The ultimate luxury electric car! 2024 Rolls-Royce Spectre review: New coupe resets EV benchmark

now look I don't want to suggest that Rolls-Royce is slow but if it's taking you 123 years to build a car seriously what's going on and yet by its own admission this spectacular and fantastically expensive new Rolls-Royce the Specter is the vehicle that one of the company's Founders Charles Rawls said he wanted to build in 1900 that's when he said that he thought the perfect Rolls-Royce would be electric because it is clean it is silent it doesn't smell bad and it's got lots of power he predicted that would work as long as there was something called charging infrastructure we'll get there one day and so finally it's here Charles would be pleased this is the Specter the world's first electric super luxury Coupe and I know what you're thinking a Rolls-Royce that's electric this is a company that's famous for its V12 engines how can this be happening well kind of because it has to happen as we all know in fact Rolls Royce said it will be completely electric by 2030 but actually it also makes a bit of sense because rolls royces have always been about quiet effortless motoring and nothing says quite an effortless like a EV with 750 kilos of battery but it also makes sense for the owners because they're the kind of people who don't drive very far because they have private jets and helicopters could this enormous monster then be the ultimate EV perhaps even one Elon Musk would buy [Music] and in terms of design there's so much I love about this car particularly this wheel this is a 23 inch wheel the largest wheel ever fitted to a Rolls-Royce and one of the loudest Wheels I've ever seen it's one of the things that car designers put on a concept car and they love big wheels they look great at drawings but the design of this car said to me today look I actually got to use the wheel he also spent a spectacular amount of time in a wind tunnel in fact they spent 820 hours just on this the spirit of ecstasy now you might not think she looks any different but her wings had to be gently clipped and changed in shape so that she wouldn't cause a Vortex over the front of the car they worked on this again and again and again to get it right because getting the lowest coefficient of drag of this car was so important for an electric vehicle so you could get the kind of range that you need different car like this and they claiming a range of 530 kilometers which is pretty impressive particularly for something this large getting that drag coefficient which is 0.25 an amazing figure of this car is also helped by the fact that the Grille no longer needs to cool anything inside the car so they could put the blades and position that helped the air go over the car around those enormous wheels and down to the back and provide the right amount of lift and downforce the whole time and as a bonus The Grille next to these fantastic drl's looks epic now what's interesting with the design is that they didn't go to a lot of trouble to make it look like an electric vehicle I asked them why not and they said well we want people to say there goes a Rolls-Royce not there goes an electric vehicle and then if you're lucky enough to get inside you might say to the owner wow this is quiet and he'll say yeah I bought an electric vehicle but they don't want to shout about it so I find the front of the car very interesting very modern I have to say it falls apart a bit at the back for me this part looks less modern but the designer told me I'm completely wrong and he said that the back of the car is more modern than the front which just shows that even a very expensive well-paid design it can be wrong because I must be right but this is the tail light which they say they've made as narrow as you can get away with its molegation it's as small as it can be giving this wide expansive Hull look and apparently the tail lights also meant to reflect the grill at the front the pantheon Grill and I'll give him that that's not so bad overall though I'm giving the car about a 9 out of 10 for design so he hasn't stuffed up too much you might call this an interior but Rolls-Royce call it a costing Art Space art to say well it's nice Timber and all the stuff that Ting Tings but they say a work of art is the Starlight roof and it is a work of art the way they weave the optic fibers through the roof to make the Stars the way it has shooting stars that go across at night and the fact that you can have it set up to look the way the sky did on the day you were born or or whatever other constellation you like apparently people in Australia quite often go for the Southern Cross which is not in so many of the rolls royces bought in the world because most of them go to the Northern Hemisphere and in fact the vast majority go to the United States which is possibly why we're here in Napa driving through wonderful Vineyards and so on the Luscious interior is meant to be an example of Automotive hot Couture meaning handmade and stupidly expensive it all sounds a bit over the top until you sit in it and discover that it really does feel Beyond special and on the point of whether that represents value well not to me personally but certainly the huge number of orders roles claims to have been hit by suggests otherwise you do get a lot of car for your money of course because the Specter is vast and weighs almost three tons and there's no doubt that the interior is nicer than most people's houses or even the nicest hotel you've ever seen and at The top-notch Umbrellas hidden in each door are a wonderful touch one of the Nifty and unexpected features the Spectra offers is it a Rolls-Royce sound which you can toggle on and off with the fake noise off the car is freakishly quiet apparently during testing they achieved a level of EV silence so incredible that people found it disturbing and described it as being like locked in solitary confinement so the engineers had to put some natural sound back in but with that Rolls-Royce sound on you get the most subtle of guttural sounds every other car company so far has gotten this fake noise thing wrong with their electric vehicles but rolls hasn't nailed it with the Specter it's just loud enough but suitably restrained as well for all the details on pricing and features check out my written review at carsguide.com if you're looking for the modern EV style interior in the rolls you can forget it because they said they didn't want any of that funky stuff in the Specter so no