Aston Martin will tentatively enter the electric vehicle (EV) market next year with its first plug-in supercar.
The Valhalla will have a hybrid, three-motor powertrain capable of going from nought to 60 miles per hour in just 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 217 mph.
Yet the launch of the Valhalla, named after the mythological hall for slain Viking warriors, also underlines a question that still sits at the heart of Aston’s electrification strategy: do its customers really want to drive an electric car?
Under plans previously set out by executives, the company would have launched its first fully-electric model in 2025.
But that has since been pushed back, with executives now saying it will now be launched in 2026 “at the earliest”.
Lawrence Stroll, Aston’s billionaire executive chairman, has warned previously that demand for electric cars so far has been underwhelming.
He is also sceptical that electric cars currently have the same allure for petrolheads, who love the “smell, feel and noise” of vehicles powered by roaring internal combustion engines.
This is an issue faced by sports car and supercar makers across the board, says Nick Parker, automotive partner at consultancy AlixPartners.
“In a high-performance sports car, customers are often looking for exhilaration and a thrill and, in reality, many still see that as being something you only get with the sound of a combustion engine behind them,” he says.
On the racetrack, EVs still do not match petrol cars either.
While they can deliver extremely fast acceleration, they are unable to sustain peak performance for more than a few laps without running out of juice or overheating, says Parker.
“When you are talking about going from a standing start, it’s fine. But in terms of sustained racing performance, EVs remain a long way off,” he adds.
For Aston, a carmaker associated with the glamour of James Bond, this makes shifting to EVs potentially risky, despite the tightening of regulations across Europe.
Other carmakers face similar issues, with different brands hedging their bets in different ways.
Ferrari, for example, is seeking to replicate the celebrated roar of its engines artificially for the electric era, so drivers still hear the sound when they press down on the accelerator.
But some are focusing on the development of so-called e-fuels – synthetic chemicals made from carbon dioxide and hydrogen that are billed as “sustainable” alternatives to petrol.
Formula 1, which the Aston Martin brand competes in, has championed these fuels, with cars in the series already using “E10” fuel – a blend of 90pc petrol and 10pc ethanol made from biomass – and plans in motion to switch to 100pc e-fuels by 2026.
Meanwhile, German sports car maker Porsche is also pioneering production of these synthetic fuels at a pilot factory in Chile.
This partly explains, says Parker, why brands such as Aston want to stick with hybrids as long as possible.
It was also why some such as Porsche lobbied so hard and successfully for a carve-out from EU rules on reducing vehicle emissions to zero by 2035. Under a loophole demanded by Germany, cars powered by e-fuels will be exempt.
E-fuels are marketed as sustainable because they can be made from carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere, thereby meaning anything emitted from the tailpipe is not technically a net addition.
What’s more, although these fuels are expected to be expensive, particularly as they will require costly “green” hydrogen input, that is not likely to be much of a problem for the likes of Aston’s well-heeled customers.
“A lot of the luxury brands will actually continue with hybrids for longer on the basis of the opening that was left in the EU regulation,” Parker adds.
“The technology is moving forward quite quickly and for luxury sports car manufacturers it offers an opportunity for an alternative to simply switching from combustion engine cars to pure electric.”
There are also some other advantages to hybrids such as the Valhalla, which can run quietly on their electric motors at first before switching to their powerful petrol motors at speed.
“You can start off on electric in your street so you don’t wake up your neighbours, before getting to the open road,” Parker says.
Whether Aston and others will be able to pursue this strategy in the UK remains a mystery, however.
The new Labour Government pledged to bring forward a ban on sales of new petrol cars to 2030, in an effort to speed up Britain’s switch to electric models.
Smaller-volume producers such as Aston will be exempt at first but only until 2035. There is then uncertainty about whether cars powered by e-fuels will be allowed after that point.
For now, Aston is staying coy about when exactly it will launch its first battery electric vehicle (BEV).
But the company insists a technology partnership with American BEV brand Lucid means it is in pole position to get going whenever the time is right.
Alongside this, the company is planning to spend £2bn over the next five years on product development. A sizable chunk of the cash will go towards electrification but also to hybrids and the company’s last combustion engine cars.
“Going forward, the focus will shift on to electrification,” Doug Lafferty, Aston’s finance chief, said on a call with journalists.
“But we’ve taken a blended powertrain approach, which means that we’ll continue to look at bringing internal combustion engines, PHEV and BEV to the market as we move forward.”
For now drivers can carry on getting their thrill from an old-fashioned petrol motor. What is under the hood in a decade’s time, however, may be a different story.
2024-07-24T12:15:28Z dg43tfdfdgfd