Ruf 911 showing battery pack.

It has been a strange couple of days in the auto world. First, you have Aston Martin badge-engineering a tiny Toyota city car. Now, this. Porsche’s R&D director, Wolfgang Dürheimer, sat down with German mag Motor Zeitung and claimed that Porsche has been working on an electric version of the stored 911 sportscar, and idea first tried out by Ruf with their Greenster concept. First water-cooling, now electricity? When will the insanity stop?

Ruf electric 911 prototype.

Actually, don’t get your favorite pair of driving lederhosen in a knot, because Mr. Dürheimer says the technology isn’t ready for the road quite yet. Apparently Porsche’s R&D department needs to pare down the weight and size of the battery pack in order for it to meet weight goals. Plus the current batteries eat into cargo space, so it’s apparently a non-starter until battery technology improves to shrink it down somewhat. No word on what the performance potential of an E-911 will be, but we assume that if it hails from Zuffenhausen, it will probably be damn quick.

[Source: Autoblog]