By Jove, the Spectre becomes the first electric Rolls-Royce

By Jove, an electric Rolls-Royce!

Joining an automotive industry fast-tracking into an electric-car (EV) future, the luxury British brand has taken the wraps off its first battery-powered car, the Spectre. It is silent, powerful and demonstrates how perfectly Rolls-Royce is suited to electrification, says Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.

“It is only now that electric drive technology is advanced enough to fulfil the Rolls-Royce experience,” he says.

The Spectre is the first step in Rolls-Royce’s transition to an exclusively electric product line by 2030. 

The order books are open for the ultra-luxury electric super coupé, as the company terms it, and it will reach its first customers in the fourth quarter of 2023. Final technical details will be communicated closer to the market launch, but preliminary data predicts a range of 520km, with outputs of 430kW and 900Nm for a 0-100km/h in 4.5 seconds.

At 5,453mm the Spectre is about the same size as the Rolls-Royce Ghost and significantly smaller than the marque’s flagship sedan, the 5,982mm Phantom. 

The design takes inspiration from yachts, haute couture and modernist sculpture, among other things, says Rolls-Royce. The Spectre is unmistakably a Rolls-Royce, with its domineering Pantheon grille — the largest yet used on one of the marque’s cars — but the newcomer makes a nod to modernity with ultra-slim headlights. 

The vanes of the Pantheon grille are smoothed and flush-fitted to help guide the air around the car’s front, and a drag coefficient of 0.25cd makes the Spectre the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce yet. Even the Spirit of Ecstasy figurine was aero-tuned in a wind tunnel to ensure the big car slips more silently through the airstream.

To heighten the car’s presence at night, the grille is softly illuminated with 22 LEDs. The dramatic fastback roof line ends in a rear with jewel-like vertical tail lamps.

Weighing just under three tonnes, the aluminium-bodied car is 30% stiffer than any previous Rolls-Royce.

Riding on 23-inch tyres, the Spectre promises to deliver Rolls-Royce’s hallmark “magic carpet ride” with the help of Planar suspension that can decouple the car’s anti-roll bars, allowing each wheel to act independently and preventing the rocking motion that occurs when one side of the vehicle rides over a road undulation. It also reduces high-frequency ride imperfections caused by shortcomings in road surface quality.

In corners the Planar system stiffens the dampers, while four-wheel steering ensures high-speed cruising stability and effectively shortens the wheelbase for low-speed agility.

Step inside the luxurious sound-deadened interior and you’ll see something offered for the first time on a production Rolls-Royce: starlight doors. Like the starlight ceiling that has been around for a while, these incorporate thousands of softly illuminated LED “stars”.  

The ethereal night-time theme continues with an illuminated fascia, with the Spectre nameplate surrounded by a cluster of more than 5,500 stars, which is invisible when the car is not in operation.

The two-door coupé is equipped with a “digital architecture of luxury” named Spirit, which manages the car’s functions and is integrated into the marque’s Whispers smartphone app, allowing clients to interact with their car remotely.

As with all Rolls-Royce cars, the Spectre’s interior suite offers clients a vast range of bespoke possibilities. The all-new front seat design has been inspired by British tailoring, with lapel sections that can be rendered in contrasting colours.

Pricing will be between the Cullinan and Phantom — about £300,000  (R6.1m).