Bentley Luxury Urban SUV: brand's first electric car to get ultra-rapid charging
Bentley has unveiled the initial technical details of its first ever electric car, due in 2027...
While electric cars from mainstream brands have been on the market for what feels like forever, luxury brands have somewhat lagged behind. However, that’s about to change for one heritage brand, with the new Bentley Luxury Urban SUV due to arrive in 2027.
Indeed, the Bentley Luxury Urban SUV – which will undoubtedly be christened something snappier once it’s fully revealed – will be the British firm’s first all-electric offering.
Technical details are thin on the ground, though Bentley has revealed that its EV will be capable of recuperating 100 miles in just 7 minutes under charging. This suggests it'll be able to charge at speeds up to 300kW, which would make it one of the fastest-charging vehicles on the market. Not the fastest though – that record currently belongs to the Lotus Emeya, which can facilitate speeds up to 400kW.
It's worth remembering, though, that it's very rare to find public chargers that go that fast. For reference, the average public charger speed in the UK is around 120kW.
We also know that the Luxury Urban SUV will be underpinned by the PPE platform developed by Audi and Porsche: a scalable chassis technology that should be able to cover many different types of car, from small cars to large SUVs.
As such, the Luxury Urban SUV is expected to be closely related to the upcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric, which will be offered exclusively with dual-motor, four-wheel-drive set-ups and should be able to manage nearly 1000bhp in top-of-the-range guise.
That car also gets 800-volt charging architecture for its large 110kWh battery, which we predict could achieve around 400 miles of range in its most efficient form. However, since the Luxury Urban SUV will receive a boxier shape, it might not travel quite as far as its Porsche sibling.
Early sightings of the Luxury Urban SUV indicate it’ll borrow a lot of styling cues from Bentley’s EXP 15 concept (as represented by our artist's illustration at the top of this article) unveiled earlier this year, with an upright stance and low-slung silhouette. Unlike that concept car and the Cayenne Electric, though, the Bentley EV looks like it’ll get a more upright roofline to maximise rear head room.
Inside, we could see the Luxury Urban SUV take inspiration from the EXP 15 concept, which had a portrait-oriented central infotainment touchscreen integrated into the dashboard, with an integrated digital driver’s display behind the wheel. It also had some physical controls, like a selector dial on the centre console.
The Bentley EV will arrive towards the end of 2026, with deliveries at the start of 2027. It will sit just below the larger Bentayga as Bentley’s shortest SUV.
Despite the arrival of the new EV, Bentley confirmed it will continue with combustion engines into the future, alongside launching a plug-in hybrid or electric car every year from 2026. This could mean that models like the Flying Spur and Continental GT could regain their pure petrol engines, despite initial plans to offer them exclusively as plug-in hybrids.
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