Rolls Royce Electric Car: Rolls-Royce has completed the first step toward fulfilling its promise to sell only electric vehicles by 2030. On Oct. 18 it unveiled the All-Electric Spectre at company headquarters in Goodwood, England.
“This is not a kind of one-hit wonder and then we go back to the 12-cylinder, that’s not the idea,” says Torsten Müller-Ötvös, chief executive officer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd. “The idea is we go electric by the end of 2030, step by step by step by step. For this reason, [Spectre] is very expensive to develop. It’s a big investment.”
Rolls-Royce Spectre 2023
Rolls-Royce will start selling its first fully electric vehicle next year, as the ultra-luxury carmaker commits to ditching combustion engines by 2030 to comply with regulations and changing customer demand.
Rolls Royce Electric Car Price
The 116-year-old company based in West Sussex said the first Spectre electric cars, priced between £250,000 and £500,000, would be delivered to customers at the end of next year.
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“Our products aren’t seen as a means of transportation — they need to please,” said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, chief executive of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, which last year sold just over 5,500 vehicles.
“Our clients say ‘I want to drive emissions-free in urban city centres’ — that’s emotionally very different,” he added, explaining that Rolls-Royce now had the youngest customers out of its owner BMW’s brands, including the Mini.
Sales of Rolls-Royce cars such as the Phantom, Cullinan and Ghost models jumped by almost half last year, which Müller-Ötvös attributed to the company’s wealthy clients, who own an average of seven cars on the grounds that “life can be short”.
The company was largely able to avoid the supply chain squeeze of semiconductors that hit the auto industry, partly because it makes relatively few vehicles and therefore needs fewer chips.
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Müller-Ötvös said Rolls-Royce had an advantage in the electric space compared with rival luxury sports car brands, which are synonymous with their revving engines. “Sports cars need to crack the sound, while for us, being without sound is part of the brand,” he said.
The European parliament has voted to, in effect, ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars in its region from 2035, a target challenged by Germany. The UK has said it will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, with some new hybrid models allowed to be sold until 2035.
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Oliver Zipse, chief executive of BMW, said he would not commit to one single “drive trend” in the future, adding that the company was expecting to launch a hydrogen car in roughly five years.
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Access to charging infrastructure, which Zipse said was expanding too slowly, particularly in the UK, would remain a hindrance to the full-scale adoption of fully electric cars.
But, speaking at the unveiling of Rolls-Royce’s new Spectre model, he said that wealthy drivers were unlikely to be reliant on public charging points.
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Asked whether he would consider following in the footsteps of Volkswagen, which has just listed part of its luxury brand Porsche to help pay for its electric transition, Zipse said: “Where is the corresponding problem? Access to capital is no problem [for us] — I can already fund the electrification.”
The announcement gives Rolls-Royce a strong first statement among the ultra-luxury set. In January, Bentley announced it would spend $3.4 billion to produce five all-electric vehicles beginning in 2025 and switch to an entirely electric portfolio by 2030. With the Spectre, Rolls-Royce beats its archrival in bringing the first all-electric ultra-luxury model to market.
Rolls-Royce Spectre Power, Top Speed and Tork
Similar in look and size to the two-door Rolls-Royce Wraith but larger, and built on the same all-aluminum architecture that underpins the flagship Phantom sedan and midsize Ghost sedan, the Spectre produces 577 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. It has a zero-to-60 mph sprint time of 4.4 seconds and a top speed of 155 mph, roughly equal to that of the Ghost but far slower than the roughly three seconds claimed by the faster—and far less luxurious—variants of the Porsche Taycan or Tesla Model S.
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Rolls-Royce Spectre Range
Total driving range under electric power is 260 miles, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates; Spectre will be ale to charge from 10-80% full in 34 minutes. Müller-Ötvös noted that the vast majority of Rolls-Royce owners will never use a public charging station.
“Most of our clients have an electric car in the garage,” he says. “On average, they have seven cars, and many have charging at home. They have charging in their offices.”
