- Aston Martin has scaled back its plans for future electric cars
- It will stay partnered with Lucid and Mercedes-Benz for powertrain pieces
- Some gas engines will stick around for “as long as possible”
- DBX will remain the only Aston SUV; Lagonda project’s a no-go
Five months after taking the top job at Aston Martin, CEO Adrian Hallmark sat down with Motor Authority and other media outlets for an update on where he plans to take the British automaker, and how he hopes to buck over 100 years of tradition by making it profitable.
With Aston having just updated most of its lineup, the plan is to build on what’s already here by offering more model variants, special editions like the Valiant, and a wider range of options—standard procedure at most of Aston’s rivals. And Aston will remain primarily a sports-car maker, one with a rising F1 team that will soon have cars designed by Adrian Newey.
There’s still room for some entirely new models—including Aston’s first EV—but electrification plans are being throttled back, along with exploration of new segments beyond where Aston already competes.
Here’s how it will work.
EVs are still happening, but plans are scaled back
“There’s no question that, at some point in the future, electrification will be a solution,” Hallmark said, but he sees less enthusiasm for it now.
“Two years ago, it was like a one-track-minded approach towards a given set of deadlines, and it was all within a five-year window,” Hallmark said, but noted that things have changed. “Over the past two years, that has melted like the polar ice caps.”
The first Aston Martin electric car will arrive “within the next five years,” Hallmark said, but it will be the only one launched during that period. Additional electric models will arrive between 2030 and 2035 “and maybe a touch later,” Hallmark said.
The CEO expects that pure internal-combustion and plug-in hybrid powertrains will still make up 85% of Aston’s sales in 2030, with a greater share of EVs after that (Hallmark declined to give a specific number) as more models arrive. That will lessen what Hallmark sees as the “gamble” of electrifying a brand known mostly for characterful combustion engines.
Powertrain partnerships will continue
That first EV will still benefit from a technology partnership with Lucid announced in 2023. Aston will use batteries, drive units, and powertrain control units from the U.S. automaker, and they will represent the next generation of Lucid’s tech, Hallmark said.
Aston will also continue to source engines from Mercedes-Benz, but the automaker is going it alone on its plug-in hybrid system because it needs greater control over packaging and battery size, Hallmark said. Those batteries will come from a different supplier than Aston’s EV batteries, he added.
Aston Martin Valhalla
Combustion engines will live on as long as possible
Plug-in hybrid powertrains will help keep Aston’s current V-8 and V-12 engines around as long as possible, even in the face of European regulations that aim to end sales of new combustion-engine cars by 2035, Hallmark said.
“We will keep the 12-cylinder running as long as possible, even as a niche model,” he confirmed, noting that this will likely take the form of exploiting “certain dispensations for very low-volume cars” allowing for a few hundred units per year as regulations tighten. Stricter emissions rules will likely end volume production of V-12 cars by 2030, Hallmark said, with V-8s lasting until 2035.
Other low-volume, high-end automakers have championed synthetic fuels, also known as e-fuels, as a way to keep internal-combustion cars on the road. Hallmark sees these fuels as “valuable, and part of the solution,” but said they likely won’t be produced in large enough quantities to serve as a like-for-like replacement for fossil fuels.
2025 Aston Martin DBX707
The DBX will be remain Aston’s only SUV, for now
They may represent a much larger market than Aston’s two-door models, but Hallmark said “we have no plans for two SUVs.”
Aston will instead continue to hone its DBX utility vehicle, which has been around since the 2021 model year and received a refresh for 2025, before redesigning it. That redesign will likely hew close to the ethos of the current DBX, Hallmark indicated, rather than venturing into more rugged territory.
SUVs remain big sellers, so Aston may have to add a second one eventually. But it won’t build a Mercedes G-Class rival, Hallmark said, as a 2024 report suggested. Nor is downsizing being considered.
Aston Martin Lagonda Taraf
A Lagonda revival is also off the table
A return of the Lagonda nameplate, floated toward the end of the last decade and then reportedly quashed by current Aston chairman Lawrence Stroll, definitely isn’t happening, Hallmark confirmed.
“It’s hard enough managing one brand,” he said, adding that the name could resurface at some point in a niche application, but it’s not currently planned as a separate brand. Nor is Aston considering any new models that would fit the Lagonda mold.
“It wouldn’t be a core product,” Hallmark said of a new sedan akin to the previous Aston Martin Lagonda or Lagonda Taraf, because Aston’s niche is sports cars and performance. And the potential sales of a new sedan wouldn’t be enough to justify development costs, he believes.
More hardcore sports cars are a possibility
Hallmark pointed to the “lack of follow-up post-launch” of new models as one area where Aston can improve. Each new generation of Porsche 911 is followed by a number of variants to keep customers coming back, and that’s the example Hallmark, who previously worked at Porsche, wants to follow.
For the DBX, there’s room for a less-adrenal variant that works better as a daily driver, Hallmark said, but added that “we wouldn’t make Vantage more luxurious” (referring to Aston’s just-refreshed Vantage coupe and Vantage roadster) and that the Vanquish’s 825-hp V-12 “demands that we do more and more with that.”
“We’ve got some really good ideas,” Hallmark said, “like bringing an existing race car back to the road.” And at least some of these sportier variants will feature a manual transmission, he said.
2025 Aston Martin Vanquish
More personalization, more options
Hallmark said optional add-ons were “like a gold mine” and that thickening the catalog of them would bring Aston “into the regular behavior of other luxury brands.”
Some of those options will likely include carbon fiber wheels, titanium exhaust systems, and more elaborate audio systems, Hallmark said, as well as leaning more heavily on Aston Martin’s Q personalization division. The hope is to get personalized builds commissioned and assembled at the same speed as regular-production cars.
Personalization is also a priority at other luxury brands, with Mercedes recently expanding its Manufaktur program and Bentley and Rolls-Royce churning out growing numbers of bespoke builds. So Aston will indeed be on-trend.
