The whole car tips the scales at 2,890 kilograms, less than the Hummer EV and roughly on par with the Ford F-150 Lightning. The huge 102-kilowatt-hour battery weighs 700 kilograms, roughly the weight of a fully grown bison. That said, the numbers are worth a look because they’re silly. Or, as happens to be the case here, it could be a big battery and some fifth-generation electric drivetrain components developed with parent company BMW Group. It could be a steam engine with Lilliputian men under the hood shovelling coal into a tiny furnace. I’d bet plenty of owners don’t know or care what kind of power unit is motivating their behemoths so long as it provides enough kick to comfortably outrun the plebs. Cylinder count and horsepower numbers were never the brand’s core appeal. To be honest, it hasn’t really mattered what was under the hood of a Rolls in a long time. I’m guessing the people who will buy this car have a collective carbon footprint somewhere in the ballpark of Saskatchewan. As if to underscore that fact, a recent press junket for the launch of the Spectre involved flying writers by helicopter from Toronto to Niagara wine country for test drives. It is not here, however, to save the planet.

(Not that the company needs it the firm delivered a record-breaking 6,021 vehicles globally in 2022 and is on track to set a new sales records in Canada this year, according to Matt Wilson, the company’s Canadian general manager.)Īnd, finally, the Spectre is here because nothing and nobody escapes the winds of change blowing through the auto industry. The electric Rolls is also here because it’ll sell. So why is this Spectre now haunting the streets? It’s here because clients would like a Rolls-Royce to drive unrestricted into downtown zero-emission-zones in cities like Paris, London and Amsterdam. In this uppermost echelon of the car market, the shift to EVs will have little impact on the planet. This glistening $495,600 ingot, a high-priced taste of Rolls-Royce’s electric future, feels much like any other car the British marque has ever made, except slightly better: pulling more vigorously toward the horizon, floating more serenely down the road and feeling more commanding on the highway. Wafting along the road in the first all-electric car from Rolls-Royce, the Spectre, is strangely anticlimactic.

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