Rolls-Royce to commence Spectre production this autumn
Rolls-Royce has announced that it will start manufacturing its long-awaited Spectre electric coupé in September. It expects prices for the luxury EV to exceed half a million euros on average while noting record demand.
During the European debut of the Spectre at the Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza in Italy, Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös revealed to Autocar that the extensive 2.5 million-kilometre development program for the Spectre is nearing completion. He said the company is now ready to transition into series production, commencing in the autumn.
Reservations are also open, and so far, demand is almost overwhelming. Müller-Ötvös, therefore, expects that new orders placed for the Spectre may not be fulfilled until 2025. Earlier plans set the first deliveries in Q4 2023.
However, he suggests Rolls-Royce customers were willing to wait. The “order intake is far beyond our expectations”, the CEO told Autocar. “Clients are definitely prepared to wait,” he said. “And you normally wait at least a year for a Rolls-Royce, be it a Spectre or whatever else.”
He is further convinced that clients of the British marque will be prepared to pay a high price for the first electric Rolls-Royce, which succeeds the Wraith coupé. While Müller-Ötvös did not deliver an exact figure based on pre-orders, Autocar quotes his assumption that this car would go “well beyond €500,000 or £435,000” when taking into account customisation options. “I think clients are keen to spec the car up to the highest levels,” he added.
Rolls-Royce first unveiled the Spectre EV in October 2021, a year after announcing plans for electrification. At the time, the company already planned the extensive testing programme the CEO was referring to now. According to Rolls-Royce, the 2.5 million kilometres of testing are equivalent to over 400 years of use. Half of the testing happened on the “very roads that many production Spectres will be driven on,” such as the French Riviera, where they’d perfected the Planar suspension system. At the time, performance targets included 430 kW, 900 Nm of torque, and acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds with a WLTP range of about 520 kilometres or nearly 330 miles. Today’s news included no update on this spec.
Still, the electric course appears to be paying off for Rolls-Royce. Why the company hesitated for some time, not unlike Bentley or Ferrari, Müller-Ötvös had announced the new approach in 2021, already with plans for the Spectre.
Fast-forwarding to today, even the EV-ready CEO admitted to being “pretty surprised about the interest in particular from people who never thought about buying a Rolls-Royce and are doing it now for the reason that this is the very first full electric car”. He added, “We obviously have a lot of clients who are existing owners who ordered one, and we have around 40% of clients we have never seen before in our order books now.”
Rolly-Royce targets selling only electric cars from 2030.
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