Yahoo Autos Over 10 years of research went into the Rolls-Royce Spectre EV
Rolls-Royce's first series-produced electric model, the 577-horsepower Spectre, made its debut in October 2022. Electrification suits the British luxury brand well, as its clients primarily prefer a smooth and quiet ride over a deep exhaust note that sends chills down your spine. But the company's top executive told Autoblog that finding the right path to the EV segment required over a decade's worth of research.
The electric 102EX prototype from 2011 helped blaze this path. It wasn't approved for production, but it showed Rolls-Royce what to do.
"We never intended at that time that we would bring [the 102EX] to the market," company boss Torsten Müller-Ötvös told me on the sidelines of the 2023 Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance. "I joined Rolls-Royce in 2010, and I was always in the belief that we need to look into alternative propulsions for the brand." Rolls-Royce is part of the BMW Group, and this practice is common throughout the company: BMW and Mini experimented with electric prototypes at that time as well, and the iX5 presented in 2023 will bolster the firm's hydrogen research.
Rolls-Royce learned several lessons from the 102EX project. One was to simply keep on keeping on.