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