Aston Martin looking to develop an electric Rapide with Faraday Future

British ultra-luxury sportscar maker swore that they would never stray from the V12 path. But it seems the official Bond car maker has had a change of heart. They have recently signed a deal with Letv, the Chinese company that finances Faraday Future, an electric car manufacturing startup. It would be safe to say that China really wants an electric Rapide. The reveal of the RapidE during the Chinese president’s visit to the UK last year in October, the talks with ChinaEquity to put the electric Rapide into production and company CEO Andy Palmer confirming that an electric Rapide will come around 2017, is evidence enough to point the direction in which Aston is headed. 

Aston and Letv have worked before on the Rapide S model and built the Internet of Vehicle or the IOV system for the car. And currently Aston Martin is looking to Letv to supply batteries and transmission materials to accelerate the development process of the all-electric four door sportscar. Aston is also said to be working closely with Letv for advancing production feasibility as well. But the reports do have an air of skepticism about them in the wake of the recent Faraday Future concept unveil at CES in Las Vegas. Instead of the expec ted functional mobility solution, the company presented a 1000PS hypercar concept that would never see the assembly line.

However, it not all talk and bull, according to a few reports, Andy Palmer, Aston Martin CEO mentioned that there is a good probability that the British automaker could work directly with Faraday Future. This in turn means that Aston shares its knowledge of performance and refinement and in return gets expertise on Faraday’s electric engineering expertise. 

So in essence we could see an all-electric RapidE soon but not before 2018. In the mean time Aston will roll out at least one more generation of its V12 powered cars.