km : Automotive News

For any of you who let your guard down after Porsche debuted the new second-generation Cayenne last week, the pictures you see here may surprise and excite you. It turns out that while the company's smaller, lighter sport utility is the more relevant production news, Porsche was saving the good stuff for today. The 918 Spyder, while just a concept at this point, is simply fantastic.

The 918 isn't just a beautiful roadster, but a technological marvel as well. Hiding beneath the rear decklid is a 500-hp V8 coupled to a plug-in electric drivetrain with three motors producing 160 kW of output. The combination should deliver blistering performance, but it's also incredibly efficient, reducing emissions to just 70 grams of CO2 per kilometer and delivering an estimated 94 imperial miles per gallon of fuel. That, of course, is calculated with the consideration that the car can run on pure electric for some amount of time, and we imagine once that V8 starts spinning it's no longer too eco-friendly.

We've heard a number of rumors that Porsche, now owned by the Volkswagen Group, would get its own version of VW's Bluesport Concept (shown at Detroit 2009) and Audi's second e-tron concept (Detroit 2010) and we suspect this is that car. It that's the case, the production feasibility is quite strong, minus the futuristic drivetrain that could possibly be produced in very, very limited numbers a few years from now. But don't rule out a more traditional flat-six version of the car, possibly as the sub-Boxster model that's been discussed lately. If this is the new entry-level Porsche, it needs to be built now. We just love the design, which looks a bit like a more modern, scaled-down Carrera GT.

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