+++ BENTLEY has confirmed that it will replace its outgoing W12 engine with a V8-based plug-in hybrid (PHEV) powertrain that puts out more than 750 hp. The firm added that the set-up will produce, in metric units, “4-figure torque over a wider plateau”, suggesting it will at least match the 1.000 Nm of the tuned W12 in the limited-run Batur. Bentley has yet to disclose the technical specifications of the new engine or its electricals but said the powertrain will deliver an electric-only range of 80 km between charges and CO2 emissions of less than 50 g/km. The Continental GT, GTC and Flying Spur will be updated with the new powertrains later this year, replacing both the standard V8 and the W12 in each instance. The Bentayga will offer a pure-combustion engine until 2026, at which point it will go hybrid-only. The V6-based plug-in hybrid powertrains in both the Bentayga and Flying Spur will remain on sale. The new details come shortly after former Bentley announced significant investment into plug-in hybrids. Former CEO Adrian Hallmark, who was recently named the next boss of Aston Martin, said Bentley will spend “hundreds of millions” on PHEVs that will be offered for sale into the early 2030s. He hailed PHEVs as a “transitional technology” for reducing CO2 emissions and acclimatizing drivers to electric driving. As well as upping investment in PHEVs, Bentley also delayed its first battery-electric car from next year to late 2026. Hallmark cited delays to the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) program as the reason for pushing back the new car. These issues also set back the arrival of the Audi Q6 e-Tron and the electric Porsche Macan. He added that the delay would allow further development of the EV’s advanced driver assistance systems. +++
+++ A production version of the CUPRA DARKREBEL concept car remains “a dream” for company boss Wayne Griffiths. However, it won’t be launched any time soon, as Cupra has other priorities that will deliver profits and volume much sooner as it enters a period of what Griffiths hopes to be “exponential growth”. A striking 2-seat coupé EV that showcases the Spanish brand’s vision of a future sports car, the DarkRebel was revealed in physical form for the first time last year, having previously been shown in digital form at the unveiling of the Tavascan electric SUV. Griffiths told: “It’s a car I’d love to do, but you do it at a time when you can afford to do it. When you have limited resources, you need to make your priorities, so obviously for me a big priority is the next generation of Cupra cars and electric cars. “The DarkRebel would do a great job for Cupra in terms of image and positioning, but in terms of generating profitability and volume, certainly not. It could be a real game-changer for the Cupra brand at some point in the future, but at the moment it remains a dream”. Cupra design boss Jorge Díez previously told that the car was the result of a brand that can “truly dream”, saying: “With no heritage or the need to keep to past DNA, we can make it from scratch, which gives thousands of possibilities, but it’s an emotional design and design”. The DarkRebel is 4.5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide (doormirrors included) and 1.3 meters tall, or 2.2 meters tall when its 2 scissor doors are opened and extended fully upwards. The concept is electric, but no further technical details have been released beyond that, in keeping with the DarkRebel’s positioning as a design concept that shows how far Cupra can push its angular designs. Indeed, Díez said it was “the maximum expression of our DNA” and the result “of an obsession to create something special”. Key design elements of the extravagant concept include its striking new lighting patterns, which Díez called the DarkRebel’s “eyes”. These have already inspired a heavy restyle for Cupra’s Leon and Formentor. Like the Tavascan, the coupé also features an illuminated Cupra badge. The central cell of the car is modelled on that of a speed boat, and wrapped around it are vast wings, diffusers, spoilers, cooling and aerodynamic features. Díez said the car was always in a “fighting position”, with everything in its profile pushing forwards. The cabin features a 2-seat layout with bucket seats and a gaming-style steering wheel and display screens, designed to leverage Cupra’s popularity in the gaming world. Almost every function of the cabin is geared towards the driver, while sustainable materials are used, including bamboo. The mercury-like colour and wider colour scheme and trim of the DarkRebel is the result of more than 270.000 configurations made online of the concept since its digital debut, Cupra having selected the most popular schemes. +++
