Bicycle electronics subsidiaries, battery, Porsche rolls as part of company overhaul

Porsche is closing three of its subsidiaries as it faces falling sales and shrinking profits, the German automaker said on Friday.

The automaker’s battery subsidiary, Cellforce Group, is perhaps the biggest casualty. The division had already gone through an “adjustment” in August after Porsche abandoned plans to make its own batteries, turning Cellforce into a research and development arm. Now, Porsche says it’s pursuing an “open technology powertrain strategy” — company talk that suggests the automaker will rely more on other companies for its batteries.

Porsche eBike Performance, which made e-bike drive systems, and Cetitec, a networking software subsidiary that served both Porsche and the wider Volkswagen Group, will also close.

More than 500 people, employed in the three subsidiaries, will lose their jobs.

“We need to refocus on our core business,” said Porsche CEO and Executive Chairman Michael Leiters. statement. “This is the necessary foundation for a successful strategic realignment. This is forcing us to make painful cuts — including to our subsidiaries.”

It’s a message Leiters, who became CEO earlier this year, first delivered in March when the company announced plans to realign its operations. “We will completely reposition Porsche, make the company leaner, faster and the products even more desirable,” he said at the time.

Since then, Porsche has been spun off from several efforts, including an agreement reached in April to sell its stake in Bugatti Rimac and Rimac Group to a consortium led by New York-based investment firm HOF Capital.

Porsche’s electrification efforts got off to a strong start with the Taycan in 2019, but the company soon ran into problems developing follow-up electric vehicles. The Macan Electric was delayed nearly two years as software development at Volkswagen’s Cariad division lagged behind expectations.

The entire company has suffered sales declines in key markets, including North America, where sales were down 11% and China, where deliveries were down 21%. in the first trimester of this year. European sales were also down 18%, although they rose slightly in Germany.

Porsche has blamed EV adoption for its woes though the company’s continued poor performance in China, where electric vehicles claim more than half the marketsuggests that consumer acceptance of EVs may not be the root cause.

Cellforce’s closure marks a change in fortunes for Porsche’s EV program. The German automaker had originally launched the subsidiary to develop and manufacture batteries that would set its EVs apart from other companies.

“The battery cell is the combustion chamber of the future,” said Oliver Blume he said in 2022 when he was chairman of the executive board of Porsche.

After struggling to develop electric vehicles in time, Porsche has focused much of its new-vehicle efforts on reviving some of its internal combustion platforms, which were originally slated to be a minority of sales by 2030. However, the company still plans to launch new EVs and will soon phase out the natural gas version of the Porsche Macan. Porsche is expected to bring an all-electric version of the Cayenne and several variants to market this year.