Porsche discontinued the original Macan in Europe last year, not because it wanted to, but because it had to. The gasoline crossover failed to meet the General Safety Regulation (GSR2) that came into effect in July 2024, forcing Zuffenhausen to pull the plug on its cash cow on the Old Continent. It’s still available in other parts of the world that don’t adhere to GSR2 legislation. However, the first-gen Macan’s days are numbered as production will end next year. What comes after? A new gas-fueled crossover.
Those “significant additional expenditures” partially allocated to investments in new gasoline and hybrid efforts will materialize into a new combustion-powered crossover. In March, Porsche said it was considering a new ICE product by “evaluating an independent model line in the SUV segment with combustion and hybrid powertrains.” That’s now been decided, and the model will go on sale in three years.
Speaking during the H1 2025 earnings call, CEO Oliver Blume confirmed a new gas-fueled crossover will arrive by 2028. The man calling the shots in Zuffenhausen described it as a “very, very typical Porsche for this segment and also differentiated from the BEV Macan.” To bring it to market in such a short time, the company is “speeding up the process there with very short development times.”
Blume didn’t elaborate on how the vehicle will be ready by 2028, even though it just received the green light. Our educated guess is that Porsche will rely on the Volkswagen Group’s Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) to accelerate development. If so, the crossover is likely to share a lot with the latest Audi Q5. That wouldn’t be without precedent, since the outgoing Macan rides on the MLB platform that underpinned the previous-generation Q5. In fact, Porsche has already said the new model “would benefit from synergies.”
The latest Q5 is the VW Group’s first SUV on the PPC architecture and comes with four-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines, plug-in hybrid setups, and a beefier V-6 for the hot SQ5. The latter features a 3.0-liter mild-hybrid engine with 362 horsepower on tap. Whether Porsche’s new crossover will mirror the Q5/SQ5 lineup remains to be seen, but the 2.0 TDI is unlikely to be offered. The company pledged to abandon diesel engines back in 2018 following the nasty Dieselgate scandal.
Since it’s still early days for prototype testing, all we have is the promise of a fresh design featuring “Porsche’s characteristic profile.” Blume says the newcomer will compete in the same segment as the Macan, so expect a similar footprint.
As for the vehicle’s name, it certainly won’t be Macan. Once the first-generation model is retired in 2026, Porsche will reserve that name exclusively for the purely electric second generation. There will be roughly a two-year gap between the end of production of the original Macan and its direct successor.
Initially, the company hadn’t planned to develop another combustion-powered crossover, betting everything on the electric Macan. However, it has come to terms with the reality that EVs aren’t gaining traction as Porsche had hoped, forcing management to reconsider.
