Driven! Is the 2025 Porsche 911 Hybrid Sacrilege or a Breakthrough?

The Porsche 911 has long attracted criticism and controversy. When its Stuttgart-based maker first showed the model back at the 1963 Frankfurt International Motor Show, two things happened. First, Peugeot threatened to sue the company for calling its rear-engine, flat-six coupe the 901, hence the name being changed to 911. Second, media condemnation of the machine that would replace the beloved 356 was both swift and biting: Bigger, heavier, and a back seat? Porsche’s lost the plot! Later came the brand-destroying 928 that was meant to replace the 911, the horrible switch from air to water cooling with the 996-gen 911, rear-wheel steering with the 991, and then the 991.2 adopting turbocharging was the worst thing that’s ever happened. Until now. The 992.2 iteration of the 911 has a hybrid powertrain complete with a lithium-ion battery. Worst 911 ever? Not even kind of.

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The Decision

The crazy part was the 992-generation Porsche 911 was supposed to be a hybrid from the start. Back in 2018 when Porsche was figuring it all out, the powertrain team couldn’t decide what sort of hybrid to build. Something like a Prius that focused more on efficiency? A plug-in hybrid that would be able to go a certain distance on pure electric power? Or a performance hybrid, where the battery’s power was simply used to boost overall performance? Seems like an easy choice to make if you’re Porsche, but we were assured it wasn’t. No one could decide, and then the development process reached the point of no return. The 992.1 launched without a hybrid powertrain. However, the 992.1’s eight-speed dual-clutch PDK transmission’s bellhousing was engineered to leave space for an electric motor.

And that case now does house an electric motor, for now exclusively in the GTS, good for 53 horsepower and 110 lb-ft of torque. It connects to a brand-new engine, a 3.6-liter flat-six fitted with an electric turbocharger. Both the electric motor and the turbo are powered by a 60-pound, 400-volt, 1.9-kWh battery pack that sits above the front axle where the 12-volt battery used to reside. Total combined system power is 532 hp and 449 lb-ft, up from 473 hp and 420 lb-ft in the 992.1 GTS. (You can read our review of the nonhybrid 992.2 911 here.)

To keep the relatively small battery juiced, the gas engine and motor combination sends it electrons just like in a typical hybrid. However, the wastegate-free electric turbo effectively regens to relieve boost pressure, sending additional electricity back to the battery. While the T-hybrid system (“T” stands for Turbo), as Porsche calls it, does have some benefits in terms of fuel economy and emissions, it was designed first and foremost as a performance enhancement. We should note Porsche claims the hybrid system adds 154 pounds to the car, but our test team hasn’t weighed the new car to determine the real-world number.

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How’s It Look?

On the outside, the easiest way to tell the 992.2 GTS apart from the 992.1 are the movable gills below the headlights. Controversial according to the internet, they look pretty good in person. Much more important, the gills are effective. When closed, the 992.2 Carrera GTS achieves an impressive drag coefficient of 0.29, though in other markets its 0.27 because U.S.-market 911 hybrids lack an Eco mode setting for the rear spoiler because of our country’s brake light visibility requirements. Less efficiency through safety, which very well might be TSA’s mission statement. Ahem. When open, the gills combine with two underbody vents to allow cooling air to be sent all over the vehicle to chill everything, including the front and rear brakes, the battery, and even the intercooler. There’s a performance aero benefit, too, of course.

What doesn’t look so great is the Lego Technic–style rectangle piece that contains the forward-facing camera and radar. It’s stuck into the black front grille, and its angularity clashes harshly with the shapely snout of the 911. Tack on an ugly front license plate, and yuck. The foglights now reside in the headlight units, which is a nice, simplifying improvement. Seven new wheel designs are about the only changes on the side of the car. The rear end is subtly reworked, but you’d have to be a real Porsche nerd like me to spot the differences. The easiest way to tell is the thicker light strip that bridges the taillamps. The shape of the rear has been simplified; it’s a bit less tortured, more rounded. Should you see a debadged car (this actually happens in Europe!), you can tell the GTS T-Hybrid from the base Carrera by the position of the tailpipes. The latter’s are farther apart.

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And Inside?

Due to the ease of moaning on social media, the single most controversial part of the 992.2 is not its hybridization. No, Porsche has gone ahead and replaced the “key” with a start button. The horror, the horror, says Instagram. The reality is for nearly two decades now starting a Porsche meant sticking a plastic fob into hole to the left of the steering wheel and twisting, or because of the rise in popularity of keylessness, grabbing ahold of a $0.19 piece of plastic and twisting. And now it’s a button. We’ll survive.

