We play with the rather unique Flying Spur Hybrid, and we plug it in!
This is a little bit different from what you would expect from something with a hybrid badge on its rather imposing flanks. It is, after all, a Bentley. And Bentley is known for both huge amounts of power to play and massive levels of smoothness with which to waft. The V8s roar when you want them to but float otherwise, the (sadly outgoing) W12s hurtle forward even faster with even more sedateness, if that is at all possible. Electric propulsion should fit right into the family.
So, where is this Hybrid? It is a very gentlemanly step down the road from full glorious internal combustion to full electric to which the marque has committed, and rather soon at that. How does it get you there? By making you plug in.
This is a plug-in hybrid, and it is one that will make you want to plug it in. It has three basic propulsion modes, EV Drive, Hybrid and what they call “Hold.”
The car starts in EV Drive mode, unless you request otherwise, just like it starts in the more intelligent “Bentley” mode as opposed to Sport or Comfort in terms of driving dynamics and experience. So, even more choices. The car is meant to have a full EV experience most of the time, and for that Bentley has equipped the Flying Spur with a stated 41 kilometers of EV range (out of a total of 805 kilometers of combined range). This puts full EV use range well within most Bentley buyer’s daily range, and indeed the car went from the Bentley Showroom to Singapore’s Changi Airport, back to the Bentley Showroom then to Fullerton Bay Hotel (a couple times because we got lost) to the western reaches of the country within sight of Malaysia and partly back. The Flying Spur was supremely quiet and smooth, as expected from pure electric power. If you choose to play a little, yes you use up that power a little more quickly. But the electric power, in this car, is all about the experience for most of your daily drives.
If you choose Hybrid mode, the car will shift between electric and the 2.9 liter twin turbocharged gasoline V6 (with the Eight Speed Dual Clutch transmission doing the shifting for you) as determined by your foot and the amount of remaining charge. It will shift automatically to Hybrid mode if you run out of juice, which yes we did. And with the juice as low as we got it, it was pretty much all internal combustion with spurts of electric power for extra push. Very smooth still, very Bentley but not as sublime as the V8s or W12s of course.
Hold mode is where you try to keep (hold) as much battery power as possible, such as perhaps where you have a long highway drive for which liquid fuel is pretty efficient and then save the peace-and-quiet electric for when you reach your idyllic vacation spot. Note that you will always be using up electric, it won’t stay completely charged even in Hold mode. That’s not how it works, you are always using power somehow. Another note is that the car doesn’t seem to recuperate power as quickly as a more normal hybrid. The Flying Spur is heavily skewed to the electric experience but still wants to make it as non-intrusively Bentley as possible.
Other than all that, it is pretty much what you would expect from the marque. Excellent attention to detail in the sumptuous interior, and fittingly for a car for which you are meant to be driven, the rear headrests are so much nicer than those for the front. Climate control can be specific to all four zones. Active all-wheel drive helps keep the rather large and heavy four door saloon behaving politely. Which is useful because it has 536 bhp from gasoline and 138 bhp from electric, and combined max torque of 550 N-m. 0 to 100 kph takes 4.2 seconds.
Who is the Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid plug-in for? Someone who loves how Bentley treats their riders but wants to venture into seeing if electrics can really be that good. For the appropriate buyer, that answer will be a very quiet yes.
