Mixing it up: Porsche unveils a new gas-powered 911 Carrera T and electric Taycan GTS

For Porsche (DRPRY), being flexible is sehr gutes Geschäft, or very good business.

The German luxury and sports brand is known for the iconic 911 sports car, but of course in recent years sales successes like the Macan and Cayenne SUVs and the fully electric Taycan showed a different path was possible. In fact, a couple of years back, it decided that 80% of its cars would be EVs by the end of the decade — and ushered plans for new EVs like the Macan EV and replacements for the 718 Boxster and Cayman, which would also be EVs.

How things change. The general EV market isn’t growing as much as experts thought, and many luxury brands like Mercedes and Audi have seen EV sales plummet. Porsche also backed away from its ambitious electrification plans.

Porsche too saw Taycan EV sales slip in 2024, but the company attributed this drop to supply chain issues and customers waiting for the updated Taycan.

Now the wait is over: The new Taycan is here. And so is the new 911 Carrera T, the stripped-down 911 — meaning it’s more lightweight than the regular 911 and includes some of the more performance-oriented options only available on higher trim levels.

For Porsche, debuting both cars at the same time makes sense. That’s because it is what their drivers want: more gas-powered sports cars and performance-oriented EVs.

There’s a market for both.

“When it comes to [a Porsche], it’s meant to be a driver’s car. It’s meant to be engaging, it’s meant to be practical … and there’s no reason why an electric car can’t do that,” said Porsche North America’s product specialist Frank Wiesmann to Yahoo Finance when discussing the Taycan.

By the same token, Weismann noted Porshe is “still very passionate about very analog cars,” meaning the 911 with its manual transmission and a howling gas engine.

After all these years, it doesn’t get more analog than the 911. The new 911 Carrera T comes with lightweight glass and less sound-deadening material to give the car a more raw feel, but it now includes rear-wheel steering as a standard option, sits lower, and has better brakes, among other sporty options.

But the biggest change may be that the Carrera T is manual transmission only.

“The US is pretty much the biggest market for us when it comes to people that are looking for a transmission like that,” Wiesmann said. “So if you’re really wanting to be one with the car, row your own gears and have that engaging element that many purist drivers still find very important. They want to shift themselves. That’s just an additional layer of involvement with the car.”

Indeed, Porsche said 70% of US buyers of the prior Carrera T selected it with the seven-speed manual. Now it comes in six-speed flavor, with a sportier short-throw shifter and new linkages, giving it a more direct, mechanical — or analog — feel.

On the opposite spectrum is the Taycan. Porsche’s first all-electric vehicle impressed me with its ferocious horsepower, torque figures, and race-tuned chassis and suspension setup.

The new GTS improves on those characteristics, with Porsche Active Ride suspension that irons out the bumps on the road, new aero and design bits, and nearly 100 more horsepower, now hitting 690 hp.

Porsche hopes the new changes across the Taycan EV lineup will help boost sales. For a car that starts at $99,400, all the new updates will help in a highly competitive marketplace featuring competitors like the Tesla Model S and Lucid Air.

Taycan isn’t just competing against EVs but gas-powered cars and hybrids too. And that’s why Porsche went multi-energy, as some have called it, with hybrid Cayenne SUVs and Panamera sedans also in the product portfolio.

And the 911 gets hybrid power too, in the new 911 Carrera GTS.

“We always wanted to remain flexible with the powertrain strategy,” Weismann said. “Some people really want an EV environment at home, where they park the car, charge the car; the way they use it supports that. And other people do not, and they might be a little bit skeptical, and maybe a hybrid that offers some electrification but still retains the familiarity and security of a gas engine makes that entry a little easier.”

Weismann and Porsche’s decision to switch it up and offer various powertrain options here isn’t unique in the industry, but what is unique is that the sporty brand feels all options — even hybrids — have something to offer from an enthusiast perspective.

“It really speaks to no matter what the powertrain is, it always should reflect the company’s core values,” Wiesmann said.

The 2025 911 Carrera T and Taycan GTS will arrive in dealerships next year, with the Carrera T starting at $135,995 and the Taycan GTS at $149,895.

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.

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