Aston Martin Teases Rapide E EV Packing 600 Horsepower And 200-Mile Range
If James Bond ever goes green, you can bet the EV that Aston Martin is teasing would be his ride of choice. The first time that Aston started to talk about building an EV was way back in 2015, when it converted a Rapide to an EV aiming for a 200-mile driving range. Fast forward a few years and Aston is now teasing a production version of the Rapide E and giving up some details on the powertrain ahead of production kicking off next year.
We can’t glean any detail from the teaser image other than the blue "E" on the front fenders and snazzy wheels with blue brake calipers peeking out. Details on the powertrain confirmed include that the car will have a battery electrical architecture with 800V and that the battery pack will be a 65kWh unit. That is smallish compared to the battery packs that Tesla uses in its Model S P100 packing 100kWh of juice and over 300 miles of driving range.
Aston Martin says that its battery pack is a lithium-ion unit that has over 5,600 18650 format cylindrical cells inside. The car has two rear-mounted motors that produce a combined output of a bit over 610PS (around 600hp) and 950Nm (about 700 ft-lb) of torque. That's not the 800hp that Aston Martin promised back in 2015, but it should provide all the performance a driver needs for car of its size.
Aston claims that the battery pack provides over 200 miles of driving range on the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure. The 800V battery system will accept a charge rate of 100kW, or higher says
One key promise from Aston Martin is that the performance figures it's quoting aren’t only available when the battery pack is fully charged. Aston says that level of performance will be available at all battery charge states. Aston goes so far as to claim that the car can do a full lap of the Nürburgring with no derating of the battery and can cope with "daily demands of repeated hard acceleration and braking." The first production
