Aston Martin has delayed the launch of its first electric car to 2033 or later, with CEO Adrian Hallmark saying the company no longer has a fixed launch date. Speaking to our sister publication Autocar UK, Hallmark said, “We only need BEVs to be compliant for legislative reasons [in certain markets] just before 2035,” adding that the timing “could be 2035, it might be 2033”. He described Aston Martin as “not BEV deniers but BEV delayers”, and said the company will be “predominantly ICE-based” until 2035.
Aston Martin EV launch delayed again
Aston Martin’s EV plans have been pushed back several times. The company had previously targeted 2025, later moved the launch to 2026, and subsequently indicated that its first EV would arrive by 2030. The latest timeline moves it into the 2033-35 window.
Hallmark said the change reflects the pace at which EV demand and legislation are evolving. He said they are “changing way faster than any car company can cope with”, making it difficult for Aston Martin to set a firm launch date. “I’m not going to give an absolute date, because it’s imprecise. It could be 2035, it might be 2033, but it’s in that three-year-window. It’s not 2031,” Hallmark added.
The latest delay follows comments from executive chairman Lawrence Stroll in 2024 that EV demand at Aston Martin’s price point was lower than expected. At the time, the company had outlined plans for four EVs based on a dedicated architecture, spanning a GT, SUV, crossover and mid-engined supercar.
Lucid technology to underpin future EVs
Aston Martin has an agreement with Lucid for EV technology and has a partnership with current engine supplier Mercedes-Benz. Hallmark said the delay will give the company more time to assess how the technology develops before making major investments.
“Because we delayed, by the time we activate that deal, the technology that we will get is totally different to what we signed up the original contract for,” Hallmark said. He added that “looking at BEVs in the future, even if [we launch our first in] 2033, we've got three years where we can keep looking, keep thinking and keep evaluating different technologies and how they're changing, and the markets and the legislation. And it's only then that we would need to kick off investment. So today we've got very low-level investment, but it’s research and study, not even single-digit millions of investment.”
V8 and V12 engines to continue
Aston Martin plans to continue offering combustion-engined cars well into the 2030s. Hallmark said the company has a roadmap to keep both its V8 and V12 engines compliant through at least 2035. “We have a roadmap to keep the bigger and smaller engines alive and compliant all the way through to the end of that period,” Hallmark said.
This extends the approach outlined by Stroll in 2024, when he said Aston Martin would continue making combustion-engined cars for as long as regulations allowed. The company had also increased its investment in plug-in hybrid technology as its EV plans were pushed back. Stroll had said Aston Martin had “decided to invest very heavily in PHEVs” – technology, he said, that would “play out for a long while and we will have an extensive offering”.
However, the latest strategy is different from that earlier plan. Hallmark said Aston Martin will use hybridisation, but “probably not” plug-in hybrid systems because of their added weight. “There would be hybridisation,” Hallmark said. “Probably not plug-in, because we don’t need it; we don’t need the 200kg penalties.”
Hallmark said “between 2030 and 2035 everything will be replaced” in Aston Martin’s product line-up, adding that “the attributes, performance and quality of the vehicles will take them up a level”. He also confirmed that Aston Martin will continue with the Valhalla hypercar, hinting that “there might be a derivative of it that has a different roof”. The company is investing in the Valhalla platform for future low-volume special edition models, he said.
Rapide E never entered production
Aston Martin had planned to build 155 examples of the Rapide E, which was revealed as an electric four-door in 2019, but the production programme was cancelled before customer cars were built. The project was instead turned into an electrification research project, rather than being sold to customers. The Rapide E used an 800V battery and two electric motors with a combined target output of more than 610hp and 950Nm.
Dipan Sur
Viraaj Bhatnagar
