In the same hours when Lamborghini’s president and CEO Stephan Winkelmann explained that “the electric car does not excite” customers looking for super sports cars, Bentley Motors from across the Channel announced that it has launched a workforce reduction program aimed at improving margins by deeply revising its electrification plans for the range.
THE AUTOMOTIVE CRISIS MAKES NO DISTINCTIONS
Most Western car brands are in crisis. Boutiques like Lamborghini and Ferrari resist, indeed continuing to break sales records, but moving down the segment there is no distinction in the conditions in which both city car producers and premium vehicle manufacturers are struggling today.
This is recalled by the accounts of Porsche or Audi, the tribulations of Mercedes and BMW (which all things considered held up in 2025 but sees a bleak 2026) and, to stay across the Channel, the countless financial difficulties of Aston Martin.
TARIFFS, CHINA AND WRONG STRATEGIES
The causes are always the same: many, too many billions invested in electrifying the range while the market looks the other way and Chinese competition that first led Western manufacturers astray in the Dragon’s market and now attempts to overtake even in the Old Continent. In such a situation, Donald Trump’s tariffs then came into play and did the rest.
BENTLEY ALSO LIGHTENS THE LOAD
The watchword of the various European giants is therefore to shed ballast to become competitive again. That’s why Bentley announces it will cut no fewer than 275 workers, or about 6% compared to the current 4,600 employees.
The sacrifices will mainly be “white collars,” not workers, through the elimination of about 150 positions in administrative activities, while at the same time vacant positions will not be filled and outgoing workers will not be replaced.
THE BRITISH COMPANY’S 2025 IN NUMBERS
The measure is a direct response to the current situation well reflected in the accounts: revenues fell by 1.2% to 2.615 billion euros, while deliveries dropped by 4.8% to 10,131 units. Although Bentley remained profitable for the seventh consecutive year, operating profit is stuck down 42.1% to 216 million, with a margin down to 8.3%.
IS THE BEYOND100+ PLAN RECONSIDERED?
The market change, with the new life guaranteed to combustion engines by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, has led the British carmaker to revise the Beyond100+ strategy through which it had previously announced aiming for a fully electric future by the end of the decade – anticipating by five years even the EU ban on old internal combustion engines – while now, apart from an electric car planned for 2027, Bentley seems to want to focus, just like other Western manufacturers, on the plug-in hybrid, which will remain in the range even after 2035.
