Bentley Torcal charged up to take on the Range Rover Electric
Bentley’s first all-electric car, the 876bhp Torcal, mixes Porsche chassis technology with Bentley craftsmanship and design
It doesn’t rain but it pours British-built luxury electric SUVs. Following the recently confirmed Range Rover and Range Sport Electric models, Bentley has revealed its long-awaited Torcal, the £173,000 fourth member of the Crewe family that allows the company to provide a full suite of powertrain offerings from petrol, plug-in hybrid and battery electric.
Originally presented as the ‘Urban SUV’, the Torcal might be smaller than a Bentayga but it’s still five-metres long and weighs the wrong side of 2.5-tonnes, its suitability for urban environments starts and stops with its CO2 free ‘tailpipe’ emissions.
> New Range Rover Electric is ready to meet Bentley’s Torcal head-on
Despite utilising the same platform that underpins Porsche’s new Cayenne electric, the Torcal is very much a Bentley, with the design and engineering team in Crewe having input to the platform’s creation in Stuttgart that has allowed them to get exactly what they required to create a new Bentley in north west of England. ‘It was designed as a Bentley first, an electric car second’ explains Robin Page, Bentley’s Director of Design. It’s a similar process that was taken with the Panamera and Continental GT and Flying Spur models, and they have turned out to be two of the best modern Bentleys the company has produced.
Design and dimensions
Under the leadership of Page, the Torcal’s design closely resembles more traditional Bentleys than perhaps the brand’s current line-up does when compared to previous models. Which makes sense when you discover the Continental T provided much of the design team’s inspiration.
As with the iconic Bentley coupe, the Torcal is unapologetically bold in its stance. It portrays what Page calls ‘upright elegance’, with an imposing grille dominating the front that can be illuminated (don’t worry, you can switch it off) and a distinctive lower front bumper that provides the thread of Conti T DNA. It might sit lower to the road than you expect, but the Torcal doesn’t lack presence or confidence when faced head-on.
It’s a very broad shouldered, almost stocky design compared to both the ageing Bentayga and the swoopy Porsche the Torcal shares its under garments with. There’s little fuss to the body detailing, instead the flanks are subtle in their confidence allowing the front and rear wheel arch housings to carry the bulk and muscle. Seeing it in the metal presents a far more confident design than the images convey.
It has a wheelbase 30mm longer than a Bentayga, but its overall length is 125mm shorter and there are no plans to create a long wheelbase Torcal – it’s deemed there is enough interior space already. It’s exactly 2-metres wide, 1.7-metres high and its kerb weight is 2795kg. Ouch. But it hides its bulk far better than the lighter and larger Bentayga and in profile its cleaner design draws you into its details to provide genuine identity and individuality. Overall, many will buy it because of how Bentley has integrated elements of its old school charm into a thoroughly modern vehicle architecture. ‘We do revolution not evolution,’ explained CEO Dr Frank Walliser when giving an evo an early look at the Torcal.
Powertrain, chassis and 0-60mph
What strikes you most is that the Torcal is clearly a Bentley first and foremost and unless you know, there are no overt signs it’s a purely electric car. However, despite appearances to the contrary the company’s hybrid V8 doesn’t fit where the frunk is because there’s an electric motor there, along with one on the rear axle, both of which are powered by a 108kWh battery positioned under the floor between the two. Depending on the trim you go for, you will have either 801bhp and 881lb ft at your disposal in the Core model, 876bhp and 996lb ft in the S for a sub-3sec 0-60mph time. Both figures sit between the 657bhp Cayenne S and 1140bhp Cayenne Turbo and outgun the electric Range Rover and Sport by nearly 300bhp, and this despite Bentley saying it wasn’t chasing performance.
An additional length Bentley has gone to is how the Torcal sounds. They could have, and they did think of, using the soundtrack of a V8 and piping it through the car, but that was considered a bit of a cop out. So they recorded the sounds created by its iconic 6.75-litre V8 and then asked an orchestra to recreate them. So while it’s still piped around the cabin and outside, it’s as authentic as they could make it down to different sound waves reaching passengers depending on where they are sitting in the car, just as you hear an engine’s authentic sound when sitting in a car.
