Aston Martin has just revealed this all-electric Rapide

Last week, Aston Martin’s boss Andy Palmer revealed that the British firm's future might well include a 1,000bhp, fully-fledged all-electric supercar. This then, looks like the first step on that EV ladder.

It’s called the ‘RapidE’, and as the name suggests, is a concept Rapide which ditches Aston’s venerable 6.0-litre, 550bhp V12, and instead plumps for a large set of batteries under the bonnet. It was revealed outside Lancaster House in London, where Aston bigwigs met with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The zero-emission Aston was built in collaboration with Williams Advanced Engineering at Grove, and could, according to Palmer, pave the way for a production model in two years time.

“We see luxury electric vehicles as an intrinsic part of our future product portfolio,” Palmer said at today’s meeting. It gives more meat to his comments made recently at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, where he mentioned a future electric Aston Martin with between 800 and 1,000 horsepower. “Imagine having all that torque on demand," Palmer noted.

Aston and Chinese investment group ChinaEquity will now explore the development potential of a 1,000bhp electric Aston. Watch this space...