This page went up on New Year’s Eve 2024 as a set of predictions about luxury cars for the year ahead. That makes it unusually easy to mark. Twenty months have passed, two full financial years have been reported, and every claim on it can now be checked against what the manufacturers actually did.
The short version: on luxury cars the piece got the hybrid call right, got two facts wrong on the day it published, and was comprehensively wrong about the thing it was most confident about. We have rewritten it as a scorecard rather than quietly deleting it, because a page that shows what was predicted against what happened is more useful than one that pretends it always knew.
Electric luxury cars went backwards, not forwards. Ferrari halved its 2030 EV target, Rolls-Royce scrapped its all-electric pledge, Bentley moved its date from 2030 to 2035, and Maserati and Lamborghini cancelled electric models outright. The Rolls-Royce Spectre fell 47% in 2025 while the V12 Cullinan rose 27%.
Hybrids won instead, and the money in luxury cars moved from volume to value: Ferrari and Lamborghini both made more revenue from flat or fewer cars. The one thing almost nobody predicted was Porsche, whose 2025 operating profit fell 92.7%.
| Predicted on 31 Dec 2024 | What happened | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid powertrains would define supercars | Ferrari F80, Aston Martin Valhalla, McLaren W1, Bugatti Tourbillon; Lamborghini completed a fully hybrid range in 2025 | Right |
| Sustainable luxury: more brands going electric | Launches happened, but the defining movement was retreat — see below | Wrong on direction |
| Driver assistance and connectivity becoming standard | EU regulation had already made ADAS mandatory on all new cars from 7 July 2024, six months earlier | Already true |
| “The anticipated Ferrari Purosangue” | Revealed 13 September 2022; deliveries began Q2 2023 | Two years stale |
| “The new Bugatti Chiron Super Sport… expected to exceed 300 mph” | 304.773 mph achieved in August 2019; Chiron production ended May 2024; successor is the V16 Tourbillon | Wrong three ways |
Worth separating these two out, because they were not failed forecasts about luxury cars at all. They were already incorrect when the page published.
The Purosangue was not anticipated. Ferrari revealed it on 13 September 2022 and confirmed in its own second-quarter 2023 results that customer deliveries had commenced. By New Year’s Eve 2024 it had been on sale for roughly eighteen months and Ferrari had already opened, closed and reopened the order book.
The Bugatti line was wrong in three directions at once. The 300 mph run was not expected — it happened on 2 August 2019, when Andy Wallace recorded 304.773 mph at Ehra-Lessien in a Chiron Super Sport 300+. The Chiron was not new: Bugatti announced the 500th and final car, “L’Ultime,” in May 2024, seven months before this page went up. And the W16 era it described had already been replaced — the Tourbillon was revealed on 20 June 2024 with a naturally aspirated 8.3-litre V16, three electric motors and 1,800 PS, limited to 250 cars.
Every luxury cars trend piece written that winter said the same thing, and this one said it too: sustainable luxury was arriving, and more luxury brands would go electric. Launches did happen — Ferrari revealed the Elettrica’s architecture in October 2025, Porsche introduced the Cayenne Electric in mid-2026. But the defining movement of the period was not adoption. It was retreat.
| Brand | What changed | When |
|---|---|---|
| Ferrari | 2030 electric target cut from 40% of range to 20%; second EV pushed to 2028 or later | Oct 2025 |
| Rolls-Royce | Scrapped its all-electric-by-2030 pledge; no new date | Mar 2026 |
| Bentley | All-electric target moved 2030 to 2035; several planned EVs cancelled, next generation is plug-in hybrid | Mar 2026 |
| Lamborghini | Lanzador cancelled as an EV, replaced by a plug-in hybrid; first EV not before 2030 | 2025-26 |
| Maserati | MC20 Folgore EV cancelled before reveal, citing insufficient demand | Mar 2025 |
| Porsche | Large SUV switched from electric to combustion and hybrid; EUR 3.1bn extraordinary charge | Sep 2025 |
| Aston Martin | Electric platform investment deferred; EVs pushed to 2030-35 | Feb 2026 |
| Lotus | EV-only plan reversed; plug-in hybrid Emira confirmed for 2027 | 2025 |
The single hardest number is Rolls-Royce. In 2025 the electric Spectre fell 47%, from 1,890 units to 1,002, while the V12-powered Cullinan rose 27.1% to 3,291. Same brand, same year, same customers, opposite directions.
Policy did a lot of the work in the US. The federal EV tax credit was terminated by legislation signed on 4 July 2025 and ended for vehicles acquired after 30 September 2025. The result was a pull-forward and then a cliff: EV share peaked at 10.5% in the third quarter, then fourth-quarter sales fell 36% year over year to a 5.8% share. 2025 was the first annual decline in US battery-electric sales and share on record. First-quarter 2026 registrations were down another 28%.
One important qualification, because plenty of coverage has got this wrong: this is largely a US and ultra-luxury story. In Europe, battery-electric share rose to 17.4% across 2025 and 20.7% in the first half of 2026. Anyone telling you electric cars are finished is describing one market and calling it the world.
This was the one prediction about luxury cars the original page got right, and it deserves credit for it.
Luxury cars were not alone; the mass market did the same thing. US hybrid sales rose 57% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 while electric share fell to 5.8%. In Europe hybrids are now the largest single powertrain category at 37.3% in the first half of 2026, ahead of petrol and diesel combined. The powertrain that won receives no subsidy at all.
