For ten years the first question about any electric vehicle has been how far it goes. In today's five stories that question barely comes up, and when it does, the people using these vehicles answer with some version of far enough. What runs out first is something else: fresh water in a trailer, the stamina of a driver, and in Bentley's case the engine noise that defined the brand for a century and now has to be built from scratch.
The clearest case is the Lightship AE1. Everyday Chris spent a night in it and reported the tank levels as he went. By the next morning, after several showers, two meals and a round of dishes, fresh water was down to 25 percent and the gray tank read full. The battery was the part he stopped worrying about. He says it ran the lights, the climate control and a streamed movie overnight, while the roof solar topped it up during the day. Lightship's own website says a family of four can camp off grid for about a week, a claim framed around energy use. On this trip, the 50-gallon water tank set the length of the stay, and Chris concedes a rival trailer of the same size would probably have filled its gray tank just as fast.
Range comes up directly only in the Toyota bZ Woodland review, and TFLEV's hosts wave it off. All-terrain tires cut the rating from 281 to 260 miles, and one host says four hours is about as long as he wants to drive in one go anyway. Slate Auto makes a similar case in its own desert road trip, where the presenter describes each charging stop on a planned 670-mile day as a welcome break. That is the company talking. Slate's published estimate for its truck is 205 miles, so a day that long means at least three stops even starting from full.
At the top of the market the battery question is answered with money. Both Torcal videos, from Autogefühl and Autotrader, place it on the Porsche Cayenne Electric's platform, Autogefühl says it uses the same battery, and neither treats range as the headline. Bentley's effort went into things no spec sheet measures. Autotrader reports a driving sound built from recordings of the company's V8 and real drummers, and an indicator click recorded from a hammer striking leather. Toyota's version of the same instinct is humbler and more useful: a radiant heater where the glove box would be, meant to warm the driver's knees instead of the whole cabin.
What to watch is whether the industry's attention follows. Lightship would send a signal if it treated water capacity and gray-tank management with the seriousness it has given solar. Slate's first customer deliveries, which the company expects in the fourth quarter, will produce owner range figures that a brand road trip does not. And Bentley's symphony faces the simplest test of all. It can be switched off, so the number of owners who leave it on will show whether sound was worth building.
Bentley's First EV Keeps Its Grille and Borrows Porsche's Battery
Autogefühl's Thomas gets an early studio look at the Torcal, Bentley's first fully electric car, and points out that some trim on the example he filmed is still prototype. He places it on the platform of Porsche's Cayenne Electric and says it shares that car's battery, which he gives as 108 kWh net. That matches Porsche's published spec for the Cayenne pack: 113 kWh gross, about 108 kWh usable. Per the video, the standard car reaches 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds and the S in 2.9, with the S making 888 hp and 1,350 Nm. Charging peaks at 400 kW DC for a 10 to 80 percent stop of about 16 minutes. Based on his motorway testing of the Cayenne Electric, the host expects about 300 miles at a steady cruise, and suspects the blunt front end will cost some efficiency. Air suspension is joined by an active hydraulic system that he says feels a little artificial but can be adjusted. Inside, he likes the physical climate dials and real steering wheel buttons, and dislikes the hard elbow rest, the curve at the screen's edge and the lack of an animal-free interior option. Bentley told him there will be no passenger display. UK prices, he says, start at £165,000, or £200,000 for the S.
A Night in the Lightship AE1 Ran Short on Water, Not Power
Everyday Chris spends 24 hours in the Lightship AE1 at a sloping oceanside campsite and treats the stay as a test of its supplies. He shows it rising at the press of a button from its low towing height to about 10 feet tall, levelling itself on the slope and charging his Rivian R2 from its own battery through a NACS port. He gives that battery as 77 kWh and the solar as 1,800 watts. Lightship's spec page lists 77 kWh as standard, with 1.8 kW as the optional Solar+ array, up from 670 W on the base trailer. Inside he finds a full-height shower, induction cooking, a microwave, a dishwasher, wiring for Starlink and a half-round bed his companion says she slept on very well. The water log is the real story. Fresh water fell to 88 percent after his first shower, 59 percent by 7:30 the next morning, 38 percent after brunch and 25 percent after another shower, by which point the gray tank read 100 percent. He thinks the price is a little over $150,000; The Weekly Driver reported a $157,500 base price in April. One buyer consideration he only touches on: the R2 he brought cannot tow it. Lightship lists the dry weight at 7,150 lb, more than twice the 3,500 lb rating of the Toyota in story three.
