The new Rolls-Royce coupe model: the Spectre. It’s priced and positioned between the Cullinan SUV and the Phantom flagship in the Rolls-Royce hierarchy (so expect to pay upwards of £330,000 after tax), but this is much more than a niche-filler – it’s a sign of things to come for the double-R brand.
By the end of the decade, every single Rolls-Royce will be fully electric. The Spectre is the first battery-powered model to carry the Spirit of Ecstasy on the prow of its bonnet.
It looks enormous…
The Spectre is a truly immense coupe. That glinting grille is lower and wider than a Phantom’s Parthenon-esque façade and the corners of its bonnet taper gently downwards instead of standing as upright as a bearskin-topped guardsman, but these nods to slippery aerodynamics don’t diminish the gravitational presence this mighty two-door generates.
What are the specs?
Sitting on a Cullinan-related aluminium platform that’s been adapted to fit a 102kWh battery between the sills (making it 30 per cent stiffer as a result) the Spectre is powered by twin motors. The rearward one develops 255bhp, and the front motor adds 480bhp.
Rolls claims the total power developed is equivalent to 576bhp, with 664lb ft of torque at your disposal. Enough to haul three tonnes (well, 2,890kg if you’re counting) of leather, wood and lithium-ion from 0-60mph in 4.4 seconds. The top speed is ‘sufficient’, you’d imagine, at 155mph.
But it’s an EV, so what about all that nasty range anxiety?
Not a problem. And that’s not because the Spectre is the world’s longest range EV: it isn’t. Not even close. The official claim is 329 miles (530km), and it’ll charge from 10-80 per cent in 34 minutes so long as you have access to Rolls’ recommended 195kW charger. Don’t expect to see many Spectres queueing for the Instavolts at Peterborough Gateway Services, just off the A1 south of Grantham.
No, the reason range is immaterial to the Spectre and its anxiety-free owners is simple. When the company consulted its most faithful clients while drawing up plans for an EV, the response ran something like “ooh, I should think 300 miles is plenty. If I needed to go further than that in a day, I’d take a helicopter. Or my jet.”
So is this the greenest Rolls-Royce ever?
Don’t mistake the Spectre as being an ‘eco-Rolls’. It isn’t swathed in vegan pleather or sustainably-sourced hemp. This is a huge monument to conspicuous consumption and you could argue it’s actually rather vulgar. Sure, the cells in the battery are produced using ‘green electricity’, says Rolls, and there’s a commitment to only use responsibly-sourced rare earth metals in the batteries, but compared to the likes of a Polestar 2 for example, this isn’t a car which you’ll buy because it’s got on eye on lifetime CO2 emissions.
You’ll buy it because it’s a Rolls-Royce, first and foremost. You’ll buy it because it may very well be the finest motor car in the world.
What's the verdict?
“The first ever electric Rolls is a lesson to the entire car world in how to execute the ultimate luxury car”
The Spectre ruddy well ought to be nigh-on perfect for such titanic money. And yet we suspected that we’d miss being dimly aware of twelve perfectly balanced cylinders whirring away in the middle-distance. Or that we’d struggle to see why you wouldn’t save a few hundred grand and just buy a BMW i7. Perhaps an e-Roller would be sterilised, or an anachronism.
But if anything, they’ve done the impossible here. Electric has enriched the Rolls-Royce. It’s still a galloping, ocean-going, 24-carat indulgence, but with a tasteful specification it’s just about possible to swerve absolute vulgarity.
It’s rich in the decadence of the so-called glory days but gratifyingly simple to operate for a product of 2023. While other manufacturers wrestle with the conundrum of transposing their family heirloom values into an electric future, the age of electric propulsion will suit Rolls-Royce very well indeed.
Mercedes-Benz EQS
Rolls-Royce Phantom
Bentley Flying Spur
£160,200 – £241,480
Continue reading: Driving
Driving
What is it like to drive?
