After nearly a decade of teasing, Bentley has finally gone electric. The British luxury marque pulled the covers off the Torcal SUV at a global debut in London on September 23 — its first fully electric vehicle and the fourth model line in the company’s 107-year history.
Designed, engineered, and built in Crewe, England, the Torcal joins the Continental GT, Flying Spur, and Bentayga. And it arrives with numbers that would make most supercars blush.
876 Horsepower and a 375-Mile Range
Bentley is launching the Torcal in two flavors. The standard Torcal makes 821 PS (810 hp) and 1,194 Nm (881 lb-ft) of torque, hitting 60 mph in 3.3 seconds on the way to a 155 mph top speed. Step up to the Torcal S and output climbs to 888 PS (876 hp) and 1,350 Nm (996 lb-ft) with Launch Control engaged — good for a 2.8-second sprint and 162 mph flat out.
Both versions draw from a 113 kWh battery pack delivering up to 375 miles (600 km WLTP) of range, according to Electrek. At five meters long, it’s Bentley’s shortest four-door model, yet it still swallows 460 liters of trunk space plus a 90-liter frunk.
Up front you’ll find a new illuminated diamond grille borrowed from the Continental T — and the Torcal is the first Bentley to wear the brand’s redesigned emblem. Notably, Bentley says it deliberately capped the acceleration because most of its customers find anything more extreme uncomfortable. Restraint, it turns out, is a luxury feature.
The Cheapest Bentley Ever Built
Here’s the number that might matter most: the Torcal starts at £173,000 (about $230,000), making it the cheapest model Bentley sells. That’s less than half the price of Ferrari’s first EV, the Luce, which starts at €550,000 (roughly $628,000).
Chief executive Frank-Steffen Walliser is betting that price point pulls in a new crowd. “We see rising interest in electric cars and way higher acceptance, even in our market segment,” he told Reuters. “We expect many more customers to join the Bentley brand.”
Early signs back him up: roughly half the interest is coming from existing Bentley owners, while the other half are buyers entirely new to the brand, with strong demand from Europe, the Middle East, and US states where EV adoption is highest.
A Bentley First, an EV Second
Bentley’s pitch is that the Torcal doesn’t ask loyalists to give anything up. “Our intention was always to make a Bentley first,” Walliser told Reuters. “We feel people are not asking for a completely different car just because it’s electric.”
That philosophy shows in the details: familiar diamond-shaped lights designed to evoke a conventional grille, and even a hand-crafted driving soundtrack built on orchestral timpani and smaller drums that quicken with acceleration — Bentley’s answer to the missing V8 rumble.
Why this matters
The Torcal is the industry’s clearest test yet of whether ultra-wealthy buyers actually want electric cars. Right now, Rolls-Royce is the only other ultra-luxury marque selling an EV — and demand there is reportedly softening. Ferrari’s electric Luce drew fan backlash over its looks, Lamborghini has pushed its first EV to the end of the decade, and McLaren says it has no EV plans at all, citing weak customer demand.
Bentley itself has been cautious: it delayed this car until 2026 and abandoned its goal of going fully electric by 2030, pushing the target to 2035. But it’s backing the Torcal with real money — a £350 million ($465 million) investment in its Crewe plant. If the cheapest Bentley ever can’t convert the country-club set, it may be a while before anyone else in this segment tries.
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