Germans tuners, and Porsche tuners more than anyone else, are known for their ability to raise the power of any car to unreasonable level. This usually comes at a cost. Fuel economy’s going mad. There are many ways to make an engine more powerful, but almost all of them require to give it more fuel.

Maybe it doesn’t matter much on a sports car whose only goal is go fast, but that is entirely different on an hybrid. People who buys hybrids are reasonable folks who have chosen to move efficiently. Did they compromise on performances? Not necessarily. An Honda Insight is a poor highway cruiser, but the Prius is better and Lexus hybrids are plenty fast.

Being a Porsche, the Cayenne hybrid promises to be one the fastest hybrid on the market, and speedART, a German tuning house, has been working to make it even faster. Power is up to 450-hp, from 380. All this comes from the engine, as the electric motor is unchanged, nor is the electronic brain of the hybrid system. The fuel consumption is the big question, but speedART doesn’t give any answer.

We don’t know if the Cayenne hybrid tuned by speedART has better or worse fuel economy than a stock model, but we have every reason to fear the worse. So we guess that as long as tuning companies won’t be able to publish precise data about the fuel economy of the cars they modify, they should abstain from working on hybrids. Actually, if a tuner works on an hybrid, his goal should be to make more efficient, not more powerful. Don’t you think?