Aston Martin’s first battery-electric car will go on sale in 2025. Aston projects a relatively quick timeline for its debut BEV, which will bump another car from its lineup and pave the way for the rest of its fully-electrified cars, plural, per Automotive News. I’d get excited, but we’ve been here before.
In 2019, the British carmaker announced it would replace its Rapide sedan, which was powered by a V12, with the fully-electrified Rapide E. The company had even announced a then-new production facility that would be its “Home of Electrification,” in St. Athan, South Wales.
The Rapide E never made it to production because billionaire Lawrence Stroll killed Aston’s EV aspirations as a condition of his buyout when the company was struggling last year. Aston’s previous CEO, Andy Palmer, said afterwards that its electrification plans weren’t dead, only delayed.
Well, just over a year later, it seems those plans are back on, even if there’s been a change of executives at Aston. Despite Stroll still being around, the current CEO, Tobias Moers, told AN that a fully-electrified Aston is imminent.
It might even be worth the wait, because soon after the (alleged) release of Aston’s first, more BEVs are set to follow and replace some ICE models, per AN:
The current range of front-engine sports cars including the Vantage and DB11 will then move to full-electric models in the next generation, Moers said.
The current range cadence of entry Vantage, the DB11 and the high-performance DBS range will be retained, with a halo model sitting above them. “The succession of our traditional sports segment has to be full electric, no doubt,” he told Automotive News Europe at an event here.
In fact, the British carmaker says that by 2030 half of the cars in its lineup will be fully-electrified. That means a fully-electrified Vantage, or EV-antage, plus a fully-electrified DB11, or DBE-leven. Or whatever.
I can goof around with the carmaker’s silly naming conventions (Rapide E?) but the mile range that Moers predicts for Aston’s electric cars is no joke. Moers told AN that the first BEV will do 372 miles, “at least.” That’s not a bad number for the first one, and presumably the subsequent cars will have more. We’ll see.
One important thing to note is that the transition to EVs is projected to be pretty quick thanks to Aston’s relationship with Daimler. Remember that the carmaker’s recently announced PHEV, the Valhalla, uses a hybrid drivetrain from AMG. So, you can expect the two companies will keep collaborating.
Of course, an announcement like this would be incomplete without news of an electric SUV, hot on the wheels of any BEV Aston Martin releases first. The SUV segment practically saved Aston Martin, according to AN:
Moers told investors on a financial results call in May that the company’s first full-electric sports car will be followed in 2025 or 2026 by an electric SUV, which, he said, would be crucial because of the popularity of SUVs.
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Aston Martin has forecast that sales will rise to 10,000 a year “in the medium term,” up from the 6,000 the brand has predicted it will sell this year.
Part of that rise will come from increase sales of the DBX SUV, of which Aston Martin has promised more spin-offs. The DBX accounted for 50 percent of the brand’s wholesales to dealers in the first quarter of 2021, Aston Martin said in May.
Again, it’s hard to get excited about EV promises from carmakers that reneged before, but when they’re talking about electric SUVs, you know something is up.
