Rolls-Royce is in the middle of its test program for its first electric vehicle called Spectre. In the past few months, the BMW Group-owned luxury brand’s test and development engineers have shifted their focus of the 2.5 million-km (1.6 million-mi) program from the extreme winter conditions of Arjeplog, Sweden, to a location that more reflects the car’s expected everyday use. The 625,000-km (388,000-mi) testing phase in the French Riviera region of southern France will include evaluation at BMW’s Autodrome de Miramas facility and on Côte d’Azur roads.

Rolls-Royce says that the Spectre “Electric Super Coupé” evokes its spiritual successor, the Phantom Coupé, and will be the first all-electric super-luxury motor car focused on continental touring. The French Riviera and its roads—ranging from technical coastal corniches to faster inland carriageways—most represent how its “clients” will use the car.

“It is no exaggeration to state that Spectre is the most anticipated Rolls-Royce ever,” said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. “Free from the restrictions connected to the internal combustion engine, our battery-electric vehicle will offer the purest expression of the Rolls-Royce experience in the marque’s 118-year history.”

“Spectre unlocks the extraordinary potential of integrating a fully electric powertrain into our Architecture of Luxury platform,” added Dr. Mihiar Ayoubi, Director of Engineering, Rolls-Royce Motor Car.

The brand has big hopes that full electrification will secure its ongoing relevance for a new generation of customers. The benefits of electrification were front-of-mind for cofounder Henry Royce, an electrical engineer who dedicated much of his career to creating internal combustion engines that simulated the characteristics of an electric car—silent running, instant torque, and the sensation of one endless gear.

“The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean,” said Charles Rolls, the other cofounder when he drove a 1900 electric car named the Columbia. “There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.”

The Spectre is said to be the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Rolls-Royce’s renewed interest in electrification can be traced to 2011 when the company showcased a fully electric experimental Phantom-based concept named 102EX. This was followed by the 103EX design study that anticipated the brand’s more distant electric future. Now, Müller-Ötvös promises that Rolls-Royce will go electric, starting this decade, and by 2030 will be a fully electric brand.

In September 2021, Rolls-Royce confirmed that it had commenced testing of the Spectre. Now it has revealed more details about the upcoming car, the development of which is now about 40% complete.

To style the Spectre, designers considered the dimensions and “emotionality” of the Phantom Coupé and other grand coupés from Rolls-Royce’s past. They captured that emotion with a fastback silhouette and grand size, but they also carried forward a key design feature of Phantom Coupé—the iconic split headlights, a design tenet of Rolls-Royce for many decades. The “design typology” was selected in consultation with clients that found the idea of a Phantom-scale Electric Super Coupé appealing.

The flexibility of Rolls-Royce’s proprietary aluminum-intensive spaceframe architecture enabled the exterior design scale, one example of which is the Spectre’s wheel size. It will be the first Rolls-Royce coupé equipped with 23-in wheels since 1926.

The spaceframe architecture is reinforced with steel sections and by integration with the battery structure for a 30% torsional rigidity improvement over existing Rolls-Royce cars. An aerodynamic channel for the battery and a smooth underfloor profile is enabled by placing the floor halfway between (rather than on top or below) the sill structures. The arrangement and moving of the bulkhead location enabled designers to create a low seating position and deepen the dashboard for an enveloping cabin experience.

The battery location unlocks another benefit. By creating wiring and piping channels between the car floor and the battery top, engineers have created a secondary, sound-deadening function for the 700-kg (1540-lb) battery.

A low windscreen rake and efficient airflow profile, along with other intelligent design solutions like an aerodynamically tuned Spirit of Ecstasy mascot, contributes to low aero drag—important for long EV range. Aerodynamicists had predicted a drag coefficient of 0.26. However, following wind-tunnel testing, digital modeling, and high-speed testing in Miramas, that figure has been reduced to 0.25.

The car’s aluminum body sections represent the largest of any Rolls-Royce yet. The one-piece side panel, which extends from the front of the A-pillar to behind the rear taillights, is the largest “deep draw” part ever produced by Rolls-Royce, extending nearly 4 m (13 ft) in length. The pillarless coach doors, which are nearly 1.5 m (5 ft) in length, are also the longest in Rolls-Royce’s history.

The integration of a fully electric powertrain and decentralized intelligence into the electric/electronic (E/E) architecture is what the brand calls Rolls-Royce 3.0. The Spectre is promised to have unprecedented computing power and application of advanced data-processing technologies.

The dramatically increased intelligence of its E/E architecture is said to enable a free-flowing exchange of detailed information with minimal centralized processing. Data will be processed closer to its source rather than being handled by a single central processing unit. By sending more sophisticated data packets, reaction time is significantly faster and more detailed.

The upgrade to E/E capabilities has required engineers to increase the length of cabling from around 2 km (1.2 mi) in existing Rolls-Royce vehicles to 7 km (4.3 mi) in the Spectre and to write more than 25 times more algorithms.

Engineers are creating a dedicated control for each of Spectre’s 25,000-plus functions, incorporating variations of response depending on factors including weather, driver behavior, vehicle status, and road conditions. They are harnessing the new processing power to create what is said to be unparalleled levels of detail, refinement, and effortlessness while ensuring continuity in the experience of Rolls-Royce’s internal-combustion-engine cars.

Following months of testing, new suspension technology has been approved that ensures Spectre delivers Rolls-Royce’s hallmark “magic carpet ride.” This technology is now being refined and perfected at Miramas and on the roads of the French Riviera.

Using a suite of new hardware components and leveraging the high-speed processing capabilities, the sophisticated electronic roll stabilization system uses data from the car’s Flagbearer system, which reads the road surface ahead, combined with the satellite navigation system, which alerts to upcoming corners.

On straight roads, the system can automatically decouple the anti-roll bars, allowing each wheel to act more independently. This prevents vehicle rocking caused by one-sided inputs and dramatically improves response to high-frequency imperfections caused by smaller shortcomings in road surface quality.

Once a corner is detected, the components are recoupled, the suspension dampers stiffen, and the four-wheel steering system is prepared. Under cornering, more than 18 sensors are monitored, and steering, braking, power delivery, and suspension parameters are adjusted accordingly so that Spectre remains stable. For the driver, this delivers serenity, predictability, and greater control in “unprecedented high definition.”

First customer deliveries of the Spectre will commence in the fourth quarter of 2023.