Electric future… but we need points
THE BMW i8 is one of my favourite cars. The hybrid electric supercar offers the most genuinely thrilling acceleration of just about anything out there, seamlessly hitting penalty-points territory faster than you’d care to register.
If that, and Teslas, have paved the way, prepare yourself, because there’s a lot more to come. Adrian Hallmark, the new boss of Bentley, is in no doubt where the market is headed. ‘The future’s electric,’ he says. ‘The motor industry is facing the biggest shake-up in living memory.’
Bentley unveiled the new petrol-electric Bentayga hybrid SUV at the Geneva Motor Show, and Hallmark says that’s just the start of what ultimately will be the full electrification of the range.
The potential rewards are enormous. Last year, Bentley sold a record 11,089 cars, of which 85% were exported. With a greater focus on electric cars, and subsidies is most countries to encourage take-up, even the super luxury segment will benefit.
Jaguar has the all-electric I-Pace, Aston Martin has an electric Lagonda, and the Volkswagen family, which includes Bentley, also has, or is planning, electric versions of models from Porsche, Audi and VW itself.
The main barriers to greater sales remain range anxiety and the lack of charging points. I was in Spain on holidays this week and the big news was that a bank of 12 fast-charging points is to open on the motorway from Madrid to Valencia, allowing for rapid charging. That still seems relatively few, but it’s a lot better than the one charger available on my own drive from south Dublin to Gorey on the M11. Minister for Transport Shane Ross has expressed his intention to phase out traditional combustion engines by 2030, but that is pie in the sky unless we also roll out a massive expansion of charging points. On a home charger, the most you will get out of a drive is around 300km, enough to get you to Cork from Dublin, or Belfast to Galway. But how do you get back?
Supercar or not, you still need to power up, and the challenge now is to ensure that you can.