Iconic luxury car maker, Rolls-Royce enters electric age with unveiling of Spectre model

Rolls-Royce, the iconic luxury car maker, has accelerated into the electric age with the unveiling of the first non-petrol car in the company’s 120-year history.

The first models of the all-electric Spectre, which has been years in the design, planning and testing stages, will be delivered to well-heeled customers toward the end of next year. The car will have a price tag in the $350,000 range, but customization and special features could double the cost.

Unveiling the car at the Rolls-Royce headquarters in Goodwood, UK, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, the chief executive officer, said: “Spectre is not only an historic moment for Rolls-Royce, but also an historic moment for electrification — with Spectre, the marque confirms that the technology has reached a standard that can contain the Rolls-Royce experience.”

Müller-Ötvös reaffirmed the company’s commitment to go fully electric by 2030 across all its car models, while continuing to sell petrol-fueled cars in the immediate future.

The move to electric vehicles, or EV, by Rolls-Royce will add to the competition by global car manufacturers to ditch the petrol-fueled internal combustion engine under pressure from environmental regulators.

Tesla, until now the market leader in EV, is facing challenges from other manufacturers such as Lucid Motors, backed by Saudi Arabia, as well as traditional car makers which have all launched EV



models in recent years.

Since 1997, Rolls-Royce has been owned by BMW of Germany, which has itself announced big plans to go electric. But the move by the iconic luxury car maker — whose products are in demand by royalty, presidents and celebrities — is the most high-profile commitment yet to the age of electric motoring.

The German-designed battery will provide sufficient power to speed the 3,000-kilogram car from standing to 100 kilometers per hour in an estimated 4.5 seconds.

Final specifications and performance figures are still being calculated as the Spectre goes through the last stages of an exhaustive testing process that has seen the car cover 2.5 million kilometers of advanced test tracks, and real driving conditions ranging from the Arctic tundra to the deserts of southern Africa, as well as the more sedate roads of the French Riviera.

The car is a refinement of the Phantom Coupe — although it was designed and engineered from the beginning as an electric vehicle — with two doors and four seats and is described as the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce ever built.