Bentley Abandons Its Ambitious EV Plans

The luxury British automaker was working on no fewer than five new EVs that were bound to be revealed by 2035.

Bentley EXP 15 Concept

Photo by: Bentley

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Mar 19, at 7:18am ET

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Bentley is giving up on its ambitious electrification plan.
The company is scrapping the development of four new EVs that were scheduled to debut by 2035.
The luxury automaker is charging ahead with just one electric SUV that’s on track for a 2027 reveal.

Bentley’s ambitious plan of becoming a serious player in the electric car game has come to a screeching halt. The British luxury automaker has scrapped four of its five upcoming EVs and will focus its attention on hybridization to keep profits high in the coming years.

The company had planned to build five EVs by 2035, but now just the upcoming “Urban SUV,” which is slated for a 2027 reveal, has survived the latest retreat in the car industry. Like any other car maker out there, Bentley has to make money to survive, and ambitions sometimes don’t equal profit.

A teaser of Bentley's 2027-bound electric SUV.

Photo by: Bentley

Last year, the British marque ticked off its seventh consecutive profitable year, and investing heavily in electric cars is probably not a great use of cash right now, seeing how the brand’s gas models are carrying almost all the weight and bringing in serious revenue.

“We have to rethink and recalculate our complete product line, and all future offers,” Bentley CEO Frank Walliser told Auto Express. “If you compare our planning with what it was two years ago, it looks completely different,” he added.

The decision can be linked to Porsche’s decision to cancel the Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) that was supposed to underpin the brand’s upcoming flagship SUV that will sit above the Cayenne. The three-row model was touted as an EV at first, but Porsche, which is part of the Volkswagen Group, delayed the platform and ultimately canned it in favor of a gas architecture, according to a report from Autocar.

The shift to the Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) platform allows Porsche–and by extension, Bentley, which is also part of the VW Group–to use five- and seven-seat layouts, as well as gas and plug-in hybrid powertrains.

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All things considered, Bentley is not done with EVs. The marque’s head honcho said that while hybrids and PHEVs will get more attention in the short term, the company still has ambitions to switch to a fully electric portfolio, as long as there is demand. “We have a very close eye on the development and acceptance of the EV market, especially in the upper segment. But the next car will not come before 2030,” Walliser said.

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Billed as “the world’s first true luxury urban SUV,” Bentley’s first all-electric production model will likely be based on the same underpinnings as the new Porsche Cayenne Electric. With a design influenced by the striking EXP 15 concept, the battery-powered luxury SUV will be capable of adding 100 miles of range in just seven minutes of charging, but the automaker has yet to confirm exact charging power and battery capacity figures.

That said, we expect Bentley’s EV to have similar performance to that of the Cayenne EV, which can go from 10% to 80% state of charge in just 18 minutes, thanks to its maximum charging input of 400 kW. Meanwhile, the Cayenne’s 108 kWh battery enables a WLTP range of around 372 miles.

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