$250,000 Price Tag
Aston returned to profit in the first quarter, a decade after it was sold by Ford. Now owned by private equity groups Investindustrial and Kuwait's Investment Dar, the company is rolling out a new model each year under a taut recovery plan drawn up by Palmer, who joined from Nissan in 2014.
Without LeEco's backing, the sports carmaker, based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, is pushing ahead as sole investor in the electric car, after paring down production and pushing back the launch date to 2019. The plan won board approval on June 21.
Aston will start taking orders next month with 10 percent down payments on the RapidE, priced just shy of 200,000 pounds ($255,000) in its home market before incentives. That's a significant premium on the 150,000 pound entry ticket for its V12 model, whose 5.9-liter engine develops 470 horsepower.
Batteries will come from a new production facility built by a consortium led by Williams Advanced Engineering, the F1 team's technical division, with matched British government funding.
Williams, which supplies power packs to the Formula E electric car racing series, also built the RapidE prototype unveiled in 2015.
Beyond the RapidE, Aston's first full-production battery car will be an electric version of the DBX crossover it is launching in 2019 - hoping for a repeat of the success that greeted its DB11 coupe, with a little help from the latest Bond film.
"The RapidE project was always about learning in readiness for the DBX derivative," Palmer said. "We can do that through a limited series." ($1 = 0.7858 pounds)
This article was provided by Reuters.