To set off, you tug a quaint stalk behind the steering wheel. You don’t go anywhere, but the windscreen gets doused in a localised downpour. Whoops. Turns out if you don’t frequent Rollers it’s easy to confuse the transmission lever with the windscreen wiper stalk. They’re centimetres apart.
Find the correct one and there are only two settings: drive or reverse. No Sport mode. No regen adjustment paddles adorn the back of the extra-large steering wheel. If you want one-pedal driving with strong regen, try the ‘B’ button on the stalk. The one for the drive, not the wipers.
Presumably the sort of people who drive Rollers know that already…
Once underway, the first few miles in a Spectre are an exercise in calibrating your brain to accept something completely alien. The inherent noises, vibrations and imperfections you associate with driving are absent. Your eyes recognise the scenery being drawn past the pillarless windows.
Your muscle memory knows that a steering wheel ahead and pedals underfoot mean you’re in a car. But nothing about life inside reconciles with what you’re used to as ‘driving’. It’s more like boating on a millpond, or turbulence-free low-level flight. The Spectre glides along in reverent, curated silence. It’s uncanny.
What tech has RR used to achieve this?
There’s nothing digital about it – none of the Ghost’s active noise cancellation here. In fact, Rolls-Royce has sought to ‘filter’ some ambient noise into the cabin because the soundproofed Spectre is so inherently quiet, the prototypes made test drivers feel disorientated. Unnerved. The peace is immediately spellbinding.
EVs are usually quiet, but this is sensory deprivation. You know it’s merely basic physics – the 700kg battery acts as a sound blanket and there’s noise-retarding foam inside the tyres – but the refinement is so enchanting that pointing out the method is like spoiling a sleight of hand trick. Just enjoy the magic.
Only above 70 miles per hour does wind rustle attacking the blocky mirrors expose the fact the Spectre doesn’t travel in its own private vacuum.
So it’s quiet, but is it properly comfy?
But as the old saying doesn’t go, there’s no point in being hush if you’re not also plush.
For a car wearing such gargantuan, Brunelian wheels, the Spectre rides gorgeously: stunningly compliant yet remarkably controlled. The engineers took the system they’d perfected for the Ghost and threw away the upper wishbones, deemed unnecessary because the Spectre’s battery-backboned chassis is record breakingly stiff.
Only at very low speeds do the realities of such a heavy wheel meeting a poor, innocent pothole make themselves felt. When you’re barrelling along in a straight line propelled by a splendid 664lb ft of all-wheel drive torque, the anti-roll bars decouple themselves so one side of the car isn’t upset by something the opposite flank is dealing with. Handy, when you’re taking up a lane and a half’s-worth of space.
It’s terribly clever, but all the more gratifying because anyone aboard is completely unaware of the mathematical clash of titans occurring below decks. Again, no modes. No option to lower this or adjust that. Rolls-Royce fundamentally understands something that so few other carmakers seem to realise – the greatest luxury is not ‘more choice’. It’s having tasks taken off your plate. Delegated out of sight to free your time and your mind.
Feed in the oily-slick steering and the anti-roll bars re-engage to stop the car keeling over. Finish the corner and the car surges forward with great speed but no EV-esque ‘thwack’ in the back. It’s all very linear and composed. The brakes are beautifully judged to meter out power harvesting without a hint of judder, though you’ve got to bear in mind that with three tonnes to manage, braking distances have to be considered…
Previous: Overview
Continue reading: Interior
Interior
What is it like on the inside?
Rolls-Royce has made a very deliberate decision in here not to lavish its first EV with a futuristic interior. Yes, the doors are autonomous, there’s an attentive voice assistant and for the first time in a Roller the instrument dials are entrusted to a screen instead of physical clockfaces. But – thank gawd – there’s no wall-to-wall ultrascreen.
A Spectre driver doesn’t do anything so vulgar as strain a sinew to close their own door. Simply squeeze the brake pedal and it swings silently to an exacting soft-close as if pushed by an invisible butler. A switch on the centre console allows you to shut the passenger’s door simultaneously.
