Demand for the Porsche Taycan in North America has been strong, yet only 350 units have been sold in the U.S. from December through March.
The reason for this is that the Taycan is being built at the Zuffenhausen assembly plant in Stuttgart, Germany, where production was halted for six weeks in early April and only resumed in mid-May, thus complicating the Taycan’s rollout in the U.S.
America was this nameplate’s launch market, with the high-priced Turbo and Turbo S variants arriving back in December, followed by the lower-priced 4S model in mid-April.
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“That six-week window was very much reserved for fulfilling the U.S. demand,” said Porsche North America boss Klaus Zellmer in an interview with Autonews. “We had to take thousands of cars out of our sales plan for this year that we will not get into the United States and Canada.”
Even so, global demand for the Porsche EV has outstripped the carmaker’s own expectations, forcing it to reportedly double its annual production capacity to 40,000 units.
“The Taycan is the sports car in the battery-electric vehicle segment right now,” added Zellmer. “That’s what people aspire for.”
He went on to say that this is a new era for his company and that as a milestone, the rollout of the Taycan can only be compared to Porsche “coming from two-door sports cars and selling an SUV in 2002.”
Just how important of a car this is for Porsche was made quite clear back in February when the German brand ran its first Super Bowl ad in more than 20 years in order to promote its EV.
