Porsche 918 replacement not until 2025

Porsche has always said it will replace its benchmark-setting 918 Spyder with a new-generation, limited-edition hypercar flagship, but until now it hasn't said when.

The bad news it won't be until about 2025, according to Porsche's global chief, Oliver Blume.

"We will have something in the future, but not in the near future," said Blume when asked at the Geneva motor show about a successor for its 918 Spyder plug-in super-hybrid.

"Special models like the 918 Spyder normally we launch every 10 years. The 918 Spyder we launched in 2015. Now we are 17.

"It's not time to talk about this. It's something about which we can talk in five years."

Blume said Porsche had not yet started work on its replacement for the 918, which ended production in June 2015, but welcomed new competition in the form of Mercedes-AMG's F1-inspired Project One and Aston Martin's upcoming Valkyrie.

"We love to have competition because we are coming from motorsport," he said.

"Competition helps you to be better, even better than the competition, and therefore for us it's very important to have a good management and innovations, and at the end have the car with the best driving performance, best driving dynamics and that's our competition. We are happy about the competition."

Blume, who replaced Volkswagen Group CEO boss Matthias Muller as Porsche's global chief in October 2015, said Australia -- which he plans on visiting for the first time soon "because it's such a good market for us" – would be a potential destination for the company's next hypercar, but did not say if it would be produced in right-hand drive this time round.

First revealed at the 2010 Geneva motor show as a concept and then the 2013 Frankfurt show in production form, the spiritual successor for the Carrera GT hypercar entered production a few months later before first deliveries in March 2014.

Porsche said it had sold its entire production run of 918 vehicles by the end of that year, with the majority going to the US, where 297 found homes, about 100 going to both Germany and China, and strong demand also from the Middle East and UK.

This was despite an official price range of between €768,026 and €947,716 in Germany -- or $1.12-$1.38 million in Australia, where import and luxury car taxes would have brought the price to more than $2m.

The only 918 to grace Australian roads was owned by Porsche, which staged an ‘E-Mobility’ roadshow of its plug-in hybrid models earlier this year, when the 918 logged an unofficial Phillip Island lap record and hit 350km/h on Outback public roads north of Alice Springs.

Porsche said each 918 took about 100 hours to hand-assemble by a staff of about 100 in a dedicated fabrication facility.

The 918, which also set a production car lap record of 6:57 on the North Loop of the Nürburgring in September 2013, can drive for up to 30km at speeds of up to 150 km/h using only its twin electric motors that develop 210kW at 6500rpm in full-electric ‘E-Power‘ mode.

In ‘Race Hybrid‘ mode the electric motors work in conjunction with the car’s motorsport-derived 4.6-litre V8 petrol engine, which cranks out 447kW at 8700rpm, to deliver maximum total power output of 652 kW at 8500rpm.

The result is a 2.8-second 0-100km/h sprint time, which can be lowered to 2.6 seconds with the optional Weissach performance package. Claimed fuel consumption is just 3.0L/100km.

Given about 10 per cent of all Cayenne and Panamera models are now hybrids (including the new Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, the first hybrid to crown a Porsche model line), the 918 replacement will almost certainly embrace hybrid technology developed in Porsche's dominant World Endurance Championship program.