This will start with the all-electric Mission E and then an expanded range of hybrid models.
“The headline is that the customer will have the opportunity to drive sports cars with a combustion engine, as well as new modern cars with electric engines and a lot of digitization but also all of the Porsche features,” he said.
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