Bentley won’t launch its first electric car until 2026, a year later than originally planned, according to the brand’s CEO.
In an interview with Automotive News (registration required) announced on Wednesday, Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark said the EV was delayed, but did not provide a reason.
However, he denied the delay was due to reported failures at Volkswagen Group’s software development unit Cariad. Bloomberg reported on Monday that the Volkswagen Group of CEO shuffled last week due to delays in the launch of Audi, Bentley and Porsche models due to software issues.
The first Bentley EV is being developed alongside a similar Audi model codenamed Project Artemis, both using versions of the VW Group. future SSP platform. Porsche was originally part of the project but was supposed to drawn at the beginning of this year. Porsche is now expected to use the PPE platform of its VW Group model, launching shortly Audi Q6 E-Tron.
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Hallmark said that despite the delay, which he said would in fact only be a few months instead of a year, Bentley will still reveal the EV in 2025.
He did not say whether the delay would cause Bentley to miss its goal of having an all-electric vehicle line-up by 2030, which was first announced in 2020.
Interestingly, Hallmark says Bentley is in a unique position where EV batteries are actually cheaper than the engines Bentley uses in its cars.
“The average battery is less than our 12-cylinder engine,” he told Automotive News. “I can’t wait for the batteries, they’re relatively cheap.”