Rolls-Royce Spectre Exterior
The two-door coupe uses a highly sensitive “planar” suspension system that can decouple the car’s anti-roll bars to allow each wheel to act independently, preventing the rocking motion that occurs when one side of a vehicle hits an undulation in the road. This also reduces high-frequency sounds caused by poor road-surface quality and helps preserve the marque’s reputation for producing the quietest, smoothest vehicles on the market. All told, more than 700 kilograms’ (1,543 pounds’) worth of sound-deadening equipment helps push the car’s total weight to 6,559 pounds.
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Set on 23-inch wheels and with a fastback body style, the Spectre is longer and heavier than the Wraith and harkens back to the Phantom coupe that Rolls-Royce produced from 2008 to 2016. (It doesn’t have a trunk in the front, as do many lesser EVs such as those from Lucid and Tesla. The space under the hood is occupied by battery-electric systems and fluid containers for the windshield wipers.)
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It has the widest grille ever bestowed on a Rolls-Royce, illuminated with 22 LEDs lighting up the sandblasted rear side of each of its vanes. A redesigned Spirit of Ecstasy figurehead on the hood comes crouched, yoga-like, lower than its predecessor, with her head tilted higher and wings flattened into a more active pose. The cabin comes with doors newly illuminated by 5,876 tiny light points made to resemble the starry sky—a continuation of the signature effect Rolls-Royce has long produced on its vehicles’ ceilings.
Rolls-Royce Spectre Interior
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All-new front seats are inspired by British tailoring; they offer lapel sections that can be rendered in contrasting or matching colors to the main base. In the debut model, a chartreuse-and-black two-tone paint job follows the top hood of the car over the roofline to the rear trunk, completing the new coupe’s bolder look. The dual-color effect is optional among more than 44,000 available color combinations—but recommended by Rolls-Royce brass, since it accentuates the seamless curves that run the length of the vehicle.
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“In my view, every Rolls-Royce should be two-tone,” says design director Anders Warming, noting that Rolls-Royce chose to premiere its first EV in a coupe body style—as opposed to a sedan or SUV—as an emotion-based pick “just to charge us up.”
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Long Awaited Rolls Royce Spectre Electric
The Spectre takes its name from the deep recesses of Rolls-Royce history. In 1910 the brand built a demonstration car called the Silver Spectre. By 1936 it had made nine experimental cars code-named Spectre before the model entered production under the official name of Phantom III. This is the first time the moniker has been given to a series production Rolls-Royce.
It’s been a long time coming. Rolls-Royce had for years approached the electric-vehicle proposition with some trepidation, even though co-founder Charles Rolls predicted in 1900 that the new motorized carriages of the day would eventually run under electric power, according to company records. Despite some early testing of electric prototypes in 2011 and 2016, Müller-Ötvös said as recently as 2019 that he wanted to keep the powerful V-12 combustion engine responsible for Rolls-Royce’s world-famous quiet, smooth coaches for “as long as possible.”
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But parent group BMW AG has left no doubt where all of its brands must go. Last year the company introduced its first-ever all-electric iX SUV and all-electric i4 sedan. The manufacturer has reported that its battery cell orders have exceeded $24 billion to keep pace with surging demand for electric cars. During the first half of 2021, EVs contributed 11% of deliveries across BMW Group. In a roundtable discussion on Oct. 17, BMW AG Chairman Oliver Zipse said he anticipated that by 2030, 50% of all vehicles sold across the group would be electric.
Rolls-Royce Spectre Price
Pricing for the Spectre will range between the $350,000 of the Cullinan SUV and $460,000 of the Phantom sedan, according to a spokesperson. Müller-Ötvös says production volumes will fall behind those of the Cullinan and Ghost but exceed the Phantom’s. More than 300 clients have already been specially invited to see the car, with overwhelmingly positive results, he says.
Rolls-Royce Spectre Delivery
“The order intake so far is very, very delightful—and very encouraging,” Müller-Ötvös says.
Deliveries begin in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Battery-powered Spectre will be priced between £250,000 and £500,000
Rolls-Royce Electric Car Name
Rolls-Royce first electric car name is Spectre