Aston Martin has announced that their new St Athan Plant in Wales is to be Aston Martin’s centre for electrification, starting with the Rapide E.
Aston Martin’s new Plant at St Athan in Wales is on schedule to start delivering new cars – initially the Aston Martin DBX SUV – from 2019, but its future is going to be primarily as the centre for Aston Martin’s future electric cars. Only they won’t be Aston Martins.
The future for St Athan, apart from building the DBX which will only come with petrol engines, is to take AML in to an electric future, an electric future which will start with the Aston Martin Rapide E next year (2019), but which will really take off with a new range of electric Lagonda models from 2021.
The Rapide E is Aston’s toe in the water for electric cars, but it will be the new range of electric Lagondas, previewed by the Lagonda Vision Concept earlier this year, which will really push AML in to the arena of electric car makers.
Andy Palmer, Aston Martin CEO, said:
Aston Martin sees itself as a future leader in the development of zero emission technologies, and I am delighted that St Athan will be our ‘Home of Electrification’ for both the Aston Martin and Lagonda brands.
The Rapide E will spearhead development of Aston Martin’s low- and zero-emission vehicle strategy. With the reintroduction of the Lagonda brand, this is a demonstration of how electrification features prominently in our business plan moving forward.
The first electric Lagonda is expected not to be a radical luxury saloon like the Vision concept, but a Lagonda SUV (which looks more like an ‘Allroad’) which Aston say will be the first of its kind: “a spacious, high-performance 4×4 that successfully reconciles a love of technology, luxury and style“.
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