The 911 will never be electric, Porsche says. The Boxster and Cayman will be.
Porsche’s new boss gave the 911 a promise at his first investor day. The two-seaters got a battery instead.
Facts from the Oct. 7, 2026 fact-check of the Facebook post: Porsche Newsroom USA release of Oct. 7, 2026 (primary) and Autocar, finews and Electrek (quote). The quote is attributed to Autocar because it is not in Porsche's written release. Source titles re-read Oct. 13, 2026. The Mission S update was checked against Porsche's Oct. 15, 2026, release and its U.S. Mission S page on Oct. 17, 2026.
Porsche’s new chief executive, Michael Leiters, held his first Capital Markets Day on Wednesday, Oct. 7, at the company’s Weissach Development Center. That is the meeting where a carmaker tells investors what it plans to build and how it plans to make money doing it. Most fans heard one line, a promise about the 911. The bigger news was about the two cars that did not get one.
The promise
Autocar reports Leiters saying: “I can assure you, the 911 will never be electric.” Finews and Electrek carry the same quote. It is not in Porsche’s written release, so file it under something the boss said on stage, as reported, rather than a line in the strategy document.
That is him in the photo, standing next to a red 911, which is roughly where you would stand if you wanted a promise to look sincere. Autocar notes he joined Porsche from McLaren last year.
The cars that go electric
The Boxster and Cayman are Porsche’s smaller two-seaters. Boxster is the convertible, Cayman the coupe. In plain English, the big difference from a 911 is where the engine sits. In these two it lives behind the seats, in the middle of the car. A 911 carries its engine behind the rear axle, which is the reason 911 people have opinions about everything.
Porsche’s release says the next 718 Boxster and Cayman will be all-electric, and that 2028 is expected to be their first full year of production. Finews describes the electric 718’s battery stacked behind the cockpit, where the engine used to sit. So the middle of the car keeps its job. It just stops making noise about it.
Something above the 911
The release also says Porsche is developing a mid-engined super sports car platform that would allow a new model line above the 911. A platform here means the shared bones, the structure and layout a family of cars can be built on, not one finished car. Porsche said it would show a preview of that potential platform on Oct. 15, and it did. More on that below.
So the timeline reads like this: the small cars go electric, the 911 stays as it is, and something bigger and more expensive got its first look on Oct. 15.
Update, Oct. 15: the Mission S
Porsche showed the preview on Oct. 15 and called it the Mission S. It made its world premiere on a pier in Queens, New York, the same pier where the 550 Spyder, Porsche’s first super sports car, was photographed in 1953. It is a vision model, meaning a design study, not a showroom car. Porsche says it stands for the new mid-engine platform and a permanent line of cars above the 911, not a one-off.
The most talked-about detail is something it leaves out. There is no permanently built-in center screen. A retractable MagSafe phone mount holds your own phone instead, and the phone can do the navigation. Behind the wheel sit five round gauges, and a red button on the steering wheel switches on a driving mode called “On your own,” which turns off the driver assistance systems. Porsche has not announced the engine, the speed or the price. So for now, the one part of the dashboard with a confirmed spec sheet is the phone you already own.
The fine print
So the Boxster gets a battery and the 911 gets a pinky promise. Of the two, only the battery is in the written release.
Would you drive an electric Boxster, or does a Porsche need an engine?
Sources
- Porsche Newsroom USA, “New sports cars, greater exclusivity, stronger profitability: Porsche presents new strategy through to 2035,” Oct. 7, 2026
- Autocar, James Attwood, report on Porsche’s new halo car, SUV and specials plan, Oct. 7, 2026
- finews.com, “Porsche Shifts Down to Speed Up,” Oct. 2026
- Porsche Newsroom USA, “Porsche Mission S: the essence of the sports car reinterpreted,” Oct. 15, 2026
- Porsche Cars North America, Mission S model page
- Electrek, “Porsche says Boxster goes all-electric in 2028, but 911 never will (yes it will),” Oct. 7, 2026
