No surprise that Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers intends to replace the Vantage and DB11 with all-electric models in the middle of this decade. In fact, the AMG-turned-Aston boss believes switching to battery power will be “mandatory” by 2025. But interestingly, he doesn’t think that’ll necessarily spell the demise of petrol-powered versions. A successor doesn’t always have to kill off its forebear...
“You can’t go fully electric with the [DB11/Vantage] platform,” he admitted during a round-table interview in Gaydon that PH attended. “We will need to establish a new platform [for their successors], so for me it’s clear the next generation of these sports cars will be fully electric. But you can still run them a bit in a parallel way.”
This wouldn’t be totally out of character for Aston Martin, given its recent track record for keeping the VH-underpinned Vantage alive after the 2018 replacement was revealed. Granted, that was with one-offs and special editions, like the Legacy Edition models revealed only last year - but Moers alluded to a full continuation of production for the current AMG V8-powered model, after an all-electric replacement arrives. Something that would give buyers a final few years to purchase a petrol-powered Vantage or DB car before the inevitable happens.
Apparently, there have been internal discussions about “extending the life cycle of these models” already, evidenced by the lack of DB11 facelift, which “should happen now, or even last year...so it’s kind of an extended life cycle anyway for these cars”. Aston has never been one to pump out models in quick succession, although it's worth nothing the DB11 will be nine years old by the middle of this decade, and the V12 version isn't expected to survive the introduction of Euro 7 regs in 2025. The Vantage is also due a facelift in the near future, where it appears destined to lose its short-lived manual gearbox - a transmission which made "no sense" to the current CEO.
Somewhat surprisingly, given Porsche’s enthusiasm and investment in the technology, Moers also doesn’t see synthetic fuels as a viable option to keeping Aston's petrol cars alive for longer. He was quick to play the subject down, suggesting that the firm is “not investigating that”, and adding that lab-developed alternatives to petrol were a more pressing priority for the air travel industry. By contrast, he reckons private car manufacturers “need to focus on batteries...synthetic fuels are cool but where does it come from? What energy does it use to make it?”
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