-Well, you know, when you see the "Spirit of Ecstasy" illuminated in electric blue, something's happening at Rolls-Royce.
The something is the electrification of the Phantom.
This is an experimental Phantom, the 102EX--an experimental platform to make one of these guys all battery powered.
The engine came out.
That was the 6.7-liter V12 and in goes 96 batteries of a very sort of
complex chemistry: nickel, cobalt, manganese.
I've not actually heard of that before.
That gives you 270 kilowatts of power.
It's about 360 horsepower, but 590 potential foot-pounds of torque.
0 to 60 could happen about 8 seconds.
That's slower by over 2 seconds than a gas engine Phantom, but still not a slouch.
The power goes out down to the back where the electric motors live, and they split it up to the rear wheels only via a differential--almost a quaint traditional setup.
Range of this guy, about 120 miles they say, they hope, they will figure out because this is
a test bed for use throughout the year ahead.
Oh, by the way, charging time on this, despite the massive number of batteries in here, they say would be industry standard, about 8 hours for a full charge on a 220, 3-phase, circuit.
Now, inside, if I had a bourbon, I'd get my mail forwarded here.
Where was I?
Oh yeah.
Inside, we've got some more indications this is a very different vehicle.
Here is a charge state indicator echoing the lights that are over there at the
charging port.
Oh, by the way, if this little smuggler's bin of keyed little tech switches is not enough for you, you'll love this one.
There's a traditional analog clock.
There's the very non-traditional LCD display and that is, by the way, specific to the electric version of this car.
Torquey, emissions-free, avant-garde technology--all of that's great.
But what really intrigues me is that these cars are already as
quiet as the day after you died, and that's with a V12 barn burner up in front.
Imagine what it would be like with a virtually silent electric power train.
You just wanna curl up and take a nap.
These are not for sale.
Like I mentioned, this is a one-off electric prototype.
But they're gonna be testing it and testing it hard through 2011.
Who knows?
There may be a real one, one day soon.
