A logo of Porsche is seen outside a Porsche car dealership in Brussels, Belgium, in this May 28 2020 file photo. Picture: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN
No automotive CEO has lamented this as openly and frequently as Herbert Diess, who routinely makes headlines by emphasising the urgency with which VW must move to transform itself. Exploring a Porsche listing is a nod to that need and will be a litmus test of sorts for its future. But getting such a deal done will not be simple because of the institutional hurdles that have stood in the way of other attempts Diess has made to shake up VW since he became CEO in 2018. Major decisions must be approved by the company’s dominant and oft-at-odds shareholders led by the Porsche and Piech family and German state of Lower Saxony, which tends to side with powerful labour unions.
It is clear VW will spare no expense in its efforts to catch up to Tesla, having budgeted a bigger slice of its €150bn spending budget for investment in electric cars and software in the next five years. As strong as earnings are now, they will be strained by all the costs associated with retiring some operations.
Porsche will add a more spacious version of the Taycan to the line-up later this year, then roll out a battery-powered version of the Macan crossover in 2022 that will be based on a new dedicated EV platform being co-developed with Audi.The idea of a separate listing for Porsche is not new as such.