Porsche’s entry-level sports car is in limbo. The all-electric 718 Boxster and Cayman, originally due in 2025, have slipped to 2027 — and reports from early 2026 say the program may not survive at all under new CEO Michael Leiters.
How the 718 got stuck
The combustion 718 left EU showrooms in mid-2024, an early casualty of cybersecurity regulations the aging platform couldn’t meet cost-effectively, and production wound down globally around October 2025. The plan was a clean handover to an electric successor. Then Northvolt — the Swedish battery maker contracted to supply the high-performance cells the car was designed around — collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving Porsche without a supplier for its most weight-sensitive EV. The launch slipped from 2025 to 2026, then to 2027.
New CEO, new doubts
Michael Leiters took over as Porsche CEO on January 1, 2026, and by February, reports citing Bloomberg said he was weighing scrapping the all-electric 718 entirely. The case against it has been building: ballooning development costs, no battery supplier locked in, and a 26 percent drop in Porsche’s China sales in 2025 that has cooled the company’s appetite for an EV-only sports-car bet. Porsche has meanwhile pivoted toward extending its profitable combustion models — the 911, Cayenne, and Macan — and some reporting suggests a stopgap revival of combustion 718 production is on the table if the EV is killed.
What this means for buyers
As of mid-2026, there is simply no 718 to buy new — a gap in the lineup Porsche never intended. If the electric car survives, 2027 is the earliest realistic showroom date; if it doesn’t, the outgoing combustion Cayman and Boxster become the last of their line, which used-market prices are already starting to reflect. Either way, the original promise — a sub-1,600-kg electric roadster on an 800-volt platform, “analogue in spirit” — now reads less like a spec sheet and more like an open question.