Porsche is making a radical change in strategy and is separating from several subsidiaries. A total of around 500 jobs will be lost in Germany and Croatia, as the sports car manufacturer announced on Friday. The battery cell subsidiary Cellforce, the e-bike business and the software subsidiary Cetitec are affected.
Battery cell hope before the end
The end is particularly drastic for Cellforce. Porsche said management would begin discussions with the works council about closing the company. Around 50 employees lose their jobs. For the battery cell subsidiary, “there is no longer a sufficiently viable perspective as part of the strategic realignment with a technology-open drive strategy,” according to the official reasoning.
Originally, Cellforce was supposed to build a battery cell factory with a production volume of around one gigawatt hour per year. But as early as the summer of 2025, the ambitious plans were canceled and the factory was canceled. Instead, the company should concentrate on development work – apparently without success.
Weak electrical business as a trigger
The withdrawal is a direct response to the weakening business with electric sports cars. Demand is not developing as dynamically as originally forecast. Porsche is now drawing conclusions from this and is relying on a “technology-open drive strategy” – an admission that pure electrification did not bring the hoped-for breakthrough.
E-bikes and software are also affected
In addition to Cellforce, Porsche is also completely discontinuing the e-bike business. In Ottobrunn and Zagreb, around 350 employees lose their jobs. Porsche eBike Performance set out to develop high-performance e-bike drive systems and market them worldwide.
Another 90 jobs will be lost at the software subsidiary Cetitec in Pforzheim and Croatia. The company developed specialized software for data communications. But here too, the market environment has changed and development scope has been shifted, it was said. The restructuring of the group shows that even premium manufacturers have to concentrate on their core business in times of uncertain market developments.