The other big change is the removal of the analog tachometer, which is now a screen. Remember that on the 992.1, the tach was analog while everything else was a screen. Although the two screens flanking the tach nicely aped the 911’s iconic five-gauge layout, the steering wheel blocked the outer two gauges. The 992.2 screen fixes that substantial issue. Yes, all things being equal, an analogue tachometer is preferable, but so is being able to see everything. Of note: One of the screens shows a “clocked” tach where the gauge is rotated so that 0 rpm sits at the 5 o’clock position, placing 7,000 rpm straight up at noon, just 500 revs shy of redline. It’s awesome in practice. Oh, and now a back-seat delete is standard; readding the two rear seats a no-cost option.

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How Does It Drive?

We began the day in Malaga, Spain, behind the wheel of the 911 Targa 4 GTS hybrid. It is, due to its mechanically impressive folding roof and AWD system, the heaviest 911 variant at nearly 4,000 pounds. Initial impressions after about 30 miles were that if no one told you you were driving a hybrid, you’d never know. The electrification is essentially hidden save for the battery bits on the screens and the badging on the side. One thing: Like cars from BMW and Mercedes, the central Porsche screen has become feature-packed to the point where it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for. Both my driving partner and I made the identical mistake when trying to find the Energy screen for info like state of charge and battery temperature. Said screen is not under Vehicle; it’s under Performance.

We noticed the rear end stepping out under even light amounts of throttle; our instinct was to pin this on the 992.2 4 GTS’s increased and uninterrupted power delivery—the motor provides torque fill—but the Costa del Sol region of Spain just has some greasy roads. The slides were easy to catch, for what it’s worth.

Even though Porsche lowered the flat-six engine’s height by more than 4 inches, the Targa’s relatively high center of gravity shows itself in corners. With more than 45 degrees of steering input, you could feel the body begin undulating front to rear, an unusual experience in a modern 911. Also, the harder we pushed, the worse the steering felt, transmitting a vagueness we didn’t expect or like.

Our morning drive took us to the brilliant Ascari racetrack, a gorgeous circuit with asphalt that quite literally carves its way through an olive tree grove. I first headed out in a 911 GTS Cabriolet and then a rear-drive GTS coupe. It was instantly apparent the 992.2’s steering benefits from the front wheels not being powered. While Targas and Cabriolets rule on crowded rural roads, bring on the coupes and the racing surface.

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How Does It Really Drive?

This should be no shock, but the 911 hybrid coupe’s acceleration is rapid. Porsche is claiming the new Carrera 4 GTS hybrid hits 62 mph in 3.0 seconds, down from 3.4 in the nonhybrid 992.1. Our crack test team got the RWD 992.1 GTS to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds and the GTS 4 to 60 mph in 2.8. Should Porsche be telling the truth that the hybrid is quicker by nearly half a second, that puts the 992.2 hybrid clearly into supercar territory, at least in terms of acceleration. To drive home what more speed means, the previous-generation cars did 11.1 (RWD) and 10.9 (AWD) seconds in the quarter mile. Gulp. Weirdly, perhaps because of some magic coming from the audio system, the coupes sure sound a lot meaner than the open-top cars.

The fat, Porsche-specific Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar tires help provide tremendous grip, as they should considering the rears have now grown to a massive 315/30-21. The front tires remain the same at 245/35-20. There’s still enough playfulness in the chassis to rotate under both braking and power, even in the AWD version, but you’ll have to turn the traction control off or at least down. That’s both fun and useful, which we’ll get to in a moment. The brakes on the track cars were Porsche’s yellow-calipered carbon-ceramic rotors, and they showed zero signs of fade or degradation after repeated lapping. Power, grip, stopping power, fun—this is exactly what you want in a sports car. Well, that and a damn good reason to add the complexity of a hybrid system.

It’s a good thing Porsche had a damn good reason. When you rotate the knob on the steering wheel to Sport+, one of the things that happens is the computer keeps the electric turbo spooled up to 120,000 rpm. This means that if you rotate the car properly, you can absolutely blast out of corners. Not only can the electric motor send all its torque to the driven wheels, but turbo lag is also literally and scientifically eliminated. Obliterated, even. The initial burst off a corner is quite EV-like. Just awesome. Moreover, performing such shenanigans doesn’t deplete the battery. I kept rolling into pitlane with more than 90 percent state of charge.

Worst Porsche 911 ever? No, not even kind of. Haters are certainly going to hate, but for now it’s a free country. Best 911 ever? No. Based on the laps I drove, it’s easy to make a case for the 992.2 GTS hybrid as the best non-GT, non-Turbo 911 yet, but the GT division still stands at the top. But we can say the fifth-generation GTS is a truly superlative sports car, one with a nearly invisible hybrid system that promises any electric future for the 911 is going to be OK.