Bentley's first electric car, the Torcal, hits 876 hp and 375 miles of range

Bentley has revealed the Torcal, its first fully electric car, at a launch event in London. The Torcal is a sports SUV built on Volkswagen Group's Premium Platform Electric, and it arrives 107 years into the marque's history and four years after design work on it began, according to design director Robin Page.

The core model produces 810 hp and 881 lb-ft of torque. A more athletic Torcal S raises that to 876 hp and 995.7 lb-ft, which Bentley calls the highest torque output of any Bentley yet built. The S will reach 60 mph from a standstill in 2.8 seconds and top out at 162 mph.

Both variants draw on a 113 kWh battery of 192 lithium-ion cells and an 800-volt electrical architecture. Bentley claims a range of 375 miles, or 600 kilometers, and says a 400 kW charger will take the battery from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 16 minutes.

That underpinning is shared directly with the Porsche Cayenne Electric, down to the 119-inch wheelbase and the 108 kWh pack cited for the US-spec car. Porsche, which we track for what it makes and what its cars cost, has already put the Cayenne Electric through our own testing.

Page said his team weighed whether to build a car around an electric-specific shape or to keep the Torcal recognizably a Bentley. "We decided that our best route would be to embrace our heritage and DNA, but in a modern, progressive way," he said, rejecting the more radical overhauls chosen by Ferrari and Jaguar for their own electric debuts.

The result keeps a continuous bonnet line, flared rear arches and a prominent grille, styling cues Bentley traces to the Continental T. The grille itself needs no cooling function on an electric car, but Bentley chose to keep it and illuminate it in a diamond pattern rather than close it off, which Page said would feel "like a hand over a mouth."

At the London reveal the Torcal was shown in a light, yellowy green that Page described as a deliberate departure from Bentley's usual darker house green, chosen to show off the car's form. The Torcal also becomes the first Bentley to carry the brand's redesigned logo, unveiled the previous year.

What is different inside

Inside, a wing-shaped dashboard nods to the Flying B badge, finished in materials Bentley says are new to any production car. Chief among them is a merino wool developed with Somerset weaver Fox Brothers, founded in 1772, which Bentley calls the first 100 percent merino wool automotive fabric certified for the job.

Mulliner supplies two further finishes: an ombre walnut veneer built from around 1,000 layers of sustainably sourced walnut off-cuts and craft paper pressed together, and a sunburst aluminum treatment reviving a dashboard motif from earlier Bentley models. Physical dials are alongside a curved touchscreen rather than a single digital panel.

Bentley gave the cabin a V8 soundtrack despite the absence of an engine, drawing on the Continental Turbo R, one of the marque's longest-serving V8s. Musicians drummed out its firing order by hand so the recording kept the engine's natural imperfections, then the sound was mixed to play through speakers from front to rear.

Four modes, Bentley, Comfort, Sport and Refresh, change the cabin's lighting, climate and sound together rather than just the drivetrain mapping. The cabin also includes a 28-speaker Naim sound system with Dolby Atmos and a dimmable panoramic sunroof that opens.

At 16.4 feet long, the Torcal is Bentley's shortest four-door, and it is a claimed 50mm lower than the Bentayga with a two-inch drop in roofline. Standard wheels measure 21 inches on the core model and 22 on the Torcal S, with iron brakes standard and carbon-ceramic rotors offered as an upgrade.

Bentley chief executive Frank-Steffen Walliser, who joined from Porsche in 2024, called the reveal the start of the brand's future and said the team had to settle Bentley's identity before settling on a platform. Product line director Martin Page framed the Torcal as "as comfortable as a Flying Spur and as dynamic as a GT."

UK pricing is reported at £173,300, or roughly $230,000, positioning the Torcal between the electric Porsche Cayenne and Bentley's own Bentayga, whose most powerful version makes 641 hp and reaches 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. Final US pricing has not been disclosed. The Torcal is the first production model to wear Bentley's redesigned emblem.

We have covered Bentley's parent, Volkswagen, in our ranking of British marques, most of which are now foreign owned, and in our wider look at the most searched luxury car brands, where electric SUVs already hold five of the top ten places in our coverage of the best luxury SUVs on the market.

Bentley's 2020 Beyond 100 plan had called for the lineup to go fully electric by 2030, a target the Torcal's arrival alongside continued combustion models now quietly abandons. The Torcal goes on sale later this year, with the US market getting the car as a 2028 model in early next year.