+++ RIMAC hasn’t sold all 150 examples of its Nevera electric hypercar, and any replacement is unlikely to be an EV. The Nevera was revealed in 2021 as an 1.920 hp evolution of the C_Two concept, with deliveries beginning later that year and a build run of 150 units planned. However, the Croatian firm still hasn’t sold that number of cars, which CEO Mate Rimac has attributed to a decline in demand for ultra-high-end EVs. “We started to develop the Nevera in 2016/2017, when electric was cool”, he told. Since then, he said, the market environment has evolved, with tastes changing as legislators and mainstream car makers seek to make electric cars the mainstream. “The regulators and some manufacturers push it so much that the narrative has changed. They’re pushing stuff on us that we don’t want, so people get a little bit repulsed by it, this whole forced application. I’m always against it. I think everything has to be based on merit. So the product has to be better”. The Nevera was developed partly as a showcase of what could be achieved with motors and batteries in an era when the technology was still in its nascence and had yet to be fully embraced and rolled out by mainstream manufacturers. “At that time”, Rimac said, “we were thinking electric cars would be cool in a few years: the best cars, or with the highest performance and so on. “We notice now that as electrification is becoming mainstream, people at the top end of the sector want to differentiate themselves”. This manifests chiefly in a desire for analogue technology and ICE drivetrains, he suggested, using the analogy that high-end analogue watches command several times as much money as more capable and popular smartwatches. “An Apple Watch can do everything better. It can do 1.000 more things, it’s a lot more precise, it can measure your heart rate. But nobody would pay $200.000 for an Apple Watch. We do have a market for the Nevera, and it is the best-sold electric hypercar. We have already delivered more than 50 cars out of a total of 150”. He added that “if we did an electric Bugatti, we would have sold an amount of them, for sure, because of the brand”, but that amount would have been “nowhere near” the estimated amount it will sell of the V16-engined Chiron successor. Rimac said he doesn’t see demand returning for electric hypercars because, while in the mainstream car segments there will be little prevailing loyalty for individual brands and powertrain technologies, the high-end car segments demand a high level of differentiation and “analogue” appeal. “I think there is a niche to do things you cannot do with a combustion engine”, Rimac said. “It’s not about being electric; it’s about doing things that other cars can’t do and giving a unique experience”. Rimac recently revealed that his firm was investigating whether its next car could use groundbreaking nanotube technology, wherein “chemically different” liquid fuels can be used to generate electricity to power motors, thereby doing away with the conventional battery arrangement. “Rimac isn’t exclusively electric; it’s doing whatever is most exciting at the time”, he said, citing LPG, hydrogen and even diesel as potential fuels that could be used in this set-up. Meanwhile, he said he sees “no reason” for Bugatti, which Rimac acquired from the Volkswagen Group in 2021, to stop selling ICE cars in the near future. “We have developed a new V16 and we want to use that engine for a while, and maybe some other engines, and I can’t see a reason why it would be impossible”. +++
+++ The SEAT brand will live on in the future with a lower-cost electric car positioned below the Cupra range. Seat and Cupra boss Wayne Griffiths sought to put an end to speculation about the future of the Seat brand once and for all by confirming the likelihood of such a model in the future. That speculation was in part fuelled by Thomas Schäfer, chairman of the parent company of Seat and Cupra, who said last year that “Seat’s future was Cupra”. That future beyond today’s range of Seat models, said Griffiths, will take shape when lower-cost electric cars can be made profitably. “The €20.000 question is when Seat needs to be on the table and as part of the answer”, Griffiths told. He said that while the Seat group will remain centred on Cupra for the foreseeable future as it is simply more profitable, the focus will be placed on Seat again when electrification reaches lower-priced segments and there is suitable demand for such products. Such a car is not an immediate priority for the Seat group as it would not be profitable today, and Griffiths said “my priority is profitability”. Parent company Seat SA made €625 million profit last year “with half of all our turnover from Cupra and with higher profitability than Seat”, Cupra having helped push the group’s margins to 4.4% and now accounting for close to 50% of Seat SA’s volumes. Seat has recently invested in substantial facelifts for the Ibiza and Arona, and Griffiths said their reveal was important to show the company is still committed to investing in Seat models. Cupra and Seat models will now “both live together for at least the next five years and live in perfect harmony as they don’t get in each other’s way”, although there will be no new Cupra models launched that would also carry a Seat badge, and vice versa. To that end, all immediate Seat group launches will be Cupras. A model upon which Seat has staked its future, the new Ibiza must deliver in an extremely competitive market. So can the supermini upset the likes of Ford, Mini, Mazda, Nissan and others? Griffiths added: “There is room for both brands and one doesn’t exclude the other. But sometimes you have to make priorities, saving your company, saving your workers and saving the future”. Griffiths said Cupra will always be positioned above the mass market but not in the premium segment. That higher positioning of Cupra is what would exclude it from launching a model priced as low as €20.000, the Cupra entry point being the upcoming Raval, which will be a sister car to the upcoming Volkswagen Golf-sized Volkswagen ID 2 and priced between €25.000 and €30.000. Cupra is leading the development of the Raval, ID 2 (plus the higher-riding ‘ID 2X’) and Skoda Epiq on a simplified version of the MEB architecture, and will build them all at its Martorell plant from 2026. The development and production of these cars is part of a €10 billion investment from the Volkswagen Group in Spain that also includes a new gigafactory in Valencia. Griffiths said these investments showed the company is committed to Seat, and the focus is now understood in Spain. Indeed, Griffiths said he had even been asked to clarify the future of Seat by the King of Spain (whose first car was an Ibiza), which he was happy to do. +++
