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Aston Martin’s new chief executive has warned that electric cars are “too extreme a step” for many of its customers as the company axed 170 jobs and delayed the launch of its first battery-powered vehicle for a second time.
Adrian Hallmark, who left rival Bentley to take the top job last September, said wealthy drivers were split over electric vehicles (EVs) despite calling the technology an “inevitable and somewhat necessary” shift for the car industry.
The British marque will now not launch its first EV until “the latter part of this decade”, Mr Hallmark said, and would instead prioritise plug-in hybrids because they combined the best aspects of electric and petrol vehicles.
Aston Martin had originally planned to launch its first EV by 2025 but later postponed it to 2027.
Mr Hallmark said: “Having met with 150 to 200 customers in the first couple of months of after I joined Aston Martin, in the luxury market you’ve got the lovers and the non-lovers of electric vehicles – I won’t use the h-word – and there are very few people in between.”
“Five years ago, there were a lot less people that were pro-battery electric and everybody was anti-hybrid. Now you’ve got more pro-electric and there’s a lot more people pro-hybrid.
“The reason for that is that most customers can see electrification is an inevitable and somewhat necessary trend at some point in the future, but battery electric vehicles are, for a lot of luxury customers, too extreme a step at too short a pace – so they’re now seeing the value in hybrids.”
Explaining the popularity of hybrids, he added: “It’s not the smell of petrol. Very few people jump out and go sniff the exhaust – that’s an old cliché.
“But if you look at plug-in hybrids, and the way the power is delivered, you get more torque in the phase of acceleration but you still get all the benefits of combustion engine when the electric motor becomes less efficient at the higher performance range.”
It came as the luxury carmaker said it would cut as many as 170 jobs, 5pc of its global workforce, as its losses widened by a fifth last year.
Mr Hallmark insisted Aston had “the strongest product portfolio in our 112-year history” as the company said annual losses widened from £240m in 2023 to £289m last year.
That was after sales dipped from £1.63bn to £1.58bn, with the number of cars sold falling from 6,620 to 6,030.
Aston said sales had grown 10pc in the second half compared to a year earlier, however.
The company has launched an entirely new range of models in the last couple of years, including the DB12, a new Vantage, an upgraded DBX707 SUV and the flagship Vanquish, which has replaced the DBS.