GAYDON, England – Aston Martin's delayed all-electric lineup will include an SUV, a coupe-styled "CUV," a sports car and a hypercar built from the same platform, Chairman Lawrence Stroll said.
The four cars have already been designed but deliveries will start in 2027 – two years later than planned amid uncertainty around customer demand – Stroll told journalists at an event here at Aston Martin's headquarters.
The launch of the first EV, expected to be the coupe-styled SUV internally known as a CUV, or crossover utility vehicle, will be in 2026, Stroll has previously confirmed.
Demand for electric cars among Aston Martin's customers differs depending on whether they are in the market for an SUV or a sports car.
Aston Martin's future full-electric lineup will include:
- SUV
- CUV
- Sports car
- Hypercar
"They are really two very different markets," Stroll said. "Our sports car customers told us: ‘We still want sound. We still want smell.' But for SUVs we see electricity being more important earlier and for longer because they are used much more as a daily driver."
Last year 44 percent of Aston Martin sales were for its DBX SUV, amounting to 2,939 cars, according to company figures.
Aston Martin is developing an electric-only platform it says will be flexible enough to encompass SUVs as well as sports cars. The platform will package the batteries under the floor as much as possible; however. it allows gaps in the battery layout to ensure that in a sports car configuration the driver and passengers can sit as low as possible.
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Aston Martin will take EV components including the electric motor, inverter and transmission from U.S.-based Lucid Motors, the company announced last year.
Stroll said Lucid, which has a common shareholder in Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), was "relaxed" about the delay.
To satisfy ongoing customer demand for combustion-engine sports cars while still lowering average carbon dioxide emissions, Aston Martin will instead convert its current front-engine sports car platform to incorporate a plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) drivetrain.
"The PHEV program will be a bridge between full combustion and full electric," Stroll said. "That's going to play out for quite a while."
The first plug-in hybrid from its core, front-engine sports car lineup that includes the DB12 and Vantage will arrive in 2025-26, Stroll said, without saying which model would get the PHEV powertrain first.
Those models will follow the low-volume, mid-engine Valhalla hypercar, which will be Aston Martin's first PHEV overall. The Valhalla is scheduled to be launched before the end of the year.
Aston Martin is following ultraluxury rival Bentley in developing a lineup of PHEVs.
Bentley, whose departing CEO Adrian Hallmark is set to join Aston Martin in the autumn, has said the Volkswagen Group subsidiary's combustion engine lineup will be fully plug-in hybrid by 2026.
"We [Bentley] expected a drop-off of hybrids in 2028, 2029 and 2030, but now we expect that [demand for PHEVs] could actually grow and continue," Hallmark said in March. "It gives us more opportunity and it insures us against slower adoption of BEVs [battery-electric vehicles]."
Aston Martin has committed 2 billion pounds ($2.53 billion) to advanced technologies over the next five years to cover the cost of the transition to PHEVs and BEVs. The company said it expects to invest 350 million pounds in new product development this year.
