Aston Martin chairman Lawrence Stroll has announced that the British automaker will provide details on all the new cars it has planned for the next five years at its capital markets day on 27 June, reports Autocar, and this includes plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles. Electrification has been on the radar at Gaydon for quite some time, but as we exclusively reported last year, Aston Martin still intends to offer combustion vehicles for a long time to come.

Back in 2019, we saw the Rapide E, an electric version of Aston Martin's luxury sedan. This was intended to reach production in limited numbers (155 units), but the project was canned, and the developments made were shelved for future products. In 2021, we were told that the automaker's first production EV would come in 2025.

Now, we're being told to expect it a year later.

This EV is reportedly "on schedule" to arrive in 2026, and it seems that customers won't take issue with the delay. "I don't have many customers asking me for a BEV," said Stroll.

It should be worth the wait, too, as it will be a "new product" developed on a "new platform," meaning that this project will not see the automaker "putting batteries in an old platform," according to Marek Reichman, the brand's chief creative officer. In addition, major Chinese investor Geely will not have any part in supplying components.

According to Aston's chief technical officer Roberto Fedeli, "You will see we have a different target; we have in mind something completely different to the technology out there already. Our thought is that electric is not a powertrain but a new vehicle dynamic. For this reason, we have in mind our own road map."

This sounds intriguing and suggests that Aston could be approaching EVs in much the same way that BMW is. The German automaker intends to use electric motors to increase the handling ability of a car, not detract from it. Fedeli's words suggest that Aston Martin will introduce a new kind of spirited performance beyond brutal acceleration.

Regardless, Lawrence Stroll feels there is a future for plug-in hybrids, predicting that the tech will "last well into the 2030s." He also told the media that "the balance of ICE cars coming over the next 18 months" will be revealed at the capital markets day event.

These ICE cars will include replacements for the Vantage range, which is expected to be sportier than ever, and the DBS models, as well as a Volante drop-top version of the new Aston Martin DB12. Aston's first plug-in hybrid offering, the Valhalla, should still go on sale before the end of 2024.

But none of these products are intended to be big sellers. "I'm looking for higher gross margins, not volumes. That's luxury," said Stroll. "My vision and [dreams are] for Aston Martin to be ultra-luxury wedded with high performance and take marketing and technology from Formula 1."

This will be a somewhat tough ask, as Aston Martin overinvested by building a new factory in St. Athan before Stroll's Yew Tree investment consortium first started buying parts of the company in 2020 and long before the consortium took the company over, a decision that Stroll said he personally would not have made. However, it would be more expensive to close the factory down than to continue operating it, so Aston is making the most of the lemons it has.

Thankfully, more investment, remarkable F1 performances, and rave reviews of vehicles like the DBX707 mean that Aston is in its best position in recent memory. We expect new vehicles announced on 27 June will be just as impressive.