Bentley is launching its first fully electric car – complete with a drum soundtrack to replace the growl of a combustion engine – as part of a £350m investment in its UK business.
The vehicle, an SUV called the Torcal, is Bentley’s cheapest, starting at £173,000, and will be built at its factory in Crewe, securing the jobs of the 4,000 workers there.
Bentley hopes to win over both EV refuseniks and younger customers with a new synthetic engine noise built from drum recordings based on its old eight-cylinder engines. The feature is designed to give “emotion to the car” and “bridge the gap” to new buyers, said Bentley’s chief executive, Frank-Steffen Walliser.
“We expect a younger clientele,” he added, pointing to a more muscular vehicle body shape than previous models and the comparatively low price, which gives “easier access” to the brand, whose cars can cost up to £1.7m for one-off vehicles built to be showstoppers for billionaires.
The Torcal launches into a thin market for fully electric luxury SUVs. Arch-rival Rolls-Royce’s only EV is a two-door coupe called the Spectre, which starts at about £330,000. The recently announced Range Rover Electric – considered part of the premium segment rather than luxury – begins retailing at £154,070.
It also marks a more tentative entry into the EV market than Bentley once predicted. In 2024, it was forced to abandon plans to launch new electric cars each year from 2025 to 2030, citing poor demand.
Walliser said that while early indications showed demand would be strong in the UK, Europe and the Middle East, he admitted: “We managers always say we know but to be honest we don’t know [how much demand there will be].”
There are “no plans at the moment” for a second EV launch, he added. “I revised so many long-term plans in the last 10 years that one has to be careful of it.”
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It is the third big funding announcement in just over a week for Britain’s automotive sector. Nissan has said it will invest £170m to build a new model at its factory in Sunderland, while McLaren will spend £500m on a new factory, creating 1,000 jobs and its first SUV.
However, carmakers remain under significant pressure from US tariffs, competition from Chinese rivals and high industrial energy costs. Jaguar Land Rover recently said it would cut 4,000 jobs, citing “intense competition and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty”, while Bentley’s owner, Volkswagen, is cutting 100,000 jobs by 2030.
Asked if Bentley was immune from the cuts at VW, Walliser said: “Immune would be the wrong wording. But there’s a very simple rule in Volkswagen. If you’re successful you can run your business. And we consider we are a successful business … it doesn’t bother me too much at the moment.”
Bentley itself cut 245 jobs in Crewe earlier this year to reduce costs, and sales have fallen by a third since a 2022 peak of 15,200 cars. Walliser said a period of strong margins after the pandemic was a “post-Covid boom … now we are back to normal”.
Walliser said headcount in Crewe will not grow with the investment “for profitability reasons”, but he insisted that “the statement cannot be clearer” about investing in the UK and that the money will partly go towards a new assembly line.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said it was the “third win in just seven days for our world-class automotive industry, which truly shows the confidence that businesses have in Britain”.
But Walliser said the landscape remained “difficult” for Bentley suppliers. “We see a lot of impact on especially the smaller businesses,” he said, citing new EU rules of origin and high industrial energy prices both in the UK and Europe. “There’s a lot of pressure,” he said.
The Torcal can travel up to 375 miles on a single charge, and can power up from 10% full to 80% full in 20 minutes using an ultra-fast charger. The car marks the fourth model in Bentley’s lineup, alongside the Continental, Flying Spur and Bentayga.
