► Bentley’s first pure electric car due 2026
► It’s a luxury SUV!
► Hybrids of all existing Bentley models by 2023
The first all-electric Bentley will now arrive in late 2026, the Crewe maker has confirmed. The news comes as CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser, who arrived in the position in July, announced a revised – and more cautious – EV rollout, dubbed Beyond 100+.
Bentley claims the new car, which won’t replace any of the brand’s four existing models but complement them, is the first ‘true luxury urban SUV’ – though precisely what makes it more urban than any other luxury electric SUV remains to be seen. An uplift in comfort is promised, together with a level of agility beyond the current plug-in hybrid and combustion-engined line-up.
‘It will be a little bit more compact, for a Bentley I must add – under 5m [the Macan is 4.7m; the Bentayga 5.1-5.3m] and easier to drive in urban areas,’ explains Walliser. ‘It will be super versatile and you will be able to use it for both long range and for the city. We want to attract new customers – there is not a lot of electric demand among today’s Bentley customers – and we think this vehicle will help us do this. Optimising travel time is not just about range. We will have incredible fast charging and the range will fit all the needs of our customers.’
The new car will be the first of several EVs arriving before 2035, and part of a prudent re-engineering of Bentley’s initially hyper-aggressive electrification timeline. The original plan, announced in January 2022, was to launch five EVs between 2025 and 2030 – the so-called ‘Five-in-Five plan’ – in an ambitious £2.5bn push to establish Bentley as a leader in sustainable luxury. The brand’s ‘all-electric by 2030’ intention has also been revised, to 2035. We’ll see a new model every year between 2026 and 2035 but the rollout will comprise new PHEVs as well as EVs. Bentley’s also not done with purely combustion-engined cars, hinting at a hot Bentayga in 2025.
‘This is the part of the strategy we have been concentrating on since I arrived; how it will work and what is the right timing,’ Walliser told CAR in September. ‘Things could still change. We have five-year cycles, so you have to review at least every five years. And when you look back five years from now, to 2019, pre-Covid, the picture was completely different.’
As is consistently the case at the moment, it’s the tepid customer demand that’s prompted Crewe’s re-think, rather than any serious technical, production or financial challenge.
‘The big question is: when is the customer ready? You can only sell it if your customer is convinced; you cannot push it. For sure it also depends a lot on the regulators, the political and tax boundary conditions. But the luxury car it is not something you buy to go from A to B. They are outside of tax optimisation, and realistically you cannot ask for a tax reduction on luxury cars. So, this is a real market. It is not driven from the outside.
‘I would say what we’re seeing in the [electric] market at the moment is a dip, with a lot of factors affecting that. Electric demand will come back, at different speeds in different categories and in different countries, and we will be prepared for that. And when we arrive with our first BEV in 2026/2027 it will coincide with a second wave of customer acceptance.’
Walliser’s familiarity with the VW Group’s various platforms should stand Bentley in good stead as it works to create its initial battery electric offering. The urban SUV will use an advanced version of PPE, as seen in/under Porsche’s electric Macan and Audi’s Q6 e-tron and new A6. Put it to Walliser that the prospect of a Bentley that feels and drives like any of the above doesn’t feel right and he smiles a weary smile.
‘The question is always: “What is the platform?” But really there are so many variants, and this makes sense when you have the requirements of so many different brands. Software also has a big part to play – it has a very big impact. Has Crewe been influencing the design of PPE for years? It’s more like “What can we take?” We can do whatever we want; whatever is appropriate for the brand. We just need a platform that gives us a good base on battery power, charging speed, the electrical architecture and the software platform.
‘This is where I think sometimes Bentley is misjudged. It is also a technology company – we’re handling all this stuff. It’s not only stitching and leather and nice interiors, and I’ve not seen many [other luxury car companies] in the world capable of doing this to this level. Honestly, no one. It is not just a carryover platform. The engineering job is way bigger – to bring a Bentley-ness to every part of the platform, even where you cannot see it. This is very important, so that we are unique.’