Rolls-Royce’s first electric car is a stunning high-performance super-luxury coupe and arguably the world’s best EV – for now
- How much does the Rolls-Royce Spectre cost?
- What equipment comes with the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
- How safe is the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
- What technology does the Rolls-Royce Spectre feature?
- What powers the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
- How far can the Rolls-Royce Spectre go on a charge?
- What is the Rolls-Royce Spectre like to drive?
- What is the Rolls-Royce Spectre like inside?
- Should I buy a Rolls-Royce Spectre?
Rolls-Royce is seeking to reinvent itself as the ultimate premium EV brand – every model in its line-up will be fully electric by 2030 – and the journey starts with its first electric car, the Rolls-Royce Spectre. So, can an EV provide the kind of thrusting, continent-crushing effortless power, silent running and sense of automotive haute couture the brand is famous for? And can an electric powertrain satisfy customers used to whopping great V12 engines? In a word, yes.
How much does the Rolls-Royce Spectre cost?
The 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre is priced at $770,000 plus on-road costs, though once personalisation options are added, most buyers will pay around $1 million for one.
The list price is just below the expected $800K mark, but still makes the Spectre one of the most expensive new cars in the Australian marketplace.
With the Rolls-Royce Wraith and Dawn coupe and convertible discontinued in Australia last year, the electric super-luxury Spectre coupe marks a return of a two-door model to the line-up.
The EV also slots in between the previous price points for Black Badge versions of the (V12-powered) Wraith and Dawn, set at $735,000 and $802,000 plus ORCs respectively.
What equipment comes with the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
The 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre comes in just one specification, which includes lashings of leather, umbrellas in each giant coach door, buttons to automatically open and shut those doors (they’re very heavy, you know), wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a head-up display and very large cup holders.
You can, of course, spend as much as you like personalising your Spectre, literally hundreds of thousands, in fact.
The spectacular Skylight Roofliner can be designed to show the night sky on the day you were born, and in the Spectre you can also choose to have this effect run down the inside of the doors, leaving you with stars on your thighs at night.
The Spectre’s battery is covered by a 10-year warranty, while the entire car gets a four-year warranty (not even seven, like a Kia? I’m shocked, I tell you), which is for unlimited kilometres.
An extended service and warranty package is “TBC” for this model, the company says.
Buyers also get 24/7 roadside assistance, and if the battery horribly goes flat the Spectre will be picked up and transferred to the nearest charging station.
Another interesting bonus is a “regional flying doctor”, who is on standby 24/7 for “extreme cases” if a Spectre “fails to proceed” (this is a Rolls euphemism for “breaking down”).
How safe is the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
The truly vast 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre makes do with just… four airbags. Yes, four.
But the good news is Rolls tells us that it “does not need more”. Perhaps because you’ve got such a super-strong all-aluminium space-frame around you, which it calls the Architecture of Luxury.
You also get lane change assist, active cruise control, active lane centring, lane departure with active steer, collision warning with active braking and something called a Reversing Assistant, which is designed to help with long reversing manoeuvres – along your massive driveway, for example.
Basically, the car can remember the way you’ve come in and drive it for you in reverse, for up to 200m.
The Spectre has not been crash-tested by ANCAP or affiliate safety authorities like Euro NCAP – and on cost grounds alone it’s not ever expected to be, just like any other Rolls-Royce model.
What technology does the Rolls-Royce Spectre feature?
The 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre is fitted with SPIRIT, a new digital architecture that connects the owner with their car and is integrated into the marque’s Whispers app (which can help you book holidays, organise a wedding, possibly fly into space), allowing owners to interact with their car remotely.
You can even set the colour of your digital dash read-out.
There are no big screens, as you find in other EVs, however, with Rolls claiming it didn’t want “any of that funky stuff” in its cars.
The dash in front of the passenger does offer a new Illuminated Fascia, which took two years and more than 10,000 collective hours to develop. It incorporates the Spectre nameplate surrounded by a cluster of more than 5500 stars.
Rolls-Royce really likes stars. The optional Starlight Doors also include 4796 “softly illuminated stars”. And they do look fabulous at night.
What powers the Rolls-Royce Spectre?
It takes quite a lot of batteries to help move a car like this at appropriate pace, as you can imagine, and the battery pack in the 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre is made up of 804 cells, for a total weight of 700kg and a net capacity of 102kWh.
That power is fed into two separately excited synchronous motors, one on each axle. The front one makes 190kW and 365Nm and the rear a hefty 360kW and 710Nm.
