According to Autocar UK, the British premium automaker no longer sees it viable to produce an all-electric Bentayga crossover. Instead, the new generation will go hybrid.
Whereas the zero-emission SUV was supposed to be based on Porsche’s SSP platform, the hybrid will be designed anew on an architecture known as the PPC (Premium Platform Combustion). It supports six- and eight-cylinder engines in tandem with one or more electric motors.
No technical specifications have been revealed yet, but Volkswagen Group has been developing the next Porsche Cayenne and the all-new Audi Q9 on the same platform. It is said to take advantage from the latest developments in power management, promising plenty of range in both hybrid and all-electric modes.
Unofficial sources speculate that Bentley ditched its electric Bentayga plans due to technical challenges that Porsche encountered while designing the SSP architecture. It’s unclear what kind of issues it ran into, but rumor has it the platform may not be ready for production any time soon. Even so, Bentley still has one EV remaining on the roadmap: the compact-sized Barnato crossover, which came out for its first road tests not long ago.
