One big discussion point with EVs has always been their sound… or lack thereof.
Recently, Lamborghini backed out of its EV plans, largely because the supercar maker couldn’t figure out how to make buyers feel connected to a Lamborghini that makes no sound. This may sound silly to non-car people, but Lamborghini is known for its high-revving, screaming V12s. Would anyone want a Lamborghini that didn’t feel that visceral?
Then Ferrari’s Luce completely flopped, and suddenly every luxury brand is wondering how to make an EV appeal to supercar snobs who want to feel and hear an engine roar.
Bentley thinks it has an answer. And it’s a weird one.
What is Bentley doing to make a fake engine sound?
The Bentley Torcal is the automaker’s first fully electric vehicle, an SUV that slots below the V8-powered Bentayga. It’s set to be revealed on September 23 in London, and go on sale in early 2027.
Bentley hasn’t confirmed the money stuff yet, so treat the numbers as estimates. Reporting pegs the price at around £170,000 (roughly $230,000), which would put it between cars like the BMW iX and the Rolls-Royce Spectre. It rides on the same VW Group platform as the coming Porsche Cayenne EV, and Bentley has confirmed just one hard figure: more than 300 miles of range.
It sounds promising… but it’s an EV. Will Bentley buyers want an EV?
Bentley is very aware of that challenge, and it just revealed how it plans to fill the silence.
Here’s where it gets strange. Rather than pipe a fake V8 through the speakers like almost everyone else, Bentley built its soundtrack out of live instruments. The centerpiece is drums. Yes, drums.
The reasoning is more logical than it sounds. Bentley’s engineers recorded and analyzed the brand’s iconic V8 in a studio, then set up two parabolic speakers, one playing the V8 and the other a live drummer, and had people stand between them. What they found was that the special part of a V8 isn’t the exhaust note. It’s the rhythm.
They also noticed the V8 wasn’t perfectly uniform. Its little imperfections and variations gave it what Bentley calls a distinctly human quality, which a drummer’s natural timing happens to share.
So Bentley commissioned musicians to compose an original piece using drums, viola, and bass guitar, tuned to sound like the emotion of a V8 without copying one. It’s called the “Bentley Dynamic Symphony,” and it responds to your foot: the tempo climbs as you accelerate and eases off as you lift.
The V8 that inspired it is a proper piece of history, too, tracing back to Bentley’s supercharged engines of the 1930s and its long-serving 6¾-liter V8. So the soundtrack is at least paying homage to something real, rather than inventing a spaceship whoosh from nothing.
So will drums actually fix the EV problem?
Will this work? It’s tough to say. It’s a genuinely interesting idea, and I’ll give Bentley credit for not doing the lazy fake-engine thing that always ends up sounding hollow.
But I’ve always said this: EV drivers don’t care about engine sounds. So why give them a fake one? And car enthusiasts don’t care about EVs. So, again, why bother?
Bentley isn’t the first to throw money at this problem, either. Other brands have amplified motor whine, faked exhaust notes, and one even hired Hans Zimmer to score its EV. Some of it is clever. Most of it gets old fast, because you can always tell it’s fake.
The drum approach is at least different, and being made by real musicians on real instruments, it might actually sound good on its own terms rather than as a bad V8 impression. That’s the strongest thing going for it.
Still, I think EVs just have to accept they won’t deliver the same experience as an ICE car, and embrace that new direction instead. The inauthenticity doesn’t really land with either side of the argument.
Then again, if anyone’s going to make a drum solo feel like 1,000 pounds of British luxury barreling down the motorway, it’s probably the brand that’s been obsessing over how its cars make you feel for the last 107 years. We’ll find out on September 23.
