Bentley to Retire Roaring 12-Cylinder Engines, Go Electric | Hacker News Reader

Bentley to Retire Roaring 12-Cylinder Engines, Go Electric

bloomberg.com

33 pointspseudolus37 comments

the company’s first fully-electric model to be introduced in 2025

The news is always [major car manufacturer] will have a huge range of EVs available in [3 to 5 years - pick one].

I mean, good luck to them, but I'm weary after all the years of announcements and then not much actually happening on the ground.

A few things are finally happening now, granted.

I mean you could say the same thing about VW (surely a major car manufacturer) 3 years back but ID 3 is being mass produced now and has a clear backing from VW (eg. I see it advertised a decent amount). ID 4 is coming, VW group members will all offer EVs based on the same platform in following years.

Electric cars are becoming a reality, charging networks are getting built, and most of the things I see around here is not Tesla. I bought a new car recently so I won't be in the market for a new one for at least 3-4 years but I fully expect my next car to be electric and I doubt it will be a Tesla (I have my eye on Jaguar ipace but who knows by then).

Note also that Bentley is part of VW.

> ID 3 is being mass produced now

I just did a TON of searching, and while every outlet wrote about it in late 2019 and early 2020, and about how production was going to be x units/week by summer 2020, I can't find a single report written in the last ~3 months giving an update on how production of the ID.3 are going.

Can you find a source for how many they're actually building per day right now?

Couple of minutes of looking I found production was delayed till Sept 2020. Looks like they shipped about 2700 units in October.

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/jq8u0c/ev...

Can't find production numbers but they recently made a statement that they have 40k orders which seems like less than they anticipated (blaming it on software issues) and expect the line to fill the emissions gap in their fleet [1] and deliveries have started. I should maybe rephrase my statement to say ID line is ramping up to mass production - I don't know what's their status but I've noticed them pushing ID.3 seriously around here (unlike say e-golf which was a half-assed "we have an electric car" thing) and they committed to a bunch of full electrics across the group (Škoda, Seat, Audi).

[1] https://todaynewspost.com/auto-news/vw-braces-for-eu-fine-fo...

Thanks.

So like so many all-electric vehicles, the ID.3 is still not in mass production.

I think the difference is that ID.3 platform plans feel much more concrete than other manufacturers half hearted attempts, but I could be wrong, we will see next year.

I keep seeing references to work VW is doing to produce the ID.3 and ID.4 at scale. Articles like this one. That talks about them adding a second factory to produce it in Germany and building a factory for the ID.4 in Tennessee. That's more than marketing/PR blather.

https://electrek.co/2019/11/19/vw-production-id3-electric-ca...

A point too is this isn't like some startup saying they are going to do something they haven't done before. VW builds automobiles at scale.

VW is electrifying as a settlement condition, it's not a major car maker with free will.

I just checked the numbers in France. Over the last three months, top EV constructors were, in order: Renault-Nissan, PSA, Hyundai, Kia, Tesla, BMW and Volkswagen.

PSA wasn't even selling electric cars in 2019, and is already threatening Renault-Nissan for first spot. All their brands (Peugeot, Citroen, DS and Opel) have launched at least one EV in 2020.

I don't think the new comers need luck, or your encouragements: they are already taking over the market. Maybe that's not the case in the US though: I have no idea about GM, Ford, etc...

True. If you take "200 miles of range" as the hurdle to be cleared, then all those manufacturers you mentioned have exactly one model each that can acheive that. Except BMW who've got nothing with that range. Tesla have four.

I take '200 miles range' as the kindof benchmark of seriousness. Its easy to make EVs with 100 miles of range, we've had those for a decade. They have their uses as town cars but 200+ miles is much more useful.

The other challenge is to deliver that range at a reasonable price.

Yes.

Aug 04, 2020: "The electric Ford F-150 will possibly debut in 2021."

Motor Trend: "2022 Ford F-150 Electric Pickup: What We Know So Far"

Motor Trend: "2023 Ford F-150 Electric: What We Know So Far"

The big news is that the price has jumped up to $70K - $100K. There is no excuse for that.

Jeep is supposedly coming out with a plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler next month. Electric range is maybe 25 miles.

On the plus side, on that short of a range you only need to carry a few AA batteries with you for a quick top-up.

> Jeep is supposedly coming out with a plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler next month. Electric range is maybe 25 miles.

That's enough to get a carpool sticker, right?

> Electric range is maybe 25 miles

Average commute is 16 miles each way so is doable.

Depends on the type of commute. Are those 25 highway miles? If so, 16 miles of slow stop-and-go traffic could push the limit. Get stuck behind a car accident for an hour and it definitely would. Hybrid though, so you'd still have gas and wouldn't be stuck.

