Silence is a luxury feature, which is why the top end of the car market took to electric power so readily. Rolls-Royce has the Spectre, Cadillac’s Celestiq pushes bespoke to an extreme, and Mercedes has given the EQS the full Maybach treatment. Bentley’s answer is the Torcal — and it arrives with a curious twist: an engine note for an engine that does not exist.
The Torcal is Bentley’s first fully electric car and the fourth model line in the range alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga. It is set to be revealed in full in London on 23 September 2026. The name comes from El Torcal de Antequera, a dramatic limestone landscape in Andalusia, Spain, and from the Latin torquere, meaning to twist — the same root that gives us the word torque.
Underneath sits the PP41C platform, shared with Porsche’s electric Cayenne. Bentley has already put the headline numbers on the table ahead of the reveal:
- More than 838bhp and 738lb ft from a dual-motor setup
- Target driving range in excess of 370 miles
- Charging at up to 400kW, with 10 per cent to 80 per cent in less than 20 minutes, and 100 miles added in 7 minutes
- A five-metre-long SUV, 120mm shorter overall than the Bentayga and around 300mm shorter than the stretched Bentayga EWB
The Verge rode in a heavily camouflaged preproduction Torcal ahead of that debut and came away fixated on two things: how it rides and how it sounds. The suspension hardware is off-the-shelf two-chamber air with adaptive dampers, but Bentley’s engineers carefully altered the oil flow through those dampers so the jump between Comfort and Sport is far more discernible than the usual token difference. Product director Martin Page calls the ride “incredibly smooth,” with steering that holds its center. It has to be: the car weighs nearly 6,000 lbs, and the air springs are the ones asked to hide that.
Then there is the fake V8. Bentley took its cue from the V8-powered Turbo R of the 1980s, but the soundtrack was not simply churned out from a synthesizer — the track was recorded by a musician’s drum beat and mixed accordingly, preserving the small imperfections a combustion engine naturally has. It is not pure theater, either. The note is tied to torque delivery, giving occupants an audible cue for what the car is about to do, which Bentley argues can help reduce motion sickness.
The material story is just as deliberate. Door cards are made from a fully recyclable, sustainable natural fiber, Merino wool is offered as an interior option through a partnership with UK cloth maker Fox Brothers, and the Crewe assembly plant runs on solar and renewable energy, with a stated focus on circular materials and green aluminum. “What we wanted to do throughout the car is maintain craftsmanship, not only in the materials but also in the way we execute the digital aspects,” Page says.
Pricing is yet to be confirmed. Bentley chairman and CEO Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser calls the Torcal “the most considered car in our history” — the London reveal will show how much of that survives contact with a spec sheet.
