Bentley has unveiled the Torcal, its first fully electric production model, combining up to 375 miles of range with 16-minute 10–80% rapid charging, a £173,000 starting price and a deliberately familiar approach to luxury.
The new SUV becomes Bentley’s fourth model line alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga, and it is a significant change of direction for a brand built around large-capacity combustion engines. Crucially, Bentley is not presenting the Torcal as an EV that needs to abandon everything its customers already recognise.
That approach runs through the design, the cabin and even the sound. The Torcal range includes the most powerful and fastest-accelerating production Bentley yet, while its electric soundtrack has been created from recordings of real musical instruments rather than simply trying to reproduce an artificial engine note.
Bentley Torcal: the key figures
- Starting price: £173,000
- Claimed driving range: up to 375 miles
- Battery capacity: 113.2kWh
- Rapid charging: 10–80% in 16 minutes on a suitable high-power DC charger
- Production: Crewe, England
- Model position: Bentley’s fourth model line and first fully electric production car
The 375-mile figure puts the Torcal into serious long-distance EV territory rather than limiting it to the “urban SUV” description Bentley used earlier in the project. Bentley lists a 113.2kWh battery and a 16-minute 10–80% DC charging time, while also saying more than 150 miles can be added in 10 minutes at a 350kW charger. Real-world charging performance will still depend on battery temperature, charger capability and conditions.
The figures also put it close to another major British luxury EV revealed this year: the Range Rover Electric, which was announced with a 372-mile range and 350kW charging.
It still wants to look and feel like a Bentley
Bentley’s strategy is clear: going electric does not mean giving customers something deliberately alien. The Torcal retains the brand’s traditional proportions and visual cues, including diamond-inspired lighting details that reference the grille treatment of its combustion models.
The name itself comes from El Torcal de Antequera in Andalusia, Spain. Bentley says the new SUV sits alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga rather than replacing an existing model.
Inside, the company is mixing familiar materials with some genuinely new ideas. Bentley says the Torcal introduces a 100% merino wool automotive fabric developed with Somerset cloth maker Fox Brothers, while the wider cabin still leans heavily on the hand-finished materials expected at this end of the market. The company’s official materials briefing gives a closer look at that approach.
Bentley has given its EV a soundtrack — but not a fake V8
One of the more unusual parts of the Torcal is its sound design. Instead of sampling a combustion engine and playing it through the speakers, Bentley recorded real drums, viola and bass guitar to create the powertrain’s sonic character.
According to Bentley’s explanation of the system, the team studied the rhythm and emotional character of its V8 engines before building a responsive soundtrack around acoustic instruments. The sound changes with driver inputs, so the idea is to add some of the feedback an EV naturally loses when there is no combustion engine working through the rev range.
Watch: Bentley demonstrates how the Torcal’s Dynamic Symphony was created from real instruments and shaped around driver inputs.
Whether owners see that as clever theatre or something they switch off will be one of the more interesting things to learn once the Torcal reaches customers. But it is at least a more considered solution than simply pretending an electric motor is a petrol V8.
The most powerful production Bentley yet
Bentley has used electrification to push performance beyond its combustion models, but there is an important distinction between the two versions. The standard Torcal uses two electric motors producing 809 bhp (821 PS / 604 kW) and 1,155 Nm of torque, with 0–60 mph taking 3.3 seconds.
The Torcal S raises output to 876 bhp (888 PS / 653 kW) and 1,350 Nm, cutting 0–60 mph to 2.8 seconds with Launch Control. That is the version Bentley describes as the most powerful production model in its history.
That matters because the Torcal is not being sold as an efficiency-led alternative to the rest of the range. Bentley is trying to make electric power feel like a natural extension of the effortless torque and performance that have long defined its cars.
The cabin technology follows a similar theme. Bentley has created four environments — Bentley, Comfort, Sport and Refresh — that coordinate lighting, sound, climate, air quality and digital information rather than treating each system separately. Refresh Mode, for example, increases fresh-air circulation and brightens the cabin with the aim of helping occupants remain alert on longer journeys.
£350m investment keeps Torcal production in Crewe
The Torcal will be built at Bentley’s Crewe headquarters as part of an investment of more than £350 million in the site. A new production line has been created inside one of the original factory buildings dating from 1938, combining Bentley’s hand-built production methods with autonomous guided vehicles moving cars between assembly stations.
The investment lands during a particularly active period for the UK automotive industry. We recently covered McLaren’s £500 million UK expansion and first SUV programme, while Nissan has committed another £170 million to Sunderland for Kicks e-POWER production.
For Bentley, however, the Torcal is about more than investment in a factory. It is also a test of whether the marque can bring existing customers into an EV while attracting buyers who may never previously have considered a Bentley. Reporting around the launch puts the Torcal at the lower end of Bentley’s price range, opening the door to a slightly broader group of buyers without turning it into anything close to a mass-market EV.
Bentley’s electric strategy has become more pragmatic
The timing is important. Bentley originally targeted an all-electric line-up by 2030, then extended that ambition to 2035 in 2024. A further strategy update in 2025 said plug-in hybrids would remain available until at least 2035 and that the previous EV-only milestone could move again in response to customer demand.
That makes the Torcal less of an all-or-nothing bet than Bentley’s earlier EV strategy suggested. Instead, it becomes the first real-world test of how much appetite there is for an electric Bentley while buyers can still choose hybrid models elsewhere in the range.
Tech Torque Verdict
The Bentley Torcal matters because it does not treat electrification as an excuse to throw away the identity of the brand. The 375-mile range and rapid-charging capability give it the fundamentals expected of a modern luxury EV, while the Crewe production, traditional craftsmanship and slightly eccentric real-instrument soundtrack are unmistakably Bentley.
The bigger question is commercial rather than technical: will enough Bentley buyers actually want an EV? Torcal is now the car that has to answer it.