No trend piece written that New Year’s Eve mentioned the thing that turned out to matter most, which is that the business of selling luxury cars stopped growing on volume and started growing on value.
| Brand | 2025 deliveries | 2025 revenue | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ferrari | 13,640 (−0.8%) | EUR 7,146m (+7%) | Fewer cars, more money. Net profit EUR 1,600m |
| Lamborghini | 10,747 (record) | EUR 3.20bn (+3.3%) | Operating margin around 24% |
| Rolls-Royce | 5,664 (−0.8%) | Not disclosed | Flat overall; Cullinan +27.1%, Spectre −47% |
| Bentley | ~10,000 (−5%) | EUR 2.6bn (−1%) | Profitable but shrinking; EUR 42m tariff hit |
| Aston Martin | 5,448 (−10%) | GBP 1,258m (−21%) | Operating loss GBP 259m |
| Porsche | 279,449 (−10.1%) | EUR 36.27bn (−9.5%) | Operating profit −92.7%; margin 1.1% against 14.1% |
Ferrari and Lamborghini both sold flat or fewer luxury cars and made more money, through mix and personalisation rather than units. Ferrari’s order book now runs to the end of 2027. That is the best-evidenced trend in the whole dataset, and it is the one nobody was writing about.
Among luxury cars, Porsche is the cautionary tale. A 92.7% fall in operating profit at the most consistently profitable volume manufacturer in the industry is not a rounding error, and it came from three things: unwinding an electric product strategy, tariffs, and China. Its first-half 2026 figures tell the same story in miniature — the 911 was up 19% while the Taycan was down 25%.
Look at which luxury cars actually grew in 2025 and 2026 and a pattern appears that no trend list for luxury cars contained: the combustion halo cars outperformed.
None of that means combustion is winning the long war. It means the customers at this end of the market bought what they wanted rather than what the strategy decks said they would, and the makers of luxury cars have spent two years and a great deal of money adjusting to it.
Not predictions. These are the things about luxury cars with numbers behind them as of the middle of 2026.
We are leaving this page about luxury cars up with its own homework marked because the pattern is worth understanding if you are making decisions about luxury cars with real money.
Our family has been in the car business for more than a century, which is long enough to have watched a lot of confident forecasts about luxury cars arrive, get repeated everywhere, and then quietly not happen. The steam-versus-petrol argument, the rotary engine, the death of the manual, and now the electric transition timeline — every one of them was going to be settled within five years, and none of them was.
What has actually held up is duller and more useful. People at this end of the market buy what they want to own. When the product and the customer disagree, the customer wins and the manufacturer writes off a few billion finding that out. Everything on the scorecard above is a version of that.
We will mark this page again next year. In the meantime, browse our inventory or list your car with us. New to this end of the market? Start with the first-time exotic car buyer guide, and our sister publication Exotic Car News tracks these numbers as they land.
Much more slowly than they said in 2024. Ferrari cut its 2030 electric target from 40% of its range to 20%, Rolls-Royce scrapped its all-electric-by-2030 pledge entirely, Bentley moved its date to 2035, and Maserati and Lamborghini cancelled planned electric models. Launches continue — Ferrari’s Elettrica and the Porsche Cayenne Electric among them — but the direction of travel between March 2025 and March 2026 was retreat.
In the US, largely policy. The federal EV tax credit was terminated for vehicles acquired after 30 September 2025, producing a rush and then a collapse: fourth-quarter 2025 sales fell 36% year over year to a 5.8% share, and 2025 became the first year on record in which US battery-electric sales and share both declined. Demand at the top of the market was also weaker than forecast — the Rolls-Royce Spectre fell 47% in 2025 while the V12 Cullinan rose 27%.
Plug-in hybrid. Every significant hypercar of the period is one — the Ferrari F80, Aston Martin Valhalla, McLaren W1 and Bugatti Tourbillon — and Lamborghini completed the hybridisation of its whole range in 2025. Bentley’s next generation is plug-in hybrid too. In the wider market, US hybrid sales rose 57% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, and hybrids are now the largest single powertrain category in Europe.
Not by volume, but the strong brands grew profit. Ferrari delivered 13,640 cars, marginally fewer than 2024, while revenue rose 7% to EUR 7.15bn. Lamborghini set a delivery record at 10,747 with revenue up 3.3%. Bentley, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce and Porsche all shrank — Porsche most dramatically, with operating profit down 92.7% and margin falling from 14.1% to 1.1%.
The combustion halo models, which almost nobody predicted. The Rolls-Royce Cullinan rose 27.1%, the Porsche 911 was up 19% in the first half of 2026 in a range that fell 16% overall, and the Mercedes G-Class set a record at 49,700 units with AMG up 7% while Mercedes overall fell 9%. Porsche also brought back a manual gearbox on the 911 Carrera S in August 2026.
It depends which side of the depreciation you are on. US electric luxury values have fallen sharply since the tax credit ended, which makes a used one materially cheaper than it was and makes a new one a harder financial case. If you are buying a model whose programme has been cancelled or wound down, get parts and service commitments in writing first. If you want the safest technical bet, plug-in hybrid is what the manufacturers themselves have committed to for this decade.
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