From your imperious throne, the cascading bonnet is a problem – only the fabric billowing behind Eleanor Thornton balanced on the nose hints where your bodywork ends. Very much a car that depends on its surround-view cameras and sensors, this.
The infotainment display – a tastefully reskinned and simplified version of the latest BMW iDrive – is indeed a touchscreen, but this is minimalism done properly. A volume knob. Swivelling discs for interior temperature. Organ-stop vents. Buttons to heat, cool and massage your backside. A button to start proceeding, indeed.
Praise be! Same story for the driver’s controls?
It’s a mixture of old and new school. The starter button itself, subtly located next to delightfully tactile switches for the lights and display brightness, curiously still reads ‘ENGINE’. Pushing it conjures a harp-string flourish and wakes up the screens.
And are they as tasteful as the dashboard?
Yes, this isn’t pixel overload. Ahead there’s the delightfully understated ‘power reserve dial’, which now reads beyond 100 per cent to account for the Spectre’s regenerative braking. There’s a speedometer with no numbers on the face (just a big numerical readout below the needle) and a range meter.
Are there flaws?
Yes. Some of the button management is haphazard: the seat heater and cooler is controlled from the main console but the massage setting is incongruously on the door. The clickwheel hides half of the menu buttons. No complaints about the materials or build quality, though. You can now supplement the ‘starlight’ headliner by encrusting sparkling pinpricks of light into the doors as well.
It’s worth noting said doors are so long and heavy that if you park on a slope, their whispering mechanisms aren’t strong enough to overcome their weight plus gravity, so keep a real-life butler handy just in case.
So, is it practical? It is massive after all…
This is undoubtedly a Rolls to drive yourself, even though passengers are well catered for – it’s a generously spacious four-seater with surprisingly glassy rear quarters. Behind a newly streamlined flying lady, the vast bonnet doesn’t conceal a clever front boot or some sort of foldaway dinner set. Just a dressed cover for the one of the motors and control electronics, which could double as a medium-sized aircraft carrier.
The boot is narrower than you might expect but will swallow a couple of suitcases. Send the rest in your butler’s Range Rover. There’s a hidden stowage compartment under the floor that’ll fit the charging cable you’ll never use, because your staff will see to that for you.
Previous: Driving
Continue reading: Buying
Buying
What should I be paying?
So, the price. It’s £275,000 plus tax, and Rolls-Royce predicts most will be optioned and individualised beyond £400,000. Biggest markets will be the US and China, and demand is so strong that if you order a Spectre today (summer 2023) it won’t arrive until mid-2025.
Rolls-Royce doesn’t publish an ‘options list’. If you have to ask, and all that. But rest assured the bespoke hi-fi is spectacular, all of the alloy wheel options look superb, and two-tone paint is a tightrope of good/bad taste. You have been warned.
What about running costs?
You reckon many Spectre owners will be setting up an off-peak energy tariff to charge their Spectre overnight? A 7kW wallbox will fully charge the battery in around 15 hours, if you’re interested. Naturally, you’ll have to pay the higher tax rate in the UK given the Spectre costs over £40,000. Quite a lot more, in fact.
Plugging in at your mansion? That 102kWh battery will cost about £30 to fill from empty based on current UK tariffs. Expect that figure to double if you send your driver out to top up at a public rapid charger.
Real-world range is somewhere around 260-280 miles. The fullest charge we were able to test drive was 85 per cent, with 265 miles showing on the display. Efficiency settled at 2.4mi/kWh, which is better than we managed with a Mercedes EQC and Audi Q8 e-tron. That demonstrated that Rolls Royce’s aerodynamics aren’t just hogwash – it does appear to slip undisturbed through the air.
Rivals?
There simply aren’t any. There is no all-electric Bentley or Maybach to compete. The closest thing possible to an all-electric luxury car is the Mercedes EQS, but that feels like an A-class once you’ve been exposed to the Spectre’s all-round magnificence.
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