Yahoo Finance

Well, Porsche's first ever electrified 911 is here and pulling into the studio to tell us more about it is Yahoo Finance senior autos reporter, Pras Subramanian. Pras, walk us through it.

You know, I was driving this car. Not the robot, not a robot, right? It was me, not the robot.

You got to test drive it, yeah.

I got to, I got to drive it. I got to drive it. So, it's the first electrified hybrid 911. This is a big deal for Porsche. You know, this is their sports car, right? This is a car that's made, you know…

You look good in that car, by the way.

Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, I was just there. That's me trying to drive.

That looks right, yeah.

I'm actually at a test track there in, in Los Angeles when I was there for a short time. So yeah, basically, this car, you know, it's, it's not about efficiency. It's about performance, right? It's not about an EV mode. It's about can you get more power, more torque off the line, uh, when you're accelerating, there's no gaps in power delivery. This is what it's all about, right? But, but there are some drawbacks, right? There's no EV only mode, okay? Uh, this car is not meant for, you know, that kind of thing. With the Corvette E-Ray, with a similar sized battery, you can actually have a little bit of electric range, believe it or not. So that's a bit of a drawback, but it's still an all-around winning car. Uh, pricing is not cheap, however, 170,000 starting, which is, you know, the going rate for a very top-of-the-line sports car at that technology. But we haven't talked about the big elephant in the room, which is tariffs, right? So Porsche has talked about how, you know, they, they make a lot of their cars in Europe. They're going to be subject to a 25% foreign tax on autos. They say they were going to price pass on some of that to, to, to buyers. And so the question is, you're bringing this innovative car to the US market, it's going to get potentially slammed by tariffs. What happens?

Does it, does it, do sales go away? Do people say, you know what? I'll pay the tariff to get this, the first ever electrified 911? We'll see.

When you were driving it, walk us through the experience. How did it feel?

You know, it's interesting because it has no electric starter. It goes right from, uh, there's a, there's a battery, a motor in the actual transmission and a motor that spools a turbo for immediate power. So you just push a button, it immediately fires up. Like it's a very kind of, uh, almost a shock. It's not like a, it's like a boom, you know? Uh, also very cool, but just driving it's super smooth. The car is so wide and planted. It, you know, it's, I'm a lucky guy. I'm a lucky guy here. It's obviously beautiful design, very purposeful interior, comfortable, but very much focused on the driver, looks great, looks smart. You know, every, every 911, a person on the street can look at, what car is that? That's a 911, right? So styling, great, but performance is very different than other 911s.

How so? How did it, how so? Walk me through that part.

It almost has the, the smoothness and power delivery almost of an EV, but you hear that motor in the back, right? You hear that car, that flat six kind of rumbling behind you. Immense power, kind of scary power. I was in a test track, we did a straightaway launch and the guy's like, just punch it.

Yeah.

I punched it. I got scared. We were, the wheels start spinning, the car flies. I mean, man, this is insane. So, uh, it is a fantastic car. It is a technological marvel. But I got to tell you, in the world of post-tariffs, the future of this car is perhaps uncertain in this country.

Can I just ask you one final question? Who's Porsche kind of taking over with that vehicle, taking on with that vehicle? Who's the competition?

I mean, it's kind of, I mentioned this Corvette E-Ray is the only other sports car, rear motor with an electric motor in it that kind of assists with some of this stuff and, and that's probably its only near kind of competition, right? But there's no real car out there in terms of, you know, there's, there's Acura NSX, that was a hybrid. That's gone, that's gone now. Uh, there's a couple other cars like the Bentley GT, which is way more money. That's also got a hybrid power system. So there's some cars here that, that, that do, there's no 911. There's no 911 with the hybrid that's really out there, as far as I know.

All right, great story. Thank you, Pras. Appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.