Why electric propulsion is the perfect fit for Rolls-Royce

Too big and heavy, too expensive, too slow to charge. These are all accusations levelled at today’s electric car batteries, to an extent and on occasions, fairly. 

Consider also what’s said about Rolls-Royce: that it makes the world’s best cars. “Strive for perfection in everything you do,” Sir Henry Royce reportedly once said. In the 1920s, Rolls-Royce adverts on these pages were promising that “the unique prestige of the Rolls-Royce cars is based upon perfection of design, superb material, and fine craftsmanship”. A century later, you would still recognise those as Rolls-Royce traits.

So it’s weird to me that battery technology often called not good enough for lesser uses is somehow more than entirely adequate for some of the world’s most expensive and luxurious production cars.

The new Spectre Black Badge is a £400,000 super-luxury coupé EV of extremely high performance, and yet the battery technology within it is compromised just like anywhere else. Here, though, it matters less.

So what that batteries are heavy? The V12- engined Ghost weighs two and a half tonnes, so it doesn’t matter that the Spectre weighs a few hundred kilos more. It can carry only four people and can’t tow anything.

If it can’t charge very quickly, that’s fine too, because Spectre owners have three-phase charging in at least one of their homes and, on average, 13 other cars. If the 300-mile range isn’t enough, they won’t hang around a charger in the cold and rain splitting power between their Spectre and an adjacent Nissan Leaf. They will go by helicopter.

Finally, batteries are expensive. Shrug.

If the Spectre Black Badge is a car that does only 2.6 miles per kWh, has pricey electrical bits and charges no faster than a family hatchback, it doesn’t matter. It compromises its use not one bit and is 100% fit for a Rolls-Royce.

It’s fitting the same equipment into, say, a supermini where the problems actually come, just like they would if you were trying to fit one of Rolls-Royce’s V12s into a Nissan Micra.