An environmental epiphany sitting in a Bentley? Well, there’s no point being uncomfortable, is there?
Iceland wears its geology on the outside.
There’s no cloak of fields and trees, no undergarment of soil and earth, what buildings and infrastructure exist look fabulously fragile in this barren zone of landslides and lava, nothing more than temporary jewellery. The occasional cap of snow and ice is all there is to cover this island’s modesty. Iceland is nature’s ‘how stuff works’ lesson to humanity.
And it’s got plenty to teach us. The geology is well understood but hand in hand with that comes energy. It’s hot under here. The mid-Atlantic ridge bisects this country, it’s expanding at a rate of 40mm per year, plus it sits on a thin crust moving over a mantle plume that is basically blowtorching the underside. Meanwhile any water that isn’t frozen in place on the topside tends to move fast. Plunge a pipe into the earth or stick a turbine under a waterfall and you’ve tapped into a power source.
Actually, 75 per cent of Iceland’s electricity comes from hydro, the rest is geothermal. Pipes run 2.5km down and bring up boiling brine or take down cold water which comes back up hot. That heats 85 per cent of the homes here. As renewable energy sources go, Iceland has it made. And you don’t need me to tell you, in the shadow of the COP26 climate conference, how important clean energy is right now. I have a meeting with Thordis Gylfadóttir, the country’s minister of tourism, industry and innovation (“Basically the minister of fun,” she tells me), who lays out a very serious plan for Iceland to be entirely free of fossil fuels by 2050, “the first country in the world, I hope".
It’s not a one way street. On a taxi ride, between snatches of Led Zeppelin (“Did you know Immigrant Song was written about Iceland? Listen to it when you’re driving, it’s a perfect match for the scenery. I have to tell that story and put it on before some comedian demands Jaja Ding Dong”) my driver bemoans the winter range of his Audi e-tron – “About 170-180km, that’s all” – but does go on to say that various tax incentives mean a hybrid S-Class is literally half the price of a diesel.
At this point I need to introduce a purple Bentley into proceedings. I appreciate I’m landing it in here with all the elegance and subtlety of a flounder on a fishing deck and that I could have worked it in seamlessly, but it’s a purple Bentley. It’s making a statement. And given it’s a 2.5-tonne plutocratic stogie wagon it wouldn’t appear to be a good one. But just like this country, the good stuff happens underneath.
Actually that’s not true of either car or country. The Flying Spur is rakishly handsome, a flowing four-door where the driver doesn’t look like a chauffeur – an achievement unique among luxury saloons. The country? Well that’s plain mesmerising. I stopped being able to absorb it, became punch drunk on scenery. Then we drove over a bridge that had icebergs floating underneath it, broken off from the glacier I was gawping at just across the bay. Never seen anything like it. And that, for reasons I’ll come on to talk about, sobered me up instantly.
But this car. It’s Bentley’s first ever hybrid saloon. Under that long bonnet lies a 2.9-litre V6 with a pair of turbos and cats nested between the cylinder banks so they run hot and efficient. A 134bhp electric motor is mounted between engine and gearbox, drawing power from a 14kWh battery. You can plug it in, run entirely on electric if your hops are less than 30 miles.
But ours isn’t. The plan is to drive the whole way across Iceland from one side to the other, powered by nothing more than water, straw and volcanos. A 470-mile renewable fuel roadtrip. Only that’s over before it’s begun. Route 953, a dirt road to the Dalatangi lighthouse on Iceland’s easternmost edge, is closed by a landslide. Our journey is suddenly 30 miles shorter, which at least makes it more likely we can do it in one hit. Then, at our hotel in Egilsstadir, it starts snowing. The Bentley is on summer tyres. It may well be the only car on the island shod with summer tyres, given most cars seem to crackle around on studs. I go to bed nervous.
