Bentley Will Go All-Electric In The Next Decade

Luxury carmaker Bentley unveiled plans to produce only plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars starting in 2026, as it aims to make sustainability a top priority.

In its Beyond100 strategy for the coming two decades, the company highlighted its aims to go from producing the world’s largest 12-cylinder petrol engines to stopping the usage of combustion engines altogether within 10 years.

This comes months after the company slashed almost a quarter of its workforce and postponed its plans to go electric.

The company has committed to offering hybrid variants of all its models by 2023. But its first pure electric vehicle will arrive in 2025, helping Bentley pair the luxury it has long been known for with "zero-emission mobility." The automaker is set to make its entire line-up electric by the end of 2030.

“Driving this change includes, and also goes beyond our products, delivering a paradigm shift throughout our business, with credibility, authenticity, and integrity. Within a decade, Bentley will transform from a 100-year-old luxury car company to a new, sustainable, wholly ethical role model for luxury,” Adrian Hallmark, chairman, and CEO of Bentley Motors said.

All of Bentley’s suppliers will have to pass a sustainability audit and verify their sustainability credentials by the end of 2020, the company said in a release.

In an attempt to also make its operations more sustainable, the company renovated its headquarters in the U.K. to make it carbon neutral and certified by the Carbon Trust. It is putting in measures to reduce the environmental impact of its factories, with respect to wastewater, CO2 emissions, and the use of solvents and plastic.

The luxury automaker's plans are to follow its parent Volkswagen Group’s strategy to become a leader in electric vehicle sales and sell close to a million electric cars every year by 2025.

With its Beyond100 strategy, Bentley is also striving to become a "recession-proof" company, something that has so far been evident with the restructuring of its workforce and the elimination of about 800 positions. Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic like all other automakers, Bentley has put in place cost-cutting measures to “achieve a positive financial performance for the full year 2020, in spite of the extenuating circumstances,” it said in the release.

Other British and European automakers, including Aston Martin and Renault, also announced job cuts, as demand for high-end cars approaches an all-time low during the coronavirus pandemic.