All-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre revealed

The stunning new battery-powered Rolls-Royce Spectre has emerged in light camouflage ahead of first customer deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The first electric car from the hallowed luxury marque also paves the way for full electrification of the company’s entire model range, which is now confirmed to make the transition from combustion engines to electric motors by 2030.

This wholesale move to EVs is an expected, but still revolutionary, development from the BMW-owned British brand, coming just two years after Rolls-Royce chief executive Torsten Müller-Ötvös told Australian journalists in Melbourne that while “electric fits extremely well to the brand”, he planned to hold on to its hallmark V12 combustion engine for “as long as possible”.

“Our customers love the 12-cylinder. It’s a beautiful masterpiece, it’s like what I would call a very complicated wristwatch, and the more complications there are in a watch, the more precious they are,” he said at the time.

“And that’s what people love when they see the engine and what kind of effort goes into how we do it and how silky-smooth it is and so on.

“So for that reason, I would love to continue with it for as long as possible whilst, of course, preparing already early for electrification because we will also see one day where certain city centres will shut down and you are not any longer allowed to go into city centres with the combustion engine.”

The shift to electrification has escalated over the past two years and Ötvös today confirmed that by 2030 “Rolls-Royce will no longer be in the business of creating or selling any internal combustion engine motor cars” – the same timeframe that arch-rival Bentley has already set to go all-EV.

“But electrification, obviously, is the beginning of a new legacy of our brand, for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. And in that spirit, we have decided on a completely new name for this car … Spectre,” he said.

Just as Bentley’s first EV will be based on the radical EXP 100 GT concept, Rolls has taken a similar path with a two-door coupe that cuts a striking pose with its long bonnet, low roof and muscular haunches.

Previewed by the wilder 103EX concept five years ago, Spectre clearly symbolises a shift into a modern era that’s designed to appeal to a younger clientele.

And the car you see here is, according to Ötvös, “not a prototype”.

“I would call it the real thing. It will be tested in plain sight,” he said, adding that the on-road engineering development program would now officially get underway and cover 2.5 million kilometres – “a simulation of 400 years of use”.

Ötvös also said he was confident Spectre would “elevate the global all-electric car revolution” and that it will be “the first and finest super-luxury product of its type”.

Technical details are being kept under wraps, with Rolls-Royce saying only that the Spectre will be based on a version of the space-frame architecture that already underpins its combustion-engined models.

“In 2016, we debuted Phantom, and with it the marque’s proprietary aluminium architecture: a scalable and flexible spaceframe that would underpin all forthcoming Rolls-Royce motor cars,” said Ötvös.

“This unique technology – developed for Rolls-Royce by Rolls-Royce and reserved for the marque’s exclusive use – was created to form the foundation of not just different internal combustion engine models, as it now does with Cullinan and Ghost, but models with completely different powertrains.

“To this end, our forthcoming electric car benefits from the Rolls-Royce architecture and therefore the extraordinary experience of a Rolls-Royce on the road. Free of any group platform sharing strategy, we were able to integrate our plans for an electric powertrain into the architecture’s initial design and ensure that this extraordinary new product meets the extremely high expectations of our clients.”

There are no powertrain or battery pack density specifics available yet, leaving us to speculate that to justify its move into the EV era Rolls-Royce will ensure the Spectre sets new benchmarks.

The car-maker’s most recent EV concept, the 2016 Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 (codenamed 103EX), went without powertrain details, while its first signal towards electrification dates back to the 2011 Phantom Experimental Electric (codenamed 102EX).

The latter swapped out the limo’s 6.75-litre V12 petrol engine for twin electric motors mounted on the rear subframe that produced 290kW and 800Nm of torque – compared to 338kW/720Nm for the V12-powered Phantom of the time.

But as we’ve seen from concepts from BMW and Mercedes-Benz (Maybach), expect a far higher output with presumably a quad-motor layout that develops at least 600kW combined and provides a driving range of more than 700km via a powerful circa-120kWh lithium-ion battery pack.

The Spectre’s powertrain is sure to be BMW-derived, but, as Ötvös has told us in the past, will be suitably modified to ensure it’s befitting of the Rolls-Royce brand.