Bentley may have pumped the brakes on its plan to go all-electric, but it will still get there—eventually.
The British marque has announced that its first EV will finally make its debut in 2026. Despite this, the brand has pushed back in carbon-neutrality goal, meaning it’s focus will be on hybrid vehicles through at least the middle of the next decade.
Bentley’s first battery-powered model will be—what else?—an SUV. It won’t just be a new version of the Bentayga with an electric powertrain, though. Instead, the company claims the model will be the world’s first “luxury urban SUV.” No real details were mad available, but Bloomberg reports that CEO Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser described the vehicle as “compact.” It’s unclear what that actually means to Bentley since its smallest current offering, the Continental GT, still measures nearly 16 feet bumper to bumper. The Bentayga, meanwhile, measures between 16.8 feet and 17.4 feet.
Bentley’s first EV will be an SUV, but it will be more compact that the Bentayga
Bentley Motors Limited
The EV will kick off a period of expansion for the luxury automaker. The newswire reports that the company wants to introduce a new plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicle every year for the next decade.
Wailliser also revealed that the company is pushing back its plan to go all-electric by the end of the decade. Back in 2020, Bentley unveiled “Beyond 100,” a strategy that outlined how it would achieve end-to-end carbon neutrality—in other words, sell only electric cars and SUVs—by 2030. That target has now been pushed back to 2035 and the plan’s name changed to “Beyond 100 Plus.” The reason is simple; the appetite for EVs hasn’t turned out to be as strong as initially thought.
“We all know the automotive market looks different,” The executive is quoted as saying. “Legislation for sure is driving electrification. We have to be honest there’s not a lot of demand—customers are kind of careful in considering something like that.”
Bentley’s may still be in the process of saying a long drawn-out goodbye to the its famed W-12 internal combustion engine earlier this year—and replaced it with an even more potent hybrid V-8—but that doesn’t mean it’s finished with purely gas-powered vehicles. A new pure-combustion Bentayga is expected to sometime next year. It’s not sure how many more models like this there will be, though, as the automaker’s priority, like so many others, will be on hybrids going forward.
