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The New 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre Has Been Spotted As Public Testing Begins

Published

3 years ago

December 27, 2021

The Spectre, Rolls-first Royce’s all-electric production car, has begun on-road testing ahead of a market launch in the fourth quarter of 2023.

By that time, prototypes will have traveled 150 million miles in a variety of conditions, which Rolls-Royce claims equates to 400 years of use.

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The first prototype spotted by spy photographers appears to be the same car shown in official preview images earlier this year, but the design is much clearer here.

Torsten Müller-tvös, CEO of Goodwood, insisted that the prototype is an accurate representation of the production car.

The Spectre will be a swept-back two-door grand tourer with a long bonnet and muscular proportions – characteristics that position it as a viable replacement for the Wraith, which first went on sale in 2013.

Rolls-Royce has yet to confirm plans to end production of the Wraith, but it has pulled both the hard-top version and its Dawn soft-top sibling from sale in the United States this year, implying a phase-out is imminent.

Notably, the Wraith and Dawn are the only models in the Rolls-Royce lineup that continue to use a platform entirely developed by parent company BMW – derived from the F01-generation 5 Series, which debuted in 2008. Rolls-own Royce’s Architecture of Luxury platform, which can house a pure-electric drivetrain and will eventually underpin every Rolls-Royce model, is now used by the larger Phantom, Ghost, and Cullinan models.

The luxury brand first hinted at its electrification strategy in 2011 with the Phantom-based 102EX concept, which was designed primarily to test the viability of EV power as a replacement for its large-capacity petrol engines.

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The subtle visual differences between that one-off and its production counterpart suggest an evolutionary design approach in Rolls-electric Royce’s era. Despite the lack of a petrol engine to cool, Müller-tvös has strongly hinted to Autocar that the firm’s trademark imposing front grille will survive in some form.

The Spectre will also keep the Wraith’s distinctive reverse-opening doors, and there’s no word on whether it’ll ride significantly higher than its petrol-powered predecessor. This would allow it to sustainably maintain its luxury coupé billing and, as a result, remain largely unrivaled in its segment from the start.

The much more radically styled 103EX concept revealed in 2016 provided hints as to the direction of Rolls-EV Royce’s design plans, and while the Spectre adopts a more conventional silhouette with more production-friendly design cues, the link is clear.