‘The battery cell is the combustion chamber of the future," said Porsche back in 2021. Such was the brand’s confidence that it could parlay its formidable ICE prowess into the EV era that it bought a German battery company called Cellforce, which promised high-performance, energy-dense packs worthy of EVs wearing the Porsche badge.
In the first quarter of this year, however, Porsche wrote off €700 million (£606m) covering its investment in Cellforce and “other battery activities”. Porsche also holds a controlling stake in battery maker V4Smart, a division of Varta.
In total, Porsche wrote off €1.3 billion (£1.1bn) in the first half of 2025, denting profits to the point that the once formidable cash-generating machine reported an operating margin of just 5.5%. Profits fell by a third to just over €1m, dropping Porsche behind Skoda in the Volkswagen Group stable.
Now Porsche is laying off the bulk of Cellforce’s employees, German newspaper Der Spiegel reports, with the plan for 20-30GWh hours of battery production capacity in tatters.
Porsche has said it will cut the total number of employees across its business by 15% by 2029, or around 3900.
The overall market volume [for EVs] is much lower than we expected years ago,” CEO Oliver Blume said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call at the end of July. “That puts our business under pressure.”
China was to be a big consumer of Porsche EVs like the Taycan, Macan Electric and next year’s Cayenne Electric under the EV plan. It made sense, give the market was moving much faster to electrification than Europe or the US. But that’s not what happened at the top end. “In terms of electromobility, the luxury segment still does not exist,” Blume said.
Porsche had been positioning itself in China to sell 100,000 cars a year after hitting a record 95,700 in 2021. But then the luxury premium market – EV and ICE – started to sag amid a consumer slowdown before rapidly deflating last year, leaving Porsche’s figure at 56,887. This year, the company is forecasting just 40,000 sales in China.
“We need to rescale our company, because 20% from China is missing and we expect won't come back,” Blume said.
Porsche is now adapting its business there to be profitable at around 40,000 units, he said. That means more focus on special editions and factory orders rather than pre-built stock that – currently – ends up getting discounted.
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