giant screens in here indeed I switched into a Rolls-Royce ghost at one stage to be driven somewhere and the interior is almost exactly the same as what's the silence funnily enough although the new car gets a more modern and fully Digital dash there's plenty of room for water bottles and ottoman storage and the sense of space for the driver and front passenger is suitably Grand but the rear seats are really for spoiled teenagers rather than roles owners they're not uncomfortable at all but they just feel a bit squeezed you wouldn't ask to be chauffeured in a specter clearly this is a Rolls-Royce you choose to drive yourself the boot is wide deep and long with a volume of 380 liters the Specter has two separately excited asynchronous Motors one on each axle for seamless all-wheel drive the front rotor makes 190 kilowatts and 365 newton meters while they've sensitively sent more grunt to the rear which gets 360 kilowatts and 710 Newton meters either motor on its own would be enough to power a normal car the total figures are 430 kilowatts and 900 newton meters which is which is how like the battery is made up of 804 cells and weighs 700 kilograms the net capacity of 102 kilowatt hours and the design has used it as a sound dending agent for road noise because it's just so massive the Specter can hit 100 kilometers an hour in four and a half seconds which feels very fast indeed when you're piloting something that weighs 2890 kilos and is more than five and a half meters long [Music] welcome to the lap of luxury I'm thinking of moving here it's wonderful now let me tell you about a cool little feature for this car this thing weighs about three tons 750 kilos which is battery then there are these coach doors which I reckon weigh about half a ton each so obviously I'm not going to reach out and open that because I'm a Rolls-Royce owner I have sensitive hands there's a button here that I could do it with but I'm too lazy for that so they've introduced a feature where all I have to do is just put my foot on the brake I'm ready to drive and the door shuts it's marvelous and I put on my indicator now I'm hoping you can hear it because the sound of that indicator is magnificent and apparently it was designed to sound like ice rolling around a very expensive whiskey glass because how Rolls-Royce is that Rolls-Royce also talks about The Ting Ting in this car which is a feeling you get or the sound that you feel when you tap the metal bits of the car like these vents now apparently the vents on each side are different so if you tap them and you've got girls fingernails you can play a tune unfortunately my fingernails aren't long enough for that so this is of course the first electric vehicle from Rolls-Royce and it's the first of many because they've promised that all of their vehicles will be fully electric by 2030 which is a fast turnaround so this is a very important car for them but doesn't EV work for a company that's built its reputation on big thrusting powerful V12 engines well surprisingly yes when I drove out for this event I was in the back of a Rolls-Royce Ghost for a couple of hours and it occurred to me when I got to the end of that Journey that I never heard the engine of that car once that's the whole thing with the Rolls-Royce power without any of that kind of abrasive noise in fact Rolls Royce is built on three pillars they are effortlessness waftability and silence now effortlessness is all about talk the feeling that if you put your foot down even a little bit you will surge away into the scenery and definitely a V12 delivers on that they've nailed that kind of feeling that you get from the V12 the torque is there the instant sensation but also to silence waftability in case you can't work it out from the sound of it is the ability to ride over bumps as if they weren't there this Rolls-Royce as usual delivers on that in Spades they point out that other electric cars aren't good because they use the battery at the bottom of the car to give a low center of gravity but there's too much torsional twist at the front and rear around though the battery is so you don't get the purity of handling that they were after of course they've spent billions of hours and trillions of dollars on making theirs better than that so this thing should be able to drive like a sports car what I find interesting about making a super luxury Coupe as their first electric vehicle is they chose for it to be a driver's car now you have to think that rolls royces are of two kinds they're either the kind that you drive yourself or the kind you sit in the back of but this Coupe one would put your kids in the back you wouldn't do that to yourself and you're not going to be driven around by a chauffeur in a car like this so they wanted it to be driven and that means it needs to be impressive and it is this thing is massive 23-inch Wheels the width of the thing the spirit of ecstasy in front of you the Bonnet looks the size of a barn door but it actually shrinks onto the road we're on very narrow roads here in Napa very windy roads and it just doesn't feel intimidating the steering is so light as it always likes to point out you can just use your fingers to drive it and it's so effortless they're again one of the core pillars and it kind of makes sense the electric thing because in any Rolls Royce you've always just put it in gear one gear just like an electric car and there's no sense in previous rollers that there's any gearbox at all anyway so the sense of just being one gear one acceleration all the time one effortless thrust of torque it's kind of like Rolls-Royce core values it's a pillar this is a this is kind of the car they've always wanted to make I guess because unlike anything else that costs as much money and has wheels noise is just never a factor in a Rolls Royce in fact they do everything they can to get rid of it so other than the fake noise this thing is freakishly quiet I like the steering I like the way it handles and another thing that's really shocked me is how much I like the B mode the brake mode or the Regeneration mode they call it recuperation at Rolls Royce because they're Posh like that but in this car on a winding bit of Road I quite like the fact that you can just ease off the throttle the nose tips in a little bit there's a bit of regen braking and you can just Cruise along you can also come to a complete stop without touching the brakes and something I learned from a chauffeur the other day you can pull off a proper champagne stop