Electric Rolls-Royce Spectre Finishes Winter Testing in Sweden
The Spectre EV is 25% of the way through its testing regimen.
So far the upcoming Rolls-Royce Spectre has undergone 25% of its 2.5-million-kilometer testing regimen after completing winter testing in Arjeplog, Sweden, outside the Arctic Circle, and Rolls-Royce took the opportunity to share more photos and details of its first electric production car. The brand is describing it as an Electric Super Coupe that's a true successor to the massive Phantom Coupe, and not the smaller Wraith that just ended production last year.
The two-door coupe is seen here in the same camouflage wrap that we first saw back in September, though more details are visible. The Spectre will have a split headlight setup that harks back to the Phantom Coupe , with a thin LED strip above a rectangular light housing, and it seems like the taillights will be thin and vertical. It'll be the first Rolls-Royce since 1926 to wear 23-inch wheels, and along with the redesigned Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament the Spectre uses touches like a more dramatically raked windshield and big rear diffuser for a drag coefficient of 0.26. While no interior photos have been released yet, Rolls says it moved the bulkhead to push the dashboard deeper into the car and better cocoon the passengers with more interior space.
This electric fastback is looking awesome.
The Spectre will use Rolls-Royce's proprietary Architecture of Luxury platform, and the brand says it's the "most connected" Rolls ever. The Spectre has 141,200 sender-receiver relations and over 1,000 functions with 25,000 subfunctions, whatever that means, as opposed to 51,000 sender-receiver relations, 456 functions and 647 subfunctions in the Phantom. All those functions can exchange information without going through one central processor, which means the Spectre needs 7 kilometers of cabling instead of around 2 kilometers in the existing cars and more than 25 times more algorithms than current models, all providing for much more detailed control of systems like the powertrain and chassis. Rolls-Royce says that having the battery mounted in the floor between the sills means that it can also act as 1,500 pounds of sound deadening by creating wiring and piping channels between the car's floor and the top of the pack.
While the winter testing might be completed, the Spectre still has nearly 500,000 miles of testing to go. Rolls-Royce says the first production Spectres will be delivered to customers in the fourth quarter of 2023, which means a reveal will likely happen by the end of 2022.
