The world’s poshest electric car spends a day out with the cheapest... and there are more parallels than you might think
WORDS PAUL HORRELL PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
Don’t laugh. OK, laugh then. A Rolls-Royce beside a Dacia. The most expensive usable electric car against the cheapest. I say usable so as to disqualify the outliers, the electric hypercars and the Citroen Ami. But apart from both acting as respective bookends of the price dimension, they have something else in common. Each, more so than cars in between, is a compelling use for electric power.
Rolls-Royce has spent 117 years perfecting petrol propulsion, culminating in a twin-turbo V12 with an eight-speed auto box that can time its shifts by reading the road ahead via its satnav. This marvel of a powertrain conveys a new Phantom with smoothness and silence that almost matches that in the Dacia’s relative, an 11-year-old Renault Zoe. So electricity is the necessary next step for Rolls-Royce.
Also, Rolls owners won’t worry about their EV’s range. The 240 miles that we got on open roads should do nicely. These people won’t be bothered by the potential hassles of on-trip replenishing (yes, I did spend an hour with it on a 50kW charger just beside Wormwood Scrubs prison). If they want to drive non-stop to the south of France in a Rolls-Royce they’ll just take the Wraith or the Phantom because they have each of those too. If they plan on doing the journey in stages, they can take the Spectre. When they stop for lunch or overnight, the maître d’ or concierge will sort the charging for them. The helpful fellows on the door of the Corinthia Hotel, where we photographed the car, would have been only too delighted.
The Spring is also a perfect fit for electric power, despite its range being even shorter. Its stereotypical owner might be a key worker living in the suburbs but needing to shuttle to work in hospitals or home care in a city where an EV avoids congestion charges and emission based parking fees. It’ll start at £19k odd when it gets to Britain, after a facelift, in summer 2024; those savings will easily equalise the monthly loan cost versus a cheaper to buy petrol Kia Picanto. Even going non-stop for 12 hours in a congested city won’t flatten its battery. And compared with a manual small car, it’s an absolute breeze to drive in traffic.
The Spectre is unbelievably comfortable and quiet in town, although you get the odd anxious moment because of its huge breadth. Out of town, when you use the full driver assist on a dual
