The New Bentley Torcal: Bentley's First All-Electric Car

Not to be mistaken for an update of Bentley’s Bentayga, the Torcal, revealed at 180 Studios on the Strand (the same stretch that’s home to Nick Jones’ Café Clement) on the 23rd of September, is an entirely new model. Guests including Michelle Yeoh, Simone Ashley, Tom Dixon and Jodie Kidd gathered for the unveiling. For chairman and CEO Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser, it “demonstrates how investment, innovation and craftsmanship can come together to create a world-leading luxury product”. The Torcal becomes the fourth pillar of the range, alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga. It comes in two versions, a core model and a sportier Torcal S. While it sits just below the Bentayga as a slightly smaller SUV, it is still just as, if not more, powerful, with the Torcal S being the most powerful car built in Bentley’s history. This new addition to the series also completes what Bentley calls the “luxury of choice”: buyers can now choose between petrol, hybrid and fully electric cars.

Bentley often looks to nature to name its cars: the Bentayga borrows its name from a peak in the Canary Islands, the Bacalar from a Mexican lagoon and the Batur from a volcanic crater in Bali. The Torcal follows suit. El Torcal de Antequera, a nature reserve in the mountains of Andalusia, southern Spain, is a place of towering limestone stacks, sheer cliffs, and winding stone paths. Over millions of years, wind and rain have sculpted its rocks into a surreal, almost otherworldly landscape, which is still being reshaped today, forever being wrought into something new, something enduring. The name also has a second meaning. It comes from the Latin torquere, meaning ‘to twist’, the same root that gives us the English word ‘torque’, the force that turns a car’s wheels. Thus, the name implies this level of progression, of constant evolution and change. And much like the landscape that inspired it, the Torcal is a product of powerful forces.

And those forces are considerable. In its S form, the Torcal produces 888 PS and 1,350 Nm of torque, more than any Bentley before it. It reaches 60mph from standstill in just 2.8 seconds, on its way to a top speed of 162mph. A full charge gives it a range of up to 375 miles and a rapid charger can take it from 10% to 80% in just 16 minutes. Which means a stop on a long drive needs to last no longer than a leisurely coffee. Yet for all its cutting-edge technology, the Torcal remains firmly rooted in tradition: it was designed, engineered and built at Bentley’s home in Crewe, with suppliers from across the UK. And while an electric car may run in near silence, Bentley had no intention of letting the Torcal lose its voice.

The Torcal’s voice comes from the Bentley Dynamic Symphony. According to Walliser, every Bentley of the past century has had “a soundtrack with soul”, and this one is played by real musicians. The idea came from the brand’s legendary V8. Listening back to its recordings in the studio, Bentley’s team realised that it was the rhythm of the engine, not the mechanical growl, that gave it its emotional pull. And this rhythm had an uncanny likeness to a live drummer: neither is perfectly regular and it’s in those tiny imperfections that they feel human. So rather than engineering a perfect sound, Bentley brought in musicians, whose drums, viola, and bass guitar give an electric car the same sense of humanity and artistry that its combustion engines always had. The result responds to the driver’s right foot: near-silent when cruising and building as you accelerate. It is so convincing that people who hear it cannot believe it's not a real engine. With the optional Naim sound system, the effect is not only heard, but felt. Shakers under the seats add a physical rumble to the experience, making it all the more authentic.

The Torcal’s soul isn’t only something you can hear; it is something you can see. Bentley has always been a byword for British luxury and while its first electric car looks bold and modern, the long bonnet and illuminated diamond grille make it unmistakably a Bentley. But the real magic happens inside. Everything is exactly what it appears to be: genuine leather, real wood. The upholstery comes in 100% Merino wool from the British mill Fox Brothers, while the walnut veneer gives existing wood, including offcuts, a second life, with a thousand slices bonded together to create a striking new finish. Even the digital displays have a human story. Instead of opting for computer graphics, they use light captured through hand-cut crystals from the Lake District’s Cumbria Crystal, giving the screens a warmth that no computer could create.

At a time when so much of the car industry is chasing screens and digital perfection, the Torcal takes a refreshingly different course, proving that an electric car can still have character and a heartbeat. It is also the first Bentley to wear the brand’s newly redesigned emblem, a fitting symbol of a company stepping confidently into its next chapter. The Torcal starts at £173,300, with first deliveries expected in the second quarter of 2027.