First Bentley EV on track for 2026, and yes, it’s going to be an SUV
Bentley has declared its first all-electric car will also be the “world’s first luxury urban SUV”. It’ll be smaller than the hugely popular Bentley Bentayaga, and it’s on track to be revealed in 2026 before hitting the streets the following year.
“Luxury urban SUV” might sound like Bentley is making preparations for a rival to the Citroen e-C3, but speaking to Auto Express, CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser offered up a bit more detail on the as-yet-unnamed EV. He told us it’ll be less than five metres long, which in his words is “a little bit more compact for a Bentley”. It means potential rivals will include the BMW iX and the next-generation Porsche Cayenne.
For context, the longest Bentayaga measures up to 5.3 metres end-to-end. The benefits of the EV being smaller are “better visibility and surrounding easiness and driving in urban areas,” according to Walliser.
Bentley’s top boss didn’t reveal too many technical details, however he described the range as “definitely sufficient”, while engineering boss Matthias Rabe believes the team have found the right balance between range and fast charging speeds.
We’re told testing is well underway on Bentley’s first EV, with Rabe declaring “It will be a pure Bentley. It will be an uplift in comfort but it will be so much more agile.”
The single teaser Bentley released doesn’t reveal much about the design, though the silhouette isn’t dramatically different from the Bentayga’s, showing a long bonnet, pronounced rear haunches and sloped rear windscreen.
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.
In terms of what else is coming in the near future, we can expect more variants of the new Continental GT and Flying Spur Speed that launched this year. A new petrol Bentayga is also on the horizon.
However, when asked if Bentley will offer hybrid and pure-electric powertrains in the same model, Rabe quickly responded: “No, we think that would be the wrong answer for a luxury brand to have a so-called multi-traction platform.”
“The package demands are so different whether you have batteries and electric engines, or whether you have a plug-in hybrid powertrain,” he said. “Therefore, in a luxury segment you would never reach the optimum if you would do a multi-traction platform.
“Multi-traction platform would be basically a platform which can do all, but something which can do all sometimes is not the best and we want to do the best.”