At 5am the next morning, as I reset the trip computer, the temperature reads 0.5˚C. If anything was going to make me drive gingerly... The V6 thrums into life and off I creep into the dark on Route 1, Iceland’s 1,000-mile ring road. Every 10 minutes or so a truck thunders past the other way, but otherwise I’m alone in the predawn emptiness. The road rises and falls and with every rise I let the speed drop back a little, anxious not to stress the powertrain, and with every fall, try to coast or replenish the batteries. It’s a style of driving the Bentley is well adapted for. It’s never hurried, prefers to sweep calmly along, could easily go faster, but doesn’t object to a gentler pace. Apparently there’s a Lambo in Iceland and maybe two Ferraris. Why? Iceland isn’t about driving fast, it’s about observation, having the right platform to admire the country from. The 90kph speed limit is about perfect. Only if Bentley did a landaulet would I want to travel in the back.
As light starts to trickle into the sky, the silhouettes of mountain ranges emerge – it makes me wonder what I’ve missed over the first two hours when all I could see was contained within the headlights’ sphere of influence or the occasional glitter of distant trucks or isolated homesteads. I’m following the coastline, sweeping in and out of giant glaciated valleys while on my left the sun rises out of the sea, grey light warming to yellow, giving the rock depth and shadow, revealing its true scale.
Which is mind-bending. I crane my head forward over the steering wheel to see higher, but when I nestle back into the seat’s coddling embrace – emitting a sigh of contentment as I do – I notice something else. Arty types like to talk about the frame helping to emphasise the painting, and it’s the same here. If the scenery was any less magnificent the rich damson leather would be OTT, but instead the Flying Spur’s immaculate brightwork, its textures, materials and colours, are the perfect foreground for Iceland’s staggering backdrop.
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Nevertheless, I can’t not stop when I get to Hvalnes. It’s just too much. A long spit of black beach protecting a lagoon full of – hang about, are those... swans? They bloody are! A jumble of mossy rock leads from the water up darker scree slopes to a crescendo of jagged peaks, while down below the ribbony road carries the rhythm of this place, treading lightly, not invading the magnificence. It’s utterly breathtaking.
We’ve done a quarter of our journey, averaged 27mpg so far. I’m not hair-shirting this by the way. My resting elbows are being lightly warmed on the heated armrests, Led Zep has been Naimed through the cabin and once or twice, unable to resist, I’ve gunned the engine towards a far horizon. Shouldn’t have bothered. The V6 may be mute and smooth when you ask nothing of it, but when you do it’s coarse. Not very Bentley. But then it’s not a Bentley powertrain – it’s been borrowed from Porsche, broadly the same system already fitted, to no great acclaim, in the Bentayga. Bentley has stated that every model will be electrified by 2026 and it will be all-electric by 2030, but it’s going to have to do better than this.
The satnav shows a green ring – how far I can travel on electric. When I zoom out it’s a speck. I will travel perhaps 15 times further on petrol today than electric, a petrol engine that develops four times the power of the e-motor. But for one crucial detail. It isn’t running on petrol, but biogasoline made from... straw (you were wondering when that was going to put in an appearance, weren’t you?). This isn’t the fully synthetic fuel Porsche and others are working on, but it’s important because it’s a second generation biofuel. First-gen fuels – made from vegetable oil, wheat grain, sugar cane – could also be used for human consumption, or use land that could be used for production. But straw is waste, a byproduct from wheat or corn production.
Developed by Coryton, straw is turned into fermented biomass that produces bioethanol. Remove the water and then a process called oligomerisation grows the ethylene into longer chain hydrocarbons. Can you tell that I’m feeling my way blindly through this? The point is what you get out the end has the same EN228 rating as fuel pump petrol. It’s completely interchangeable.
There are still emissions, CO2 comes out the back at roughly the same rate it does in a regular car, but all told, given the CO2 absorbed during growth and the cleaner production, emissions are down 40 per cent from conventional petrol.
Late morning and Vatnajökull looms into view. It’s a strange sight, an ice sheet. Glacial fingers pick their way between mountains, but behind the ice is just there, a vast pancake dome sat on top of everything. It blends into the cloudy sky, but I’d never see an end to it anyway – it covers 10 per cent of Iceland’s land area. But we can get close to the Fjallsárlón glacier. Close enough to touch, or so it seems. Actually the glacier is nearly two miles away. But 100 years ago it was where I’m parked, and 20 years ago it was only halfway back across the lagoon.
