The British VAG brand Bentley now says that it is postponing the launch of a pure electric car until 2026. In the meantime, it will focus on hybrid cars.
It wasn't many years ago that the world's car brands were fighting over how quickly they could convert their model programs to only electric cars.
Today, more and more of them are regretting those announcements. Bentley is just the latest brand to land. However, the concession is relatively small.
Instead of launching a pure electric car next year, the British now say they will wait until 2026. And sales won't start until 2027.
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The brand's managing director Adrian Hallmark tells Autocar . Adrian Hallmark says the brand will now focus more on the hybrid car.
– Because of everything that is happening around us, we will invest more in the hybrid car. We expected sales to decline in 2028, 2029 and 2030.
– But now we expect that the market will actually grow and continue to do so. It gives us more options and ensures us against a slow adaptation to electric cars, says Hallmark.
Bentley's decision means the brand is taking the hybrid engine into the next decade. Something that until very recently was not the plan.
In fact, Bentley only wanted to build electric cars in 2030. And it was planned that by that year they would send five brand new electric cars onto the street. That's not going to happen now. Instead, the British will probably settle for one.
Adrian Hallmark tells Autocar that Bentley's first pure electric car will be built on the VAG group's PPE platform. The same one on which, among other things, the Porsche Macan is built. But Bentley also says the new electric car will not be a direct replacement for anything else in the model range.
