2024 Rolls-Royce Spectre First Test: Electrical Adequacy Achieved

In our last visit with the Spectre, Rolls-Royce’s all-electric coupe, senior features editor Scott Evans waxed eloquently and accurately that the Spectre was the embodiment of Messers Rolls and Royce’s 120-year-old dream, that of a car with a seemingly bottomless well of silent power. Silent, to be sure, but most things seem to hit bottom sooner or later. Some EVs do indeed seem to have a limitless supply of torque, but where are the limits of the electric Rolls?

Electric Car or Electric Rolls?

This seems an inappropriate question to ask. There was a time when Rolls-Royce published its horsepower and torque figures as “adequate,” and we all know gentlemen do not discuss the rate of their acceleration nor the length of their range. But we are not gentlemen, we are car magazine writers, and our only creed is “How fast will she go?” So we were perfectly willing to take the uncouth step of strapping our timing gear to the big, new Spectre. 

First, some specs: From a gearhead perspective, the Spectre is a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive coupe, its two motors—making 255 hp and 269 lb-ft up front, and 483 hp and 524 lb-ft out back—fed by a big 102-kWh battery. (Not that you’d ever know to look at the thing, because the Spectre bears a striking resemblance to petrol-powered Rolls models, most notably the now-discontinued Wraith, right down to the miles-long hood and rear-hinged doors.) Total output, thanks to the magic of EV mathematics, is 577 hp and 664 lb-ft, not far off the last internal combustion Ghost we tested, which developed 563 hp and 627 lb-ft courtesy of a twin-turbo V-12. Of course, that Ghost weighed a mere 5,616 pounds; the Spectre tips the scales some 825 pounds heavier at 6,441.

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More Than Adequate

And yet—all praise be to electric power—the Spectre is notably quicker. We timed it to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, leaving the gas Ghost 0.5 seconds in its wake. Still, we could feel the powertrain trailing off as speed built. The Spectre crossed the quarter-mile line in 12 seconds flat at 118 mph, by which time the Ghost was still 0.6 second behind. We did note the expected unflappability of a Rolls-Royce; no matter how fast we drove it, the Spectre remained quiet and stable.

Braking from 60 was serene and tidy, with the giant Roller pulling up in just 105 feet, 2 feet shorter than the Ghost. More notable than the distance was the demeanor: The front end took a dive but did so in what our test notes say was “a cushy and demure way. Very quiet.” ABS chatter and tire squeal were muted to the point of being barely audible. Well, why should we be surprised? The whole braking system, regen and friction, was designed to provide imperceptible “limousine stops” in the Spectre’s one-pedal driving mode.

We had, er, realistic expectations for the Rolls-Royce coupe on our figure-eight handling loop, and yet the Spectre surprised us a little, circling the course in 24.9 seconds at an average of 0.80 g. The big Roller served up all the roll, squat, dive, and squeal we expected, but there was an underlying grace and enough power to come out of the skidpad in a slight drift, though it was “nothing lurid,” as noted by road test editor Chris Walton. The brake pedal’s long travel proved a boon for finding the ABS threshold, and stopping action was refreshingly tidy given our experience with heavy EVs. Again from Walton: “Who knew this could be the ‘driver’s’ Roller?”

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Could Go Farther, Could Charge Faster

Of course, most Spectre drivers will probably be more concerned with how far than how fast, so we subjected the Rolls-Royce to our Road Trip Range Test, running a steady 70 mph from 100 percent to 5 percent state of charge. The majestic Spectre ran for a just-OK 275 miles, slightly better than its 266-mile EPA rating, though by modern standards perhaps a bit short of the “adequate” claim. 

Charging was similarly fair to middling. The Spectre peaked at 200 kW but averaged 137 kW in the 36 minutes it took to charge from 5 to 80 percent. Topping off the battery took a further 22 minutes. From the moment we plugged in, we added 120 miles in 15 minutes, another 75 miles at the 30-minute mark, and 54 more miles after 45 minutes. As noted above, the Spectre was fully charged after 58 minutes. For all the money the Spectre costs, we’d expect it to get the best-possible charging gear, but perhaps it’s just as well for public order that such experiences are reserved for the proletarians in their electric Hyundais and Kias.

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Who Cares? Probably Not Spectre Buyers

Of course, we imagine little of this will matter to those who can afford the almost-$580,000 price tag of our test Spectre, or even the $423,000 base price. They will have people to take care of charging the Spectre, and we imagine they will be more concerned with the silence of its powertrain, the softness of its leather, even the soft tink-tink-tink of its turn signal chime (which sounds to us like a silver fork tapped demurely against a bone china plate) thank its performance numbers. The main reason Rolls-Royce even lets us test cars like the Spectre is not so owners will know what it will do, but so the rest of us, the 99 percenter little people, will know its capabilities. 

Judging from the longing stares the Spectre attracted even among hard-to-automotively-impress Angelenos, we’d say the Spectre doesn’t need much help. Say what you will about EVs; the silence and lack of vibration is the epitome of what a Rolls ought to be, even if the limited tether and medium-speed charging might be a bit limiting for those who care to venture beyond Bel Air. Our testing establishes that the new Rolls-Royce Spectre achieves yet another benchmark set many, many years ago: Its performance is perfectly adequate.

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