now there are three kinds of stop there's a whiskey stop when you brake too hard and the car does that oh you ain't spitting whiskey though because there's only a little bit in the glass then there's a gin and tonic stop where it rattles the glass A little bit it's not awful they hopefully won't spill it again it's not too full but a champagne stop well you don't want to spill any of that stuff because it's worth a million dollars a drop so you have to come to a stop that is completely still and without any rocking of the car now I tried to do that a few times they're using the brakes and it wasn't easy but using the B mode I can ease off the throttle and bring it to a complete stop and apparently Rolls Royce then without letting you know once you get under about three kilometers an hour the brakes are gently kicking in to bring you to the perfect stop because even if you don't have someone drinking champagne in the back it's nice to stop in there perfect way in fact everything must be perfect in your Rolls Royce the other thing worth mentioning is the stereo which is well it's so wonderful it makes you want to cry Rolls-Royce develop their own they do their own speakers and the designers work with the audio Engineers all the way through to make sure that the metal and the doors and the frames and the use of aluminum that everything has a resonant quality to it that will help the stereo when it's built then they map out the interior and so on I have to say I would never buy a Rolls-Royce myself to drive because it's just not me and I wouldn't feel good driving around in one but I would buy one to park in my garage and sit in it and just listen to music all day I mean that's a good way to spend eight hundred thousand dollars right now the waftability the ride is quite something and for something this heavy there's very little porp thing which you might expect there's almost no body roll which is freakish but uh the way that it can ride over rough bits of road as if they're not there very Rolls-Royce that's another uh another thing they're very good at and of course you would expect that so when they showed this vehicle to their many many well-heeled customers all of whom apparently been waiting for an electric vehicle their whole lives anxiously buying Teslas out of desperation because they couldn't get a roll of one when they showed it to those customers they said it has to be one thing it has to be a Rolls Royce a Rolls-Royce first an electric vehicle second and this is very much pure Rolls Royce ting ting oh I got it my fingernails are finally working from The Ting Ting to the steering to the way it goes to the silence everything about it is pure Rolls-Royce and I quite like the look of it as well I think it looks a bit plain and dull from the back they say it looks like a the hull of a boat but I love the front of it it looks fantastic coming from the mirrors behind you it's it's intimidating it's thrusting it's really got a road presence like very few things have but to drive it really is something I think more so than any other electric vehicle I've driven it is a perfect replacement for what they already had a taikan is not a replacement for a Porsche 911 it's a different kind of Porsche but the Specter feels very much like a V12 Rolls Royce without the burning of the petrol and of course Rolls-Royce owners are quite happy never to visit a petrol station again because there are Ordinary People there who wants to be near them the Specter drives just like a Rolls-Royce like they always have and talk instantaneous talk has always been their thing effortless thrust and yet thrust with silence an engine you could never hear what they got now an electric motor you can never hear it's like they knew this was coming like 123 years ago [Music] the Specter is rated at 520 kilometers on the wltp scale but roles claims it can go much further than that like 600 kilometers efficiency is claimed to be 21.5 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers on the launch we drove 210 kilometers and had 300 kilometers of indicated range left at the end which is pretty close to their claim the Specter can be charged at up to 200 kilowatts on a DC fast charger on which it will take 35 minutes to go from 10 to 80 charge on a typical 11 kilowatt home system it will take 10 hours and 45 minutes to go from zero to ninety percent charge the Specter is not being crash tested to Fran cabin nor is it likely they'll hand one over if that's a thing safety offerings include active cruise control Lane change assist active Lane centering lean departure with active steer a reversing assistant which I like it also features Collision warning and active braking role told his inspector has four airbags and does not need more so that's good news check out my full written review at carsguy.com.eu for all of the details now I would assume you did a lifetime warranty at rolls prices but I'd be wrong you only get four years but it is unlimited mileage the specter's battery is covered by a 10-year warranty an extended service and warranty package is to be confirmed rolls also offers 24 7 roadside assistance and if your battery goes flat the company will take your Specter to the nearest charging station for you Another Touch I really like is what they call a regional flying Doctor Who is on standby 24 7. in extreme cases if your Specter fails to proceed fails to proceed is the Rolls-Royce euphemism for breaking down I have to say it's probably my favorite electric car in terms of turning something that already existed as a wonderful combustion engine vehicle into an electric vehicle the rolls-roy somehow makes more sense than most and buyers have voted in large numbers rolls tells me that orders are much more ferocious than they'd expected and they're having to make more the most incredible figure though is that 40 of those buyers are new to the brand it's like they've been waiting their whole life refusing to buy a Rolls Royce until they made an electric vehicle and of course it probably makes sense to them because they never want to go to a fuel station again they don't mind electric cars because someone else will plug it in for them and if they want to drive further than 530 kilometers there's probably 20 other cars to do it in so the Specter it makes a lot of sense [Music] foreign

Channel: CarsGuide

Views: 28,068

Keywords: CarsGuide, CarsGuide.com.au, Rolls-Royce, Spectre, Review

Id: JzOyJYxbloQ

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023