+++ Ineos Automotive is pessimistic that SYNTHETIC FUELS can extend the life of the combustion engine, even after the EU decided to allow limited use of the carbon-neutral petrol alternative for new cars after 2035. “At the moment, there’s just not enough synthetic fuel to go around, and it’s going to be extremely expensive”, CEO Lynn Calder told. The maker of the Ineos Grenadier off-roader has been sharply critical of the European bans on the sale of new ICE cars from 2035, arguing that it forces car makers towards battery-electric drivetrains without admitting alternatives. Synthetic fuels or e-fuels, which are made by extracting atmospheric carbon, are touted by firms including Porsche and Bugatti as an eco-friendly alternative that would allow them to continue selling petrol cars. However, Ineos isn’t certain that synthetic fuels could fill the gap. “It feels like it’s a really long way off, in terms of having sufficient fuel to imagine keeping a combustion engine fleet alive at a cost that is a total cost of ownership for customers that would be acceptable”, Calder said. Ineos is running a prototype hydrogen fuel cell version of the Grenadier, which links the car operations with the wider parent company and its chemical operations, including making hydrogen. However, company founder and chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe has previously said the hydrogen also suffers from high cost, along with a lack of fueling infrastructure. “You come back to the economics of production and the infrastructure required with hydrogen”, Ratcliffe said at the unveiling of the Ineos Fusilier SUV. “In the US, it costs one fifth what it does in Europe to make hydrogen, so in the EU you will have to pay €500-600 a tank for fuel versus €120-130 a tank in the US”. The Fusilier will be sold with battery-electric and petrol-electric range-extender powertrains. Porsche is the leading car maker in terms of championing synthetic fuels. It invested £62 million into pilot production of the fuel in Chile late in 2022, with a target of roughly 130.000 liters annually. CEO Oliver Blume has said synthetic fuels could extend the life of the purely combustion-engined Porsche 911 until the end of the decade. Bugatti, now part owned by Porsche and Rimac, is also looking at e-fuels to extend the life of combustion engines at the hypercar company, CEO Mate Rimac told. The company could potentially make “beautiful Bugatti fuel stations” for owners to synthesise their own e-fuel at home, Rimac said. +++
+++ VOLKSWAGEN will continue to invest in plug-in hybrid technology over the coming years as a bridge towards pure electrification. The firm currently sells PHEV versions of the Golf, Passat and Tiguan, and boss Thomas Schäfer suggested the technology could be rolled out and improved in light of a “plateau” in demand for electric cars. Schäfer echoed Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida and Hyundai president José Muñoz, who each suggested their firms would maintain a flexible powertrain offering as EV demand wavers. Asked if Volkswagen would continue investing in hybrids, Schäfer said: “Hybrids were a thing of the past. Last year, if you asked the same question, it would have been: ‘Forget hybrids. It’s expensive technology and it’s not worth it’. Within the last 6 months, all of a sudden everyone wants hybrids. When we said we were going to offer hybrid on the Tiguan, Golf, Passat and so on, we were frowned upon. People said: ‘Why are you doing this? Go faster towards full electrification’. Now I’m very glad we did. We have an offer and we will probably have to even extend it. It’s a bridge technology. While battery-electric drive is plateauing out a bit at the moment, we still need this transitional technology”. However, Schäfer added that he’s “absolutely sure the future is electric” and hybrids will serve as a bridge towards the ultimate objective of all-out electrification. To that end, Volkswagen will “carry on with what we have”, Schäfer said, suggesting that any future PHEVs will use a variation of the system that’s currently available. “We will keep developing, but will we do a completely new drivetrain? I don’t think so”. Schäfer added that Volkswagen doesn’t necessarily need a PHEV offering “in every single model and in every single region” but rather development work will focus on reducing costs and boosting electric range. As it stands, Volkswagen PHEVs offer among the longest electric ranges of any on the market, with the latest versions of the Golf, Passat and Tiguan PHEVs able to travel around 100 km with the petrol engine off. Development of new hybrid powertrains won’t come at the expense of new EV platform development, Schäfer said, with the updated version of MEB and its SSP successor still on track for production in 2025 and 2026 respectively. +++
