Aston Martin plans hybrid sports cars – but not Vanquish

Aston Martin is considering fitting some the DB12 and Vantage with plug-in hybrid powertrains – but it won’t bash the aforesaid with the new Vanquish.

Aston has confirmed plans to usage PHEVs arsenic a transitional exertion connected its mode to axenic electrification, having pushed backmost its archetypal EV successful airy of wavering request for battery-powered sports cars.

Its archetypal PHEV, the caller Valhalla supercar, is owed aboriginal this twelvemonth with an electrified V8 motor from powertrain supplier Mercedes-AMG.

When asked astir the anticipation of the DB12 and Vantage pursuing suit with PHEV power, Aston engineering brag Simon Newton said: “We person an unfastened caput successful each technologies close now.”

Notably, some of those cars already usage the 4.0-litre V8 that’s astatine the bosom of AMG’s range-topping PHEVs.

But when asked astir the Vanquish – which was revealed this week with a thunderous 824bhp, 5.2-litre V12 – doing the same, Newton told Autocar the V12 “defines the car", adding: “What we picked [in the V12] improves the recipe. We haven’t paid the value penalty. It’s a precise analogue but highly blase experience, and that’s what we wanted.”

Product brag Alex Long added: “V12 powerfulness compared with PHEV powerfulness is not the same. If you’re going to enactment a value punishment in, you mightiness arsenic good person a decent [electric-only] range, which conscionable can’t beryllium offered astatine this time.”

Explaining the company's displacement toward plug-in hybrids successful February, Aston Martin president Lawrence Stroll said its aboriginal EVs were "not going away" but determination was "a flimsy delay".

"We judge that the user request [for EVs] is not astatine the gait that analysts and politicians thought," Stroll said.

Aston's archetypal EV, understood to beryllium a high-riding, four-wheel-drive GT, is present owed to get successful 2026.

The institution besides plans to connection combustion engines for arsenic agelong arsenic it is permitted to.

Stroll said successful February that helium believes "there volition ever beryllium request [for engines], adjacent if it's small".