Bentley has a name for its first fully
electric car: Torcal. The British marque confirmed this today, alongside a tease image of the EV's rear, promising a full reveal on 23 September 2026. Far more important than the name, however, is the fact that this is Bentley's first ever full electric car. Specs are thin on the ground until the official reveal, however Bentley is prepared to let slip that this 5-meter-long SUV will have a range of more than 300 miles.
The word Torcal was already on Bentley watchers' radar. Earlier this year,
trademark filings showed Bentley had registered both “Torcal” and “Barnato” in Europe and the UK, filed against motor vehicles including electric cars, charging cables, and charging stations. Barnato, a nod to 1920s Bentley obsessive and racing driver Woolf Barnato, was tipped as the front runner. Bentley has gone the other way.
Like the
Bentayga and other Bentleys before it, the Torcal name comes from a natural landmark, El Torcal de Antequera in Andalusia, Spain, a limestone landscape of stacked rock formations. Conveniently, Torcal also has auto connotations, as it is derived from the latin torquere, meaning to twist, which is where the word torque, describing rotational force, comes from.
First Look
WIRED was invited to a secret reveal of the Torcal, near Bentley's headquarters in the UK. While much of the information handed out that day cannot be shared yet, I can say that this new electric SUV is similar to the Bentayga, in that the lineage between the two is obvious. The Torcal is slightly smaller, with the signature long hood and upright front. Bentley's familiar rear haunches over the wheel arches feature as well, of course, but perhaps not as well resolved as on the Bentayga.
Still, it's an attractive, powerful and purposeful looking SUV, with a switchable glass sunroof and new light clusters. You can see how different the rear lights are to the Bentayga in the tease image—going from the familiar oval shape to a clean line. However, unlike the Bentayga, the roofline at the rear drops down, which is now becoming commonplace in
electric vehicle design as it means less drag and increases range.
At the front, perhaps the most striking visual element of the Torcal is the new grille: ventilation to a radiator is replaced by a solid wall of illuminated crystals with a design apparently influenced by the face of the Continental T. It's a bold touch that is deliberately unsubtle, a far cry from the move towards
quiet luxury.
Once inside, thanks to the all-round power doors, it's pleasing to see that Bentley's designers have got the message regarding switchgear. Buttons for important functions are mixed with OLED screens. The central display curves pleasingly downwards in a similar manner to that of the
new Cayenne. Interestingly, Bentley hasn't followed other high-end manufacturers in offering a separate passenger screen, and I'm assured there won't be an option for this.
The Graveyard Torcal Is Driving Into
Bentley chairman and chief executive Frank-Steffen Walliser calls Torcal “the most considered car” in Bentley's history, and it's going to have to be. Whatever the EV's final specs, it arrives at possibly the worst moment to date to sell a premium electric car.
Lamborghini
shelved its Lanzador electric GT this year after concluding, in the words of CEO Stephan Winkelmann, that demand among its buyers is “going almost to zero, if not to zero.” Ferrari's first EV, the Luce, wiped billions off the company's market value within hours of its reveal in Rome, and Ferrari has now pushed its second electric model back to 2028.
Mercedes Benz sold
just 1,450 of its electric G Wagen in Europe through April 2025, against 9,700 for the combustion version. Audi discontinued the Q8 E-tron after closing its Brussels plant, citing a “global decline in customer orders in the electric luxury class segment.”
Then there is Porsche, Bentley's stablemate inside Volkswagen Group. The Taycan's depreciation is
so eye-watering some dealers have supposedly refused to take their own brand’s performance EV as a trade-in. Porsche's 2025 results show group operating profit collapsing 93 percent to €413 million, dragged down by a €3.9 billion writedown tied to reversing its EV strategy. Rolls Royce Spectre sales are down by 44 percent. Mercedes' EQS SUV is down by about the same.
This is the decidedly rocky state of the luxury EV market Bentley wants to roll its new Torcal all-electric SUV into.
Will It Be Different for Bentley?
Compared to many other
Western automotive brands right now, Bentley is seemingly doing OK. Well, sort of. In March, Bentley reported its seventh consecutive year of profitability: €216 million in operating profit on €2.6 billion of revenue, an 8.3 percent return on sales. However, this is a 42 percent fall compared with a year earlier. It is self-funding the conversion of its historic A1 building in Crewe, England into a battery electric assembly line, alongside a new design center and paint shop. It has also, more quietly, cut 275 management and non-manufacturing roles to fund that transition, and, just as with other Western brands, Chinese demand is falling for Bentley.
Bentley has also already hedged its own EV bet before. In 2024, months after Walliser joined, it pushed its target for going fully electric
back five years, from 2030 to 2035, under a renamed Beyond100 Plus strategy, and it plans to keep selling plug-in hybrid and combustion models alongside the Torcal. A second all-electric Bentley is not expected before 2030.
“Technology seekers that consider themselves opinion makers, they wanted to have cars that looked different, they wanted to show, 'I'm advanced, I'm in the latest tech.' This is why the cars had to look different,” says Walliser. “Now people don't want that. They just want to have a car, and this is why our timing maybe now is right. Using all of our DNA, being careful, delivering the car that feels authentic—don't try to play anymore.”
“It's an evolution of the brand, and I think it's the right thing for Bentley to do—not look for revolutions. We look a little bit more in the edges,” he says.
It's a nice conceit, but I'm sure the designers at Mercedes, when they faithfully reproduced the combustion version of their G Wagen in electric form, felt the same. Still, there is cause for optimism, especially when it comes to reinvigorating the Chinese market for Bentley.
Ferrari’s deeply controversial first EV may well have been poorly received here in the west, and damaged the brand's value, but
signs are emerging that the 1,035 hp Luce is getting an altogether different reception from wealthy buyers in Asia. Despite its thumping sticker price of $586,600, initial reports seem to suggest that the country's entire first-year allocation of 88 units was snapped up almost instantly. Bentley and Walliser will no doubt be hoping the Torcal gets a similar reception.
<small>Source: Wired</small>
