The Rolls-Royce Specter is a massive, ultra-tough EV Super Coupe

• “Spiritual successor” of St Phantom coupein a conservative style 2024 Rolls-Royce Specter EV breaks little ground in terms of styling, but as an EV it heralds major changes for the 116-year-old automaker.
• Its smooth dual-motor electric drivetrain is meant to complement Rolls-Royce’s traditional virtues of quietness and composure with a carefully engineered, intensely supportive electronic chassis that promises to deliver a “magic carpet ride.”
• There should be plenty of power, in the Rolls tradition: 577 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque, enough to propel the coupe to 60 mph in a claimed 4.4 seconds. The first cars will reach buyers at the end of 2023.

“The electric car is absolutely silent and clean. There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful if stationary charging stations can be arranged.”

So said Charles Stuart Rolls in 1900, six years before he and Henry Royce founded the Rolls Royce Motor Cars concern, which runs on gasoline. Rawls predicted a future that looks set to happen now, as the company that bears the two men’s famous names has just fired the first salvo in its mission to sell only electric vehicles by 2030.

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The virtues of an electric motor seem particularly suited to what the concern has claimed since its inception, but never will those outstanding qualities – instant torque and near-silent operation – be realized to a greater degree than here. While 102EXthe Phantom-based Rolls electric concept car unveiled to the press in 2012, the Specter, which goes into production late next year, incorporates a decade’s worth of new technology and investment, and it shows.

It’s Rawls, okay

However, to look at the Specter is to see the unmistakable look of a modern Rolls-Royce coupe. It would have been easy, perhaps easier, to make the first electric offering an SUV, Mihiyar Ayoubi, the company’s director of engineering, told us, but it wasn’t the expression of luxury the company was aiming for. At nearly 18 feet long and seven feet wide, the four-seat Specter fastback is an unashamedly opulent express that doesn’t bow to anyone. Riding on a 126-inch wheelbase, it tips the scales at 6,559 pounds unladen, and the Brobdingay has a turning circle of nearly 42 feet, even with standard four-wheel steering. Eco-efficiency may be the aim, and it’s claimed to be the most aerodynamic Roller yet, but there’s nothing particularly futuristic, scaled-down or less than as stiff as possible about the Spectre. Not that we expected otherwise.

Visually, its lower-than-traditional look is a beautifully illuminated Rolls Pantheon grille, like many of the new electric models, flanked by split headlamps for a new take on the old look. The firm’s widest grille ever, it reminds us that BMW, the industry’s staunchest champion of big front openings, writes checks to Rolls. Behind that record-breaking grille is not a box, but a proper engine bay to house the bulky hardware and software behind the highly sophisticated suspension, with dedicated controls for each of the 141,200 individual sender-receiver variables to help quickly anticipate and make the necessary damper setup adjustments and anti-roll bar to adapt to upcoming road conditions – for example, temporarily disabling the anti-roll bars for short periods of time to avoid unseemly interference with passenger comfort.

Achieving a silky ride is made even more challenging by the fact that the Specter’s variation on Rolls’ flexible aluminum space-frame chassis architecture, as seen in other models today, has 30 percent more torsional stiffness than ever before, which makes business sustainable and comfortable more daunting, if not impossible. A lower center of gravity – thanks to the placement of its capacious batteries low in the center of the car, with the motors moving between the front and rear axles – will aid cornering on flat corners. The batteries, while heavy, are noted to double with more than 1,500 pounds of additional sound insulation. Along with all the other tricks Rolls has learned about cabin quietness, engineers have had to work hard to recreate the interior sound, although there are no plans to artificially amplify the sound of the ersatz version of internal combustion yet.

Plenty of power — and 260 miles of range

In keeping with that overarching spirit of civility, Rolls chose not to engage in the senseless horsepower wars that have gripped many EV makers of late, settling for a power output not unlike one of today’s battlecruiser V-12s. While final EPA numbers haven’t been released, its twin 577-horsepower, 664-pound-feet of torque engines are expected to propel the big coupe to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, which is pretty quick in our book—”good enough.” u A delightfully vague earlier description of Rolls Royce — but not so fast as to risk passenger nausea and driver unconsciousness under hard acceleration. Significant regeneration when driving with one foot was thought to be off-brand and unlikely to be present, while a top speed is expected to be 155mph along with an estimated electric range of 260 miles. We’ll know more when we drive it next year.

Recent investment in the company’s environmentally friendly Goodwood plant in Sussex will allow the bodies, which are pressed in Germany and then shipped to England, to be assembled and finished on the same line as the firm’s other models, adding to flexibility. Rolls’ extensive and ever-growing list of options and special upgrades includes new Starlight doors with 4,796 “stars” that subtly illuminate the doors and rear side panels, just as the popular Starlight headliner option (pictured above) already does.

How much?

Rolls-Royce predicts the Specter’s base price will be somewhere in between Cullinan ($351,250) and Phantom ($460,000); Around $400,000 might be a good idea.

With a claimed 2.5 million test miles and numerous marketing clinics with the Rolls faithful behind it, the firm is confident that its entry into the still-unpopulated ultra-luxury super-coupe EV market will be poised for success when it reaches customers in the fourth quarter of 2023. Orders are filling up quickly, we’re told, and the company predicts Specter sales will account for 20 percent of the company’s total sales in about the first year. Trusting the forecast, Rolls reveals that its typical owner is surprisingly the youngest of any ultra-luxury brand today.

Now, if only by heeding the instructions of Charles Rawls, they can fix the world’s stationary charging station situation.

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