For anyone that still doubts the automotive industry's full commitment to electrification, today's announcement by bespoke luxury coachbuilder Rolls-Royce should mark the end of an era. The British firm, currently owned by BMW, now promises to deliver a fully electric vehicle named "Spectre" by the fourth quarter of 2023, and released a small set of teaser photos of the new two-door complete with aggressive camouflage largely hiding specific design details like the massive front grille that has graced Rolls-Royce's V12-powered icons for over a century.
Not The First Electric Rolls-Royce
While the Spectre will eventually become the first fully electrified Rolls-Royce to hit the market, it is not the first Rolls to employ electric power. Back in 2011, the company first teased an all-electric Phantom concept nicknamed 102EX, before following up with the 103E in 2016. Now, however, the transformation appears to be a full go, as news of the Spectre comes with a commitment to transition the firm's entire lineup to electric power by 2030.
Design Details Of An Electric Rolls-Royce
Built on Rolls-Royce's proprietary spaceframe platform, the Spectre shares the same one that underpins both the Cullinan and Ghost—both of which employ traditional internal-combustion engines. If the Cullinan represented the highest-end luxury market's reluctant capitulation to the SUV as a major market force, the forthcoming Spectre seems like a much more timely addition to luxury EV offerings, even if startups such as Tesla and Lucid planned their fanciest, most expensive models to hit the roads first. No mention of battery size or estimated range accompanied the Spectre's official announcement.
Extensive Testing Planned Before The Release
Of course, reliability concerns surround the electric car industry as a whole, so Rolls-Royce plans to put the Spectre through the most demanding testing the company has ever undertaken. All over the globe, test cars will drive over 1.5 million miles in harsh conditions (which Rolls snarkily points out is more than 400 years of average use for one of their vehicles).
The name Spectre hearkens to the Ghost and Phantom names, without a doubt, and also to the silent drive that electric vehicles offer—the overlap with a certain James Bond film seems almost like a happy coincidence.
"Now is the time to change the course of the future of luxury," Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said in a statement. "We embark on this bold new future with a huge advantage. Electric drive is uniquely and perfectly suited to Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, more so than any other automotive brand. It is silent, refined and creates torque almost instantly, going on to generate tremendous power. This is what we at Rolls-Royce call ‘waftability’."
Sources: rolls-roycemotorcars.com and lucidmotors.com.