Bentley won’t rush with the development of its first production electric vehicle because the company is not happy with the current battery technologies. The Crewe-based automaker wants its future EVs to “appeal to modern luxury values” and falling under the control of Audi is seen as a positive move by Bentley’s CEO.
Adrian Hallmark is happy with the new internal transfer Volkswagen Group is making by moving Bentley under the control of Audi instead of Porsche. The move, which should “allow for synergies to be achieved as part of the electrification strategy of the two premium brands,” will come into effect on March 1, 2021.
“We will have much more synergies with Audi in five to 10 years’ time than with Porsche because Porsche is sportier and we are more on the luxury side than the performance side,” Hallmark said during a recent online conference, as Automotive News reports. At this point, it’s not known whether Audi will take a share in Bentley because “that is not yet determined.”
The transfer to Audi control means Bentley will use differently tuned and calibrated platforms. Given Audi’s more comfortable nature compared to the sports cars of Porsche, this probably means the engineers of Bentley will have an easier task when converting the architectures for use in its ultra-luxury cars.
“With the current cars we had to get into the engineering of those architectures after they had largely been done,” Hallmark commented. “The difference now with this new electric architecture is that we are right at the beginning of the definition of what it needs to achieve.”