Combined figures are 430kW and 900Nm.
How far can the Rolls-Royce Spectre go on a charge?
The official WLTP figure for the 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre says it will go 520km, but the people at Rolls scoff heartily at this and suggest it will do far more, possibly even 600km off a charge.
The claimed efficiency is 21.5kWh per 100km.
On a 195kW DC fast-charger, you can get the Spectre from 10-80 per cent in 34 minutes, and Rolls says such a charger will add 100km of range in around nine minutes.
Use a more typical 11kWh AC charger and it will take you 10 hours and 45 minutes to go from 0-90 per cent of charge.
What is the Rolls-Royce Spectre like to drive?
The 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre has a regenerative braking function that the driver can configure by pushing a button marked ‘B’ on the column shifter.
By activating ‘Brake Mode’, regenerative braking is increased, enabling so-called single-pedal driving and even allowing the car to come to a complete stop if desired. The default setting on starting is low regeneration, mimicking the automatic driving style of an traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) Rolls-Royce.
Goodness me but it’s lovely. Perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay the people behind the Spectre, however, is that they’ve created an electric vehicle that feels more like the combustion-engined cars that preceded it than anyone else has managed to create.
That’s because a traditional Rolls-Royce actually felt and behaved like an EV anyway – sensationally quiet with seamless, endless acceleration of the torque-tastic variety from zero rpm and no need to worry about things like gears or shift paddles or Sport and Comfort modes.
A Rolls has always been a machine of elegant simplicity – select Drive, plant foot, relax.
It’s possible that the Spectre accelerates even more rapidly, and rabidly, than a V12 Rolls of old, but it honestly doesn’t feel any different.
An engineer told us that they made it even faster during development – when it was capable of hitting 100km/h in 3.9 seconds – “but if you did it two or three times, it made you feel physically ill”.
So they toned it down, just a little, and the Spectre now surges to 100km/h in 4.5 seconds, which still feels like a momentous occasion, mainly because the damn thing is so big – roughly the size of the English cottage a Rolls owner’s gardener lives in – and weighs almost three tonnes (2975kg).
The acceleration, then, is what you would expect, both from an EV with 700kg of batteries, and a Rolls, but what is surprising is how enjoyable it is to drive around corners.
The steering, though a thin tiller, is super-light, because a Rolls-Royce must be “effortless” to drive, but the accuracy with which it allows you to place all that car is impressive.
Body roll and pitch are as non-existent as the bumps and corrugations seem to be as the Spectre ‘wafts’ over them (“waftiness” is another brand attribute for Rolls-Royce, which really can tune a suspension system). The ride on its massive 23-inch wheels is simply superlative.
The Spectre delivers, then, in every possible way, and it’s no surprise to hear that the company has been overwhelmed with orders, with 40 per cent of them from customers new to the brand.
What is the Rolls-Royce Spectre like inside?
Plush, posh perfection, that’s what it’s like to be inside the 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre, as your feet disappear into the lush lambswool carpet and you’re enveloped in scents of wood, leather and luxury.
The bespoke stereo system (they spend eight hours tuning the interior of each individual car, because the amount of leather etc does vary depending on personalisation) is truly wondrous and everything feels delectable to the touch.
Overall, it’s an overwhelming sensory overload of spoiling, but what stays with you most is just how incredibly quiet it is.
Apparently at one point the engineers were relishing the chance for super silence provided by an EV so much that they produced a test mule that was so quiet it freaked people out, and they had to let some natural noises back in.
Should I buy a Rolls-Royce Spectre?
Look, if you can afford to buy the 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre, why wouldn’t you? I mean, with that kind of cash you’ve got other vehicles – or jets or helicopters – to get you where you need to go if it’s further than 250km in each direction, so range is not an issue.
And you’ve definitely got room in your garage(s) for a charger, so an EV is no problem. And you’ll have the very best electric vehicle the world has so far seen, and arguably the best-looking one as well, so that’s nice.
But really, if you’re the kind of person who wants a Rolls-Royce, you want one of these. In fact, you need one. Just do it.
2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre at a glance:
Price: $770,000 (plus on-road costs)
Available: September 2023
Powertrain: Two separately excited synchronous motors
Output: 430kW/900Nm
Transmission: Single-speed reduction gear
Battery: 102kWh lithium-ion
Range: 520km (WLTP)
Energy consumption: 21.5kWh/100km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Not tested
Keyword: Rolls-Royce Spectre 2023 Review – International