Bentley will call its first electric car the Torcal, the company announced from Crewe on July 6, 2026, ahead of a full reveal set for London on September 23. The name draws on El Torcal de Antequera, a limestone formation in Andalusia, Spain, and on the Latin torquere, to twist, the root of the modern word torque.

That second derivation deserves a closer look. When I covered CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser’s Sunday Times interview last November, he argued torque had stopped setting carmakers apart because every EV delivers it, and that a silent Bentley wouldn’t be a Bentley at all. Eight months later, his first EV carries torque in its name.

The Torcal becomes the fourth Bentley model line and the first production Bentley without a combustion engine since the company’s founding in 1919.

Torcal Becomes Bentley’s Fourth Model Line

Bentley announced the Torcal name from its Crewe headquarters on July 6, 2026, positioning the car as the fourth model line in its range alongside the Continental GT, the Flying Spur and the Bentayga, with a full reveal scheduled for London on September 23, 2026.

In the official announcement, Walliser said the Torcal “may just be the most considered car in our history.” The naming approach continues a convention Bentley started with the Bentayga: pick an extraordinary natural landmark and let the geology do the brand work. The company promised further updates in the weeks leading up to September 23.

What the announcement did not include is just as interesting. There is no delivery date and no price. Technical details are absent too, and the sole teaser image shows the car’s rear end.

The Announcement Avoids The Word Electric

Nowhere in the body of Bentley’s naming announcement does the word electric appear, an omission that stands out for a company presenting the first battery-powered production car in its 107-year history and one that says plenty about how Bentley wants this launch to be read.

Electric shows up only in the fine print. Bentley’s social posts and consumer site carry a compliance footnote about pending EU type approval for electric range, and the newsroom page confines the word to boilerplate about the Beyond100+ strategy. The product copy itself sticks to limestone and Latin.

The technical picture comes from elsewhere. The Torcal rides on Volkswagen Group’s Premium Platform Electric, the same PPE architecture under the Porsche Cayenne Electric that we covered at its November unveiling. Journalists who saw a pre-production car at Crewe report a body around five meters long and a range target above 300 miles. The upright grille lights up, a feature owners can switch off.

The same preview described diamond motif lighting that runs across the car and shows up in the rear light cluster. The interior keeps physical switchgear alongside a large infotainment screen.

The Name Contradicts Walliser’s Own Torque Argument

Eight months before naming his first EV after the Latin root of torque, Bentley CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser told The Sunday Times that torque no longer separates one carmaker from another, arguing that every electric vehicle delivers it and that sound now carries the difference.

“But now everyone has torque,” Walliser said in that interview, which we covered on November 9. He described EV acceptance as having never been lower, and he was announcing a petrol-powered Continental GT Supersports at the time, expected to cost around £400,000, while the electric program waited.

The naming lands at the end of a four-year retreat. In January 2022, Bentley committed £2.5 billion (about $3.2 billion) to converting its Crewe factory for an all-electric lineup by 2030. In 2024 the deadline moved to 2035. By late 2025 Walliser was describing the target as the mid-2030s, and in November he said the first EV wouldn’t reach customers until 2027.

Against that record, a September 2026 reveal reads as the brand recommitting in public, even if the language stays cautious. Bentley has not said when Torcal production starts or when customers get their cars.

EVXL’s Take

Bentley just named its first EV after the one attribute its CEO says no longer matters, and announced it without using the word electric. That looks like confusion. I read it as the most honest signal yet of where luxury EVs stand in 2026.

The playbook has a precedent. Rolls-Royce built the Spectre on former CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös’s framing that it was “a Rolls-Royce first, and an electric car second.” That approach delivered a strong first year, then a 47 percent sales collapse in 2025 and the end of the brand’s 2030 all-electric pledge, which I covered in March. Bentley is running the same play with the volume turned down further: electric goes unspoken entirely.

I understand the commercial logic. Walliser watched luxury buyers walk away from EVs, said so in public, and has no interest in leading his most important launch in a decade with the one word his customers have been rejecting. But notice what that concedes. The launch strategy for Bentley’s first electric car is to avoid saying electric car. When the marketing plan treats the powertrain as a liability to be footnoted, the luxury EV confidence problem has officially reached Crewe.

Watch September 23 for two things. First, a delivery date: Walliser said in November that the car wouldn’t reach customers before 2027, and I’d expect the reveal to hold that line rather than pull it forward. Second, whether the word electric appears in Bentley’s launch materials anywhere outside the regulatory fine print. Torquere means to twist. So far, that describes the messaging as much as the car.

Source: Bentley Newsroom

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.