SILVERSTONE, England — Aston Martin’s first full-electric car will be a replacement for a model in its front-engine sports-car lineup and will go on sale in 2025, CEO Tobias Moers said.
The automaker is in the process of moving away from its traditional reliance on V-8 and V-12 combustion engines and is moving to gasoline-electric hybrid drivetrains, starting with the Valkyrie full-hybrid hypercar, which is due in September.
The company unveiled the mid-engine Valhalla on Thursday ahead of deliveries in 2023. A plug-in-hybrid version of the DBX SUV will quickly follow, while a planned entry supercar, previewed by the Vanquish Vision concept, will also be a plug-in hybrid.
The current lineup of front-engine sports cars including the Vantage and DB11 will then become full-electric models with the next generation, Moers said.
The current lineup of the entry Vantage, DB11 and high-performance DBS range will be retained, with a halo model sitting above them. “The succession of our traditional sports segment has to be full electric, no doubt,” he told Automotive News Europe at an event here.
How the traditional cars will be separated from the brand’s new midengine lineup in an electric future is unclear. Greater freedom to position the batteries and electric motors will blur the differentiation that exists now.
Moers said the EVs will have a range of 600 km (372 miles), at least.
The move to full-electric cars will mean the current range of sports cars will survive longer than originally planned, he said.
The DB11 coupe was launched in 2016 and marked the first car in the transformation undertaken by Aston Martin’s previous CEO Andy Palmer.
Palmer’s plan to electrify Aston Martin’s lineup with the Rapide E and the launch of the full-electric Lagonda marque in 2022 was dropped by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll when he gave the automaker a financial lifeline last year, becoming a major shareholder, as well as executive chairman.
Moers told investors on an earnings call in May that the company’s first full-electric sports car will be followed in 2025 or 2026 by an electric SUV, which, he said ,would be crucial because of the popularity of SUVs.
Aston Martin has previously said that 50 percent of its lineup will be all-electric by 2030.