You've got it wrong for hybrids. Stop and go traffic is great for range. But if you can go highway speeds because there was an accident upstream of your entrance, you'll need to use gas to get home.

Sure that's the point. Most of the time you can rely on electric, when something unusual happens or you're doing a road trip you use gas.

> but I'm weary after all the years of announcements and then not much actually happening on the ground.

I see Leafs everywhere, Nissan's electric vans, BMW i3s, and I don't live somewhere with a big spend on new cars. Citroen and Puegeot's new cars all have electric options.

The fact that the Germans are well behind due to their relentless insistence that all they need is diesel is bad for them but shrug.

Yeah it is getting better the last year or two

Bentley are not a major car manufacturer as per se

You are aware Bentley is part of the Volkswagen group?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group

Major to me means VW group as a whole rather than Bentley. Bentley are a big company but they don't really have a range of cars as per se, they're all... Bentley's (if that makes sense)

I'd love to own a Bentley, and I think an electric version has the potential to make them much more competitive, reliability-wise. (The ghost of Lucas electrics threatens to haunt, though.)

I think Tesla has too much headstart, though. Bentley (and most others) simply won't be able to catch up.

> I think Tesla has too much headstart, though. Bentley (and most others) simply won't be able to catch up.

Everyone says Tesla has a head start.

They have a head start on batteries and the motors. Other manufacturers have a head start on building cars and other aspects of what makes a car a car.

A Bentley or Rolls Royce is a different class of car to a Tesla. Tesla may be able to make a battery / motor fit for a Bentley or Rolls Royce but can Tesla make a car you can call a Bentley or Rolls Royce?

Likewise if you take something like a Porche 911. Tesla might be able to make an electric power train fit for a 911 but can Tesla make a car you can call a 911 with it's handling?

There's lots of different markets and no single manufacturer can corner them all.

With governments starting to make all new vehicles from 2030+ electric other car manufacturers have no choice but to catch up so will be investing heavily.

I think Tesla will grow and will certainly have a spot in the market. At some point they'll be a crossing point where other manufacturers have Tesla's tech and it'll be interesting how Tesla distinguishes itself.

The next 5-10 years look interesting.

Tesla are the only car manufacturer that really understand how to do software. It will take a long time for the others to adjust. VW recognise that they need to do a huge amount of work in this area. See https://thenextweb.com/cars/2020/01/17/vw-must-become-tech-c...

Bentley is in a whole other tier of luxury, they're not really a direct competitor.

The first company that puts out an EV with ~250 range for about the price of a Civic will be the one to really take the mass market. That could be Tesla, but even if they hit their 3-year deadline, their history shows they're unlikely to be able to keep up with demand. If another larger company with more capacity gets to market even a year later, they could still take the crown on the first real mass-market affordable EV.

With the price of gas being so low and most Americans driving suvs the appeal of electric isn’t great. I really like smaller cars but I feel like they aren’t very safe When every other idiot drives a car with twice the mass

Only ~5% of the world's population live in the USA... so a vehicle doesn't have to be successful in the USA to be an enormous success - financially and environmentally

What percentage of the world's car-owning population lives in the USA?

I own 6 cars, myself.

For the purpose of this discussion where we're really talking about purchasing a car, it may be more useful to look at annual car purchases rather than estimates of world-wide car ownership.

Roughly 80 million cars are sold each year [0]

Roughly 18 million cars are sold in the US each year [1]

So the US encompasses about 22.5% of annual car sales. That seems significant enough to consider the US in this context as a major factor for the impact US adoption of EV's would have in the market.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/25/global-car-sales-expected-to....]

[1]

I recently watched a video of the assembly of that engine. It's pretty impressive and the car it was put is a beast.

I couldn't help but think it's pretty silly to be driving one of those but the engineering of that power train is still something to behold.

“As a luxury brand, our customers are more likely to have a home where they can charge a vehicle, an office where they can charge a vehicle, their favorite spots to go where they can charge a vehicle"

Translation: don't expect a lot of range from our heavy and aerodynamically inefficient vehicles.

Well yeah, people that own Bentleys use them for in-town transit with air travel between cities. Country estates get land rovers, and there's a driver to handle the details of charging.

> Translation (...)

To be fair, the W12 engine models were not blessed with a great range to start with. Especially if you were driving the automobile in "normal" fashion. They are very thirsty mashines with 90 L tank - the official 13L / 100 km consumprion is a very 'idealistic' information, you can easily double the fuel consumption.

That is why the V8/V8S got so popular and had far more then 50% share when I quit. The range (and more sportive driving characteristic) in comparison to the W12/W12 attracted more clients. That might have changed with the Gen3 GTs, since they use a different platform.

Source: I sold Bentley's as a side job for quite a while (Gen1-Gen2, quit when Gen3 came up).

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