The Rolls-Royce Spectre EV will be positioned between the Cullinan and the Phantom.
It has been more than a century since Rolls-Royce co-founder Charles Rolls commented on the noiseless, odourless, vibration-free and clean nature of electric carriages. Now the time is finally right for Rolls-Royce to take a stab at the EV game for themselves. They announced last year that they would make the quietest luxury electric car on the market.
Today, they unveiled that car and it’s called the Rolls-Royce Spectre – the first step towards a completely electric portfolio by 2030.
The Rolls-Royce Spectre is a 4-seater coupé that engineered from the ground-up to be an electric vehicle. The company prepared their most exhausting testing programme ever, and will put it through more than 2.5 million kilometres of testing by the time the Spectre is officially launched in late 2023. Testing includes extreme conditions with temperatures ranging from -40 degrees to 55 degrees Celsius.
The Rolls-Royce Spectre is built on a major evolution of the Architecture of Luxury by combining fully-electric powertrain components and ‘Decentralised Intelligence’ into the package for the first time. The chassis integrated the battery into the structure of the vehicle and makes it 30% stiffer than any other Rolls-Royce vehicle.
The battery, wiring and climate control pipework has been sandwiched into the floor. What’s more, the battery, which weighs 700kg, also works as sound deadening material.
They’ve also evolved their Planar suspension system with new software and hardware. The Planar system can decouple the car’s anti roll bars to give each wheel complete independence for better comfort. The car has the ability to determine when a corner is imminent and will recouple the anti-roll bars and prepare the four-wheel steering system for activation.
Rolls-Royce have not finalised the performance figures, but preliminary data shows an electric range of 520km on the WLTP cycle with its 430kW/900Nm motor setup. 0-100km/h is anticipated to take 4.5 seconds which is impressive given the car is expected to weigh 3 tonnes!
