For only slightly more than the cost of full interior deviated stitching on a new Taycan, you can actually buy an e-bike from Porsche. And Porsche has big ambitions for its e-bike business — something we’d heard evidence of last year, when the company announced its majority stake in the e-bike manufacturer Greyp (like grape). That was just the start, as Stuttgart has minted a new subsidiary — Porsche eBike Performance GmbH — created specifically to develop e-bike drivetrains.
Now, Porsche already sort of has a company that does that, having purchased Fazua in June. But the drive systems Porsche badges with its own name will be “particularly powerful,” we’re told. They’ll end up in Porsche’s own bikes of course, developed by another new subsidiary called P2 — but they’ll also find their way into e-bikes from other manufacturers as well. From Porsche’s press release:
Both product categories will be distributed to eBike manufacturers worldwide in the future, with the newly founded joint venture acting as a technology partner. The electric drive systems will be used in Porsche eBikes as well as in the products of other brands.
In recent months, Porsche has acquired stakes in several companies in the eBike segment. In addition to the Croatian eBike brand Greyp, these include Fazua. In June, Porsche increased its stake in the company from 20 to 100 per cent. Based in Munich, Fazua is known among experts as the founder of ‘light’ eBikes. It will now be merged into Porsche eBike Performance GmbH.
When Porsche eventually does offer up its engineering to other companies — like it used to in its earlier years — it should take that opportunity to resurrect the “System Porsche” branding from the original Seat Ibiza. Seat actually had to pay Porsche each time it stamped the German marque’s name on an Ibiza engine, and this was before the unlikely bedfellows were united under the Volkswagen umbrella.
Porsche’s existing e-bikes — the eBike Sport and eBike Cross, co-developed with Rotwild — are both sold out at the time of writing. The next-gen models stemming from the company’s many recent acquisitions won’t emerge until the middle of this decade.