+++ VOLVO will introduce mega-casting into the production of its next-generation electric cars, due in 2026; a move it says will greatly improve efficiency and create more freedom for future vehicle design and manufacturing. The firm says the advanced manufacturing process will be introduced on the next-generation EVs produced at its main Torslanda plant in Sweden. Although the manufacturer has given no technical details, this will tie in with the introduction of the SPA3 platform, which is a development of existing architectures and being used to signal the third generation of the firm’s bespoke electric cars.Erik Severinson, Volvo’s head of strategy and programme management, declined to comment on the first model to be produced on that platform. He said: “What I can say is that by 2030 we have committed to being fully electric, and by then we need to redo our whole product portfolio to have electric options for all our customers. And that requires a lot of new cars between now and 2030”. Given Volvo’s focus on SUVs, the clear gap in its electric line-up is an EX60, which would sit alongside the XC60, its current best-seller. That model had been expected to arrive in 2025 and its position as one of the firm’s most significant products would make Torslanda a natural choice as a production site. The mega-casting process involves producing large single car parts formed by pouring molten metal into a die-cast mould. That enables large sections of a car platform to be produced as single pieces, rather than manufacturing numerous separate parts and welding or bolting them together. The technique is already used by Tesla. Toyota will introduce it on future models. Volvo will start by producing the rear floor section of its next-generation models as a single aluminium piece using the mega-casting technique. The firm says this will be a single car part and replace around 100 parts used previously. Because of that reduced complexity, the rear floor will have 84% fewer welded joints and weigh around 50% less. According to Mikael Fermér Volvo’s vehicle platform lead architect, the process will revolutionise the firm’s approach to construction. He noted that, at present, the fixed points and structures of a platform mean that it essentially has a shelf life once launched. But because the megacast parts can be changed simply by adapting the moulds (which need maintenance every 4 months or so) it becomes much easier to make substantial changes to the structure, effectively giving a platform “an unlimited lifespan”. That could also lead to more rapid deployment of new vehicle types. Volvo is aiming to increase the use of mega-casting in future years, with the ultimate goal of producing much of the platform as a handful of pieces. Fermér said the floor is “a good starting point” because “it’s fairly easy to design a safe and robust rear floor. You have a lot of complicated interfaces that you replace when you go from 100 parts to 1”. He added that “it’s your imagination” that limits what can be done with mega-casting, but said: “It should always be based on the business case and function. We have looked into casting a complete battery tray, which makes sense because it could replace many parts”. Fermér also said there are no concerns over safety, or potentially higher repair costs if a large mega-cast part is damaged; an issue that Tesla has been striving to resolve with some insurance firms. He noted Volvo’s long-standing commitment to safety, adding: “We end the mega-cast piece behind the wheelhouse and then have a bumper beam and a rear crash structure, which is a big part that we can crush and replace. It is possible to repair a mega-cast part to some extent, but if it’s a really severe crash, then it will be scrapped. But that’s the same for a traditional car, and probably about as likely as the main body of a current car being written off”. As well as the advantages in car design, mega-casting offers several production benefits. These include major reductions in CO2 emissions; not just from production, but also through reducing the number of parts that need to be shipped in from outside suppliers or other Volvo factories. It allows for significantly higher material utilisation too, because any leftover aluminium can simply be melted down and re-cast. Volvo will initially use new pressed aluminium for the process because of the need for quality control, but it is evaluating the use of recycled metal in the future – or even bringing in ready molten aluminium. The huge mega-casting machine Volvo has constructed can cast a single rear tray in around 120 seconds and running two in parallel means it can meet the demands of the production line to produce around 60 cars an hour. Volvo’s new mega-casting facility at Torslanda is part of a major £800 million upgrade to prepare the site for future electric car production. The company will also open a new battery assembly plant, which will construct packs using cells produced at an adjacent new production facility that will be operated by partner firm Northvolt. Volvo also plans to use mega-casting at a new factory currently under construction in Slovakia and it could eventually be introduced across its other global plants as the need arises. +++
