MONTEREY, Calif.—Next month Bentley will reveal its first battery-electric vehicle. The British automaker is no stranger to electric motors; it now offers plug-in hybrids across its range, even replacing the Continental GT’s W12 with a new plug-in hybrid V8. The addition of electric motors perfectly suits the marque: what’s more Bentley than waves of effortless torque, after all?
But until now, there’s always been a combustion engine along for the ride. Clad in plastic and wrapped in a multi-hued dazzle camouflage, it’s shorter in length and height compared to a Bentayga, although it is similarly voluminous on the inside thanks to the inherent packaging efficiencies of an EV. If the proportions remind you of a Porsche Cayenne EV, that’s because the two share quite a lot of the same basic engineering, albeit reworked by Bentley to suit its needs.
The target is 300 miles (482 km) in range or 600 km (373 miles) under WLTP, from the battery pack, and like the Cayenne, expect 400 kW DC fast-charging. Don’t expect the Cayenne’s quadruple-figure power output, though. There’ll be over 850 PS [838 hp/625 kW], but we’re not chasing four figures,” said Martin Page, product line director for the Torcal.
And that’s been the kind of guiding principle throughout, is that access to it,” Page said as he drove us around Pebble Beach in a preproduction car that has been here in the US doing localization testing.
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