Bentley CEO: Electric cars are the future
By Andrew Hulse
Bentley CEO, Adrian Hallmark, in an interview with Bloomberg recently elaborated on the super well offs’ buying habits. One thing the company has noticed is a new openness to electric vehicles.
He expounds to the reasoning for the switch from gasoline power doesn’t come from the need to save at the pump but has a higher meaning. According to Hallmark, Bentley buyers tend to feel very lucky to be in the position that they are in to be buying a Bentley. Along with this lucky feeling tends to come a moral sense that they need to do good whilst enjoying their opulent vehicles.
This moral sense has caused Bentley to rework some of their more traditional offerings and switch things up. This includes but is not limited to electrification. Not this upcoming generation of Continental but the next will be electrified.
Electric drive won’t be limited to the Continental.
The philosophy of moral construction and purchasing items made in moral ways will not be limited to just the two door Bentley. Electrification is being built into the brands long term strategy. All Bentley models will offer some version of an electric drivetrain by 2025.
For all the purists out there, this is the way of the future, electrified cars will be hard to stay away from. Even in performance vehicles, we will be unable to avoid hybridized systems. As CEO Hallmark puts it “not going that way, even if we don’t have to, we would be massively under-performing in terms of customer potential.”
This is the way everything will be moving, especially as the technology keeps progressing.
Bentley isn’t a first mover here.
By far, if anything they are one of the last lux marques to have hybridized vehicles. Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Lincoln and even Ferrari either have or have said coming vehicles will feature at least partially electric powertrains.
There are still holdouts though, most notably, Lamborghini and McLaren have stated there is no way either company will produce an electric vehicle anytime in the near future.
Next: Last Dodge Viper and Challenger SRT Demon at Barrett-Jackson Auction
Either way, gone are the days where you were lame if you have a hybrid in your garage. The vanilla connotation ended as soon as the supercar triple crown of the LaFerrari, Porsche 918 and McLaren P1 hit with hybrid power.