Cast iron brakes are standard, measuring 420mm at the front and 370mm with Bentley’s huge 440mm and 420mm carbon-ceramic discs available as an option. A range of five different designs of 21 and 22-inch wheels are available.
In terms of range, the Torcal will waft you along for 375 miles before you’ll need to plug in, and if you find a 400kW charger you’ll be able to charge the battery from 10 to 80 per cent in 16 mins or add 100 miles of range in seven. Bentley has also predicted the battery will maintain 90 per cent of its usable life after eight years and 100,000 miles, offering a warranty up to that mileage or 10 years.
At each corner is Bentley’s first fully active suspension system, where the two-valve dampers perform independently from each other depending on the loads they are encountering. This has also allowed Bentley to do away with active anti-roll bars, but they have included all-wheel steering. ‘We started with a flat set-up for the car, so it corned flat like a race car, from there we engineered how we wanted the car to drive and feel,’ explains Martin Page, Product Line Director for Torcal.
‘We started by using the Continental GT settings for pitch and roll so a Bentley driver will immediately feel the connection, and from there we built up a character to suit the car while maintaining that Bentley feel. If we blindfolded you and let you drive it you should know it’s a Bentley.’ Drive a Torcal and Cayenne Electric back-to-back and the differences should be stark.
Interior and tech
There are also four drive modes to explore the breadth such systems offer, which means along with Bentley (the engineer’s choice), Comfort (does what it says on the dial) and Sport (how far do you really want to drive?), there is also Refresh, which opens the air vents and gives the driver a bit of a lift with brighter interior lighting. All interior lighting has been created by Bentley’s interior team having a crystal glass created to its own specification and then capturing the light as it’s shone through it to use throughout the cabin.
Open any of the pillarless doors or leave it to the key fob, which can do it for you, and Bentley interior craftsmanship occupies every area. There are, as you would expect, a couple of displays in the Torcal’s interior, one for the instrument pack and the second a central screen (there is no display for the passenger because Bentley doesn’t believe such things adds anything, which they don’t) for many of the primary controls and pretty much everything else. The central screen is also curved to provide a more natural and continuous pressure point for ease of use. Some lovely knurled aluminium controls still feature to control the HVAC system and stereo. Leather, aluminium, new wood veneers and merino wool are just some of the materials Bentley uses to trim the cabin, and like the exterior, inside feels very much a Bentley first and foremost with no contrived or try-hard nods to its powertrain. It’s simply a grand place to spend a lot of time covering miles.
You sit lower than you might expect for a car of its size, it’s similar to stepping into a crossover than up to an SUV, and the view out across all four corners provides the visual reminder of the Torcal’s broad stance. Bentleys feel special regardless of the model, but while they won’t like me for saying this, the Bentayga can struggle to hide its group DNA at times. The Torcal, however, provides that same sense of uniqueness you get from being in a Range Rover in that only a RR customer will be experiencing this cockpit and these materials – it’s the same in the Torcal.
In some people’s eyes, Bentley has been slow to the all-electric market, arriving at a time when two of its biggest markets have put rather sizeable obstacles in its way: China has fallen out with western luxury and America, well, they’ve kind of fallen out with everyone unless they are willing to pay a tariff. But Walliser, while obviously taking a responsible look at all macro and micro economic situations, is confident that Bentley is spread evenly across its markets. ‘We will not give up on China. Yes, we have had a 20 per cent drop year-on-year in China, but Bentley still has 50 percent of the Chinese luxury (car) market,’ he explained. ‘Chinese brands don’t do luxury, they do tech - that’s where Bentley’s strength is because we are luxury. Rivals are aggressively spending billions to buy market share, we don’t have too.’
How big Bentley’s share of the luxury electric SUV market will be remains unknown for now. On paper and in the metal the Torcal wants for nothing. It has the traditional confidence of a Bentley and the luxury the brand stands for and its customer’s desire. That it arrives at the same time as its rival from Gaydon also gains an all-electric powertrain, into a market that’s unproven in a world that’s very different economically than when both were signed off for production, will be both the Range Rover and Torcal’s biggest challenges.