Toyota's bZ Woodland Is Quick and Roomy, and Range Is the Trade
TFLEV's Andre and Jen call the bZ Woodland a sleeper, and the numbers they read out support it: dual motors, 375 hp and 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds. Per the video, it has 8.4 inches of ground clearance, all-terrain tires on 18-inch wheels at no extra cost, and 34 cubic feet of cargo space behind the second row, or 57 with the seats folded. The optional tow package allows 3,500 lb, and a 1,500 W household outlet sits in the cargo area. Charging is the weaker side. They cite a battery of roughly 75 kWh, an 11 kW onboard charger and a 150 kW DC peak, for about 30 minutes from 10 to 80 percent. Range is 281 miles, or 260 on the all-terrains. The cabin feature they like most is a radiant heater in place of a glove box, which warms knees and saves energy. Their test car was built in Japan and started at $47,400; with the tow package, crossbars, cargo lights and destination it came to $50,888. The hosts say it costs less than the average new vehicle. By Kelley Blue Book's August figures, that holds for the base price and against the average sticker price of $51,852, but the test car sits about $800 above the $50,089 average actually paid.
Slate Puts 2,000 Miles on Its Truck Before Customers Get One
This one comes from Slate Auto's own channel, so it is company promotion rather than an independent test. A Slate presenter takes over a truck from a colleague and heads west from Dallas, through New Mexico and into Arizona, planning about 670 miles in a day on the way to a demo ride tour in California. By his count the truck passes 2,000 miles since leaving the factory in Warsaw, Indiana, and he says it has run without a fault. He demonstrates one-pedal driving and leans across the cab to wind down the passenger window by hand. At a charging stop he holds a window-crank race with two people he met there. The video shows no range, efficiency or charging-time figures. Slate's published numbers fill part of that gap: in June it priced the truck from $24,950, with an estimated 205 miles from a 63 kWh usable battery, and said first deliveries are expected in the fourth quarter of 2026. On that estimate, a 670-mile day needs at least three charging stops even starting full, and likely more at 70 mph in desert heat. For anyone weighing it as a highway vehicle, that is the missing number.
Bentley Recorded a V8, Drummers and a Hammer to Give the Torcal a Voice
Autotrader covers the same car as story one but spends its time on what Bentley designed around the battery. The biggest item is sound. The presenter reports that Bentley blended recordings of its 6.75-litre V8 with drums played by people to create what it calls the Bentley Dynamic Symphony, which rises and falls with how hard you drive and can be turned off. The indicator tick is a recording of a hammer striking leather in the upholstery shop. Bentley kept a grille, with illuminated diamonds behind a polycarbonate face, and the video says the brand fires pebbles at it to test for chips. Some figures differ from Autogefühl's in ways that are easy to reconcile. Autotrader quotes 113 kWh, the gross figure for the shared Porsche pack, where Autogefühl gave the usable 108. Its 375-mile range reads as an official claim, though the video does not name the test cycle, while Autogefühl's roughly 300 miles is a motorway estimate carried over from the Cayenne. Per Autotrader, the core model makes 821 hp, the S reaches 60 mph in 2.9 seconds and 162 mph flat out, and the car is 120 mm shorter and 50 mm lower than a Bentayga, with an 11.1 m turning circle, a 460-litre boot and a 90-litre front trunk. The presenter expects a price under £170,000.
Bottom line: The best buy today is the Toyota, if you charge at home and rarely cover more than 250 miles in a day. The Lightship is the harder call. At around $150,000 it is an impressive power plant with a water supply two people drained to a quarter in under a day, so anyone planning more than a weekend off grid should budget for refills. Slate still owes buyers a real highway range figure. Bentley's recorded symphony is indulgent, and also the smartest idea in today's lineup, because sound is where the brand still has something to sell.
Commentary on third-party videos. Figures and claims are as presented in the sources and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.