Bentley has announced plans to launch its first-ever electric vehicle (EV), an urban SUV, by 2026.
The company reckons that the new model, which is being designed, developed, and produced at its headquarters in Crewe, Cheshire, will create an entirely new market segment. Details are yet to be released, meanwhile the company has revealed an initial outline design sketch of the new model.
Along with the news about the upcoming EV, Walliser explained that the brand is extending its goal of end-to-end carbon neutrality from 2030 to 2035, changing the name of its electrification strategy from Beyond 100 to Beyond 100 Plus.
Four years, almost to the day that Bentley initially outlined its Beyond100 strategy, we adapt to today’s economic, market, and legislative environment to initiate a major transformative phase for tomorrow. Beyond100+ becomes our guiding light as we extend our ambitions beyond 2030 while maintaining our aim of a decarbonized future, including offering only fully electric cars from 2035 and reinforcing our credentials as the British creator of extraordinary cars for over a century and beyond.
The new EV forms part of Bentley’s Beyond100+ strategy, which will see it launch a new plug-in or fully electric model every year for the next decade. The delay in going fully electric means that you can expect the firm’s Ultra Performance Hybrid V8 powertrain to live on for a while yet, and going by our first taste of it in the crushingly fast and refined new Continental GT Speed, that can only be a good thing.
Bentley’s focus will also be on hybrid powertrains like the electrically-assisted V8 now fitted to the Flying Spur and Continental. But it also promised it would still launch new variants and “special models” with pure ICE engines, starting with a version of the Bentayga we’ll see next year.
It seems likely that Bentley’s electric SUV will sit on the Volkswagen Group’s PPE platform, which is a bespoke EV architecture co-developed by Porsche and Audi. So far, it’s been used for the Porsche Macan Electric, as well as the Audi A6 and Q6 e-tron models.
Bentley to go electric-only by 2035
Bentley has also promised to launch a new electrified model every year for the next decade, which includes both pure-electric cars and plug-in hybrids, with all of them being “designed and developed” in Crewe. The goal now is for Bentley to become an electric-only brand in 2035, not 2030, as previously suggested.
The shift in strategy comes as other manufacturers, including Volvo Cars, have also reconsidered their ambitious targets for electrification.
Chairman and CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser highlighted the evolving automotive market and emphasized the pivotal role of legislation in driving electrification. Walliser noted that consumer demand for electric cars remains tepid, with prospective buyers approaching such purchases more cautiously.
The company has already made enormous strides in reinventing the historic Crewe site, creating an industry-leading certified carbon neutral facility, and focus now turns to building a ‘Dream Factory’ for an electric future.
It is now focused on ‘building a “Dream Factory” for an electric future.’ The largest self-funded site investment program in Bentley’s 105-year history includes a new state-of-the-art design center, paint shop, and electric-car assembly line.
This will transform the 85-year-old site ‘for a new age of electrification and a new benchmark in next generation, digital, flexible, and high-value manufacturing operations’.
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