The motoring world has been marked by one thing in the past decade: top-end carmakers transitioning to electric. Porsche went early with the Taycan in 2019, followed by Rolls-Royce and Maserati in 2023, with the Spectre and GranTurismo Folgore. Then came the chaos and controversy that followed the reveal of the Jaguar Type 01 and Ferrari Luce this year, both due to hit the road in the coming months. Now it’s Bentley’s turn: please be upstanding for the first electric Bentley in the company’s 107-year history, the Torcal.
The name comes from El Torcal de Antequera, a limestone landscape in Andalusia, and from the Latin torquere, to twist. Built in Crewe, it will be the marque’s fourth model line, alongside the Continental GT, the Flying Spur, and its bigger brother, the Bentayga. From £173,300 (approx. $230,000), it’s priced between the electric Porsche Cayenne and the Bentayga as the new gateway into the Bentley brand.
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I’m fortunate enough to meet the Torcal on California’s hazy, golf course-riddled Monterey Peninsula, a few months before its global reveal. Bentley, like most carmakers, will be hoping the Torcal is a hit in the US, so it might just be the perfect place to give people a sneak peek.
Up close and in the metal, the Torcal is an imposing mid-sized SUV, with much the same footprint as the electric Porsche Cayenne with which it shares a platform. It’s smaller than its big Bentayga brother – and lower, with a long wheelbase and purposeful short overhangs. Bentley initially labelled the Torcal an “urban SUV” during development, a knowing nod to where most of its cars can be found in the wild, but its makers claim it’s capable of more than a cruise down Sloane Street. “[The urban SUV name] is primarily down to the smaller proportions and some of the usability in an urban environment that’s potentially more suitable than anything we currently offer,” says Martin Page, product line director for Bentley’s first battery-powered car. “It’s not that it’s only urban capable.”
The Torcal is the first production Bentley since the marque pulled the covers off the EXP 15 concept in 2025, which hinted at its future design direction. Some design cues from the EXP 15 can be seen in the Torcal, with its flat-nosed front defined by a prominent, upright, and illuminated diamond grille, which is a nod to the Continental T, says the marque. Illuminated eyebrows sit above the main headlights, which give way into a strong bonnet line that carries down the side of the car, meeting the sweeping rear haunch line that gathers over the back wheel. Crewe’s design team calls it the “resting beast,” and it’s something shared across all its current cars.
The Torcal’s styling is a departure from the more curvaceous cars of the past few years and a return to the more linear lines that defined the mid-1990s and 2000s Bentleys. “You don’t experience a car all at once,” says design director Robin Page. “There is a hierarchy to what you see and understand.” The surfacing is cleaner than the Bentayga’s, the windows are frameless, and the doors close themselves, silently. It is also the first Bentley to wear the marque’s redesigned emblem.
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Once inside, the most arresting feature is the curved central display, which leads down to the knurled “Curation Engine,” a diamond-patterned dial with the starter button set into it, which switches between the drive modes: Bentley, Sport, Comfort, and Refresh, the last more an ambience setting than an eco-mode. Twist it and the cabin follows the chassis: lighting, graphics, climate, massage, and the propulsion sound all move with it.
The central screen and buttons are flanked by another curved digital display for the driver, but there’s no screen for the passenger, unlike some of its more tech-heavy rivals. “We haven’t got a passenger screen. That’s a conscious decision,” Martin Page explains. “Our perception of luxury is that it’s an appropriate blend between technology and traditional analog materials.”
There’s no shortage of new materials to look at instead. The dashboard reinterprets the ‘winged’ architecture of other Bentleys, while its sheer surfaces give the lashings of leather, wool, veneer, and aluminum room to breathe. The wood is an ombré veneer built up from around a thousand compressed layers, while the merino wool woven by Fox Brothers in Somerset makes its first appearance in a production car.
It’s a very comfortable and surprisingly spacious cabin to ride in, but what is more unexpected is the unmistakable V8 burble emanating from the engineless car. Far from a whine or a synthesized whoosh, you can’t help but notice the beat and bass, like a thumping V8 idling somewhere behind the rear seats.
Page and his team started with the sound, pouring through the back catalog for the best-sounding Bentley, before settling on the heavy beat of the Continental R’s V8. “We got some expert musicians to play the firing order of the V8 on drums,” he says. “The big V8 lump is a mechanical, analog machine, so it’s got its own imperfections. The same is true with humans playing drums.”
The sound in the Torcal follows torque demand rather than pure speed, so the noise level dials up under acceleration in certain drive modes. It’s unusual but it works, despite the near-silent electric underpinnings. Few electric car manufacturers have got the sound spot on but the synthetic burble of the Bentley V8 comes close and is a comforting nod to the marque’s past. “We found that the sound is a really fundamental subconscious sensor,” Page explains.
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On a passenger ride through California’s highways and byways, the new Bentley rides well. Despite sharing its platform with the Porsche’s electric Cayenne, it’s a different beast altogether. Active suspension could hold the Bentley’s body perfectly flat. Bentley tried that, found it “a bit unnatural,” according to Page, and tuned some movement back in. The aim is a car “as comfortable as a Flying Spur” on the motorway and “as dynamic as a GT” on a B-road. To quicken the switch between the two, engineers tweaked the hole inside the damper by 0.38mm.
Like any electric car, it’s not lacking power. With 875bhp, the Torcal is the most powerful Bentley yet – and the quickest from a standstill, covering the 0-62mph dash in 2.8 seconds. But the battery-powered Bentley isn’t relying on its Top Trump stats to sell. “This race to the top on power and race to the bottom on 0-60mph [is] sterilizing the industry,” says Page. “For me, the differentiator will be character.”
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Range is 375 miles, and 400kW charging takes the battery from 10 to 80 percent in under 20 minutes. Think of it as being able to complete a Paris to Saint-Tropez dash in one go and you have some idea of the Torcal’s touring ability. The order books are already open, with the car a core component in Bentley’s campaign to attract new audiences. Hot on the heels of the new raucous, race-ready Supersports that arrived in the summer, both that and the Torcal are a clear sign of Bentley’s new direction under chief executive Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser, who joined from Porsche in 2024.
For all the pressure on creating the marque’s first electric car, for Page, the brief was simple. “Just make the next great Bentley. That’s job one,” he says. “Oh, and by the way, it’s all-electric.”
