ROLLS-ROYCE SPECTRE

Elegant all-electric coupé heralds a new era of noiseless motoring from the world's pre-eminent luxury car maker

- MATT PRIOR

TESTED 29.6.23, CALIFORNIA, US ON SALE WINTER PRICE £330,000

Here's the Spectre, the first fully electric car from Rolls-Royce, its fourth based on the company's highly adaptable Architecture of Luxury aluminium platform, and a coupé that Rolls-Royce says spiritually replaces the earlier Phantom coupé rather than the more recently retired Wraith.

The Spectre is large, at 5.48m long and 2.02m wide across the body, or about the same size as a generous double-cab pick-up truck. It has four-wheel drive via two motors, one at each end. The forward one makes 255bhp and 269lb ft, and the rear 483bhp and 524lb ft, although because of how they behave together, their combined maximum output is 576bhp and 664lb ft.

With a single gear ratio, the ability to be single-pedal driven and all of the noiseless, vibrationless capabilities that Charles Rolls is reported to have identified 123 years ago ("perfectly noiseless and clean...no smell or vibration"), it's a setup that ought to be deftly suited to luxurious Rolls-Royce driving.

Its battery is big, at 102kWh (usable), which is sufficient on the WLTP test cycle for a range of 329 miles - or the Cotswolds to Glyndebourne and back without doing anything as unbecoming as sitting and drinking a coffee in a shopping centre car park.

Rolls-Royce customers typically have more than half a dozen other cars to choose, and even though they still drive 3000 miles a year in their Rollers, one suspects Spectres and public fast chargers will be distant relatives. On rare visits, the peak charge rate would be 195kW.