As we leave I approach that bridge, the one with great blocks of glacial ice flowing in the meltwater underneath, floating out to sea and melting oblivion. It’s the starkest visual metaphor for global warming I’ve ever experienced. I switch to EV mode, but as I drive above in this purple Bentley a wave of guilt washes over me. I’ve flown out here, I’m driving a distinctly average hybrid, my CO2 footprint is huge, look what I’m causing. Suddenly I feel sheepish, belittled by a country that, despite its own best efforts, is now showing me the damage I’m – we’re – causing. But are we really taking that long to react? Iceland exists in geological time and I suspect – hope – that future generations will look back at our response to the climate crisis and see that once we saw what we were doing, we actually moved pretty fast to sort it. I know, I’m making excuses, we could be doing better and car firms, just like any other capitalist enterprise, exist to make money and maximise profits. They won’t care for the environment unless public opinion and government legislation demands it. Which it now is. Two years ago Bentley’s Crewe facility, rippling with solar panels, became the UK’s first carbon neutral car factory. The aim is end-to-end carbon neutrality by 2030.
Luxury car firms, the easiest targets out there, have to lead on this. I don’t know if electric power is the final answer for personal transport, but it’s the right answer now and undeniably well suited to luxury travel. However, the Flying Spur Hybrid is no giant leap.
I’m more pensive as we hum along the south coast. The scenery is calmer here, there’s more habitation and farming, more traffic and tourists. They bus out of Reykjavik for the day to get their Instagram shots at Skógafoss, on black sand beaches and among ancient lava fields. All the sights they need are on Route 1. And the servers that hold this digital footprint are here too. Iceland, run on clean energy and with cold air to chill processors, is a fast-growing data hub. “But is this how Iceland should be using its energy?” say the naysayers. “So people can mine Bitcoin or post their best life?” Iceland has more energy than it can use. The minister talked to me about hydrogen generation and export, about undersea electricity cables, developing wind power and carbon capture projects, even asked questions about the fuel we’re using.
Fuel that runs out 10 miles short of our destination, the Svartsengi geothermal power station. We’ve covered 471 miles at 28.0mpg. Respectable, but hardly earth shattering – if I tried hard, I might have got 30mpg and made the trip without a panicky night-time fill up from a can at the roadside. The next morning I plug directly into the power station, but the Bentley only charges at 7kW so it’s a plodding process – two hours to gain those 30 miles.
Beside the overly vocal V6, the FS Hybrid drives well, feels and acts like a Bentley should, is muscular yet dignified, will suit urban dwellers. But bringing it to an environment like this asks tougher questions. Considering where other PHEVs and BEVs are it’s barely adequate, a thin paper over the internal combustion cracks. The recycled straw fuel is convincing. I couldn’t tell any difference except a less pungent smell.
I leave the car and meet volcanologist Dave McGarvie who takes me for a walk on the fresh lava flows of Fagradalsfjall volcano. Even among everything I’ve already seen, it’s utterly, interplanetary alien. Smooth or finely rippled in places, in others like volcanic coral, light, sharp, fragile and hilariously awkward to scramble over. Tongues of lava jut up, gas hisses out of cracks, the sulphurous smell... “Primordial, isn’t it,” says Dave, “the lava’s about 20 metres deep here, it’ll take at least two years to cool down.”
It’s thought that a third of all the lava on the planet that’s spilled out in the last 500 years, has emerged in Iceland. It comes from beneath, where a solid core of iron 1,500 miles across, heated to 5,200˚C and pressurised to 3.6 million atmospheres, heats Earth from within. If it were possible to flick a switch and turn it off, the heat wouldn’t dissipate for 91 billion years. Now that’s a power source. Difficult to access for most of the planet, but not here, where raw, gnarled geology lives and breathes around you.
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