VW says Cariad software will be ready for Porsche electric Macan launch

Volkswagen Group’s software division, Cariad, will be ready to deliver its delayed premium software package to Porsche in time for the launch of the full-electric Macan SUV in 2024, said Oliver Blume, who is CEO of VW Group and its Porsche business.

“We were struggling with software issues on the Cariad level in VW Group over the last years. Now they are [close] to finishing the software platform for the Macan,” Blume told analysts during Porsche’s earnings call on Monday.

Porsche said in its IPO prospectus last year that the electric Macan's debut had been pushed back because of the slow development of the software. The EV will use VW Group's new PPE premium electric platform shared with Audi.

Read more: VW software unit Cariad sees $2B loss in 2022

Cariad is developing software known as E3 (“E cubed”) 1.2 for Porsche and Audi to use on PPE platform cars, as well as other electric models. Porsche and VW have said it will allow for “state of the art” driver assistance and infotainment systems, and over the air updates. 

In 2021, VW Group said the E3 1.2 software would appear in 2023. Blume’s predecessor as head of VW Group, Herbert Diess, was ousted in July, a move that was partly attributed to software delays and problems. Volkswagen said Tuesday that Cariad, which was set up by Diess, had an operating loss of 2.1 billion euros ($2.24 billion) in 2022 on revenue of 800 million euros.

The software will also be used for the full-electric version of the 718 Boxster sports car coming “in the middle of the decade,” Porsche said in one of its earnings slides on Monday. 

The all-electric version of the Cayenne large SUV, which is due after the electric 718, will also use 1.2.

Porsche said in the IPO prospectus that delays to the E3 1.2 software platform could also affect the launch timetable of “in particular BEV models of the 718 [Boxster sports car] and the Cayenne.”

Porsche also confirmed on Monday that models following the electric Cayenne will use an adaptation of the 1.2 software called 1.2 Evolution, including a new flagship all-electric SUV above the Cayenne codenamed K1 that will also be the first model to use the Porsche-developed Sport version of VW Group’s SSP (scalable systems platform) architecture.

Porsche flagged its desire to develop 1.2 Evolution in its IPO prospectus after warning that Cariad’s parallel development of the next-generation 2.0 stack “could potentially allocate greater development capacity and resources to its E3 2.0 version to the detriment of further development of the E3 1.2 platform.”

Cariad has since said that it will stop developing software in parallel as it looks to overcome past problems. “We are now not promoting that differentiation anymore. Now we try to find the synergies [between 1.1, 1.2 and 2.0],” Dirk Hilgenberg, Cariad’s CEO, told journalists at the CES tech show in Las Vegas in January. 

Blume said elements of the 1.2 software will carry over to future group software upgrades. “It’s important to mention certain components that will be included in the standardized software architecture of the group. This helps with economies of scale,” he told a VW Group media conference on Tuesday.

Software 2.0 was due to be rolled out in 2025 for the SSP platform, which is designed to fit all subsequent VW Group electric vehicles, including the VW Trinity flagship, but the project was delayed under the leadership of Blume, with no new date set.