Aston Martin’s plans for electric cars and Lagonda scrapped for now
It looks like the £500 million bailout at Aston Martin has put plans for electrification and the revival of Lagonda on the back burner for now.
As we reported yesterday, Aston Martin has secured a £500 million bailout from a consortium led by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll. Which is good news.
It will mean Aston can pay the bills and push forward with the Aston Martin DBX which, it hopes, will be the company’s salvation. But there is a price to pay for the arrival of a White Knight, and that price appears to be the end of Aston Martins plans to deliver electric cars and revive the Lagonda brand. At least for now.
When Aston Martin decided to build the DBX in Wales, it managed to grab some £19 million from the Welsh Government in aid on the back of the promise not just of jobs with DBX production, and the pledge to make St Athan their centre for electrification.
That was supposed to happen soon with the arrival of a limited run of just 155 of the electric Rapide E, but despite that plan being well down the road it looks like AML are scrapping it. But then the production version is just a shadow of the promises initially made for it by Andy Palmer.
More significantly, it also appears that plans to revive the Lagonda marque with a production take on the Lagonda All-Terrain Concept, an electric SUV expected to turn in to a production model in 2021, followed by an electric saloon, have been scrapped until at least 2025.
Instead, AML are turning to hybrid technology to make their cars cleaner, but whether that’s plug-in hybrid technology or not is unclear.
A pragmatic move, or short-term cost-cutting and a sign the new investment is there to make the DBX work properly, put AML back in the black, and then bailout?
Mark A Geller says
They don’t have the funding for that. It’s billions they don’t and never will have. They have to have a logical vehicle to put it in and will have to licence the tech from Mercedes or someone else, if that is to happen.
Mark Geller says
Unfortunately, the electric on their drawing boards didn’t have enough advance orders and was already too little too late, as the tech passed it by in range and other ways (old body/not enough range, etc.). As for Lagonada, it is so polarizing looking that if they wanted to put it out, they could take reservations with non-refundable deposits for those that really want it (great way to gauge, and if they could actually sell 700 or 1000 of them (they wish) and that was better than break, they could do it that way. Otherwise, why bother. They are so much better off with a 120,000 dollar smaller sport suv (duplicate Macan size-that obviously works great), after they see if the DBX, which is a Bentley/Cayenne size suv, is the runaway success they think it will be. That smaller suv would be in the price range of their smaller sports car and would not dilute the brand in any way, especially if they can deliver the goods-a real Aston- at that price. Hey, with what they learned with the current electric, it (the smaller sport suv) could even be their first electric, which would make some sense. The space-ship Lagonda is a non-starter, IMHO, and obviously was to the newly made-up Board/investors, who wouldn’t smartley chose not to chase that horse. I say Bravo.
Peter Szczesiak says
Complete stupidity to cancel the electric! If they don’t do it they’ll be history by 2025! Far better to cancel all investment in ICE and be up and running with say Tesla running gear and batteries next year