Rolls-Royce fights the habit of 120 years and launches its first electric car
It’s a widely held misconception that electric cars are a modern phenomenon, and the new Rolls-Royce Spectre happens to be an excellent subject with which to dispel this myth. At the beginning of the 20th century, just as fate was preparing the meeting of well-to-do autophile and car dealer Charles Rolls and mercurial engineer Henry Royce, EVs were very much in vogue. In 1899, the fastest car in the world was electric, central London was abuzz with electric carriages and in 1900 one-third of all new cars registered in the US were electric. One of Royce’s first briefs as car designer and co-proprietor of the newly formed Rolls-Royce Cars was to produce an urban combustion-engined vehicle that would be comparably as clean, quiet, smooth and easy to use as an electric one, without the charging and range problems that limited EVs to ‘town carriage’ use. The short-lived 1905 Rolls-Royce V8 Landaulet and ‘Legalimit’ (named for the length of its wheelbase) models resulted.It was a grounding in electrical engineering that gave Royce the perspective he needed, over the following decades, to make Rolls-Royces smoother, more reliable and more pleasant to drive – superior as luxury cars, in short – than their rivals. (The legendary 40/50 Silver Ghost had the world’s first ‘perfect balance’ straight-six engine.)Now, having perfected the alternative to EVs over more than a century – and with the world more ready for EVs than it was in 1904 – comes Rolls-Royce’s very first electric car. The industry’s most aristocratic electric car opponent has turned EV gamekeeper – and the oldest independent road test in existence is about to discover what kind of ultimate electric luxury car has been created.The range at a glanceModelsPowerFromGhost563bhp£278,055Cullinan563bhp£312,855Spectre577bhp£332,055Phantom563bhp£417,255There isn’t such a thing as a Spectre derivative range. Rolls-Royce would tell you that it declines to deal with its ‘uniquely commissioned’ models in such prosaic terms anyway.Even so, it’s interesting to see where the car slots in to Rolls’ wider line-up. Filling the space left by the Phantom coupé, it is priced above both the Ghost saloon and Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV (although both of those also come in higher-output Black Badge form, and both the Ghost and Phantom are offered as EWB stretches), with power to trump its range-mates.
