New Bentley Torcal: name confirmed for brand's first all-electric car
Bentley has unveiled the name 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, which has just confirmed the name of its first electric car due in 2027: the Bentley Torcal.
Indeed, the Bentley Torcal will be the British firm’s first all-electric offering, and it will sit alongside the existing Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga in its line-up.
According to Bentley, the name Torcal is derived from El Torcal de Antequera – a nature reserve in Andalusia, Spain, made up of unique limestone landforms. It's also a nod to the Latin verb 'torquere', which means 'to twist' and is the root of the word 'torque'.
Technical details are thin on the ground, but Bentley has revealed that the Torcal will be capable of recuperating 100 miles in just 7 minutes when 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. For context, the Lotus Eletre can charge at 350kW.
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 Torcal will be underpinned by the PPE platform underpinnings 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 Torcal is expected to be closely related to the upcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric, which is 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 can achieve around 400 miles of range in its most efficient form. However, since the Torcal will receive a boxier shape, it might not travel quite as far as its Porsche sibling.
Early sightings of the Torcal 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 Torcal looks like it’ll get a more upright roofline to maximise rear head room.
Inside, we could see the Torcal 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 Torcal 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, and is expected to start at around £170,000.
Despite the arrival of the new Torcal, 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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