Rolls-Royce Spectre Testing Continues In the South of France
Because you would go there too if you had access to Rolls-Royce’s travel expense account.
Rolls-Royce would like us all to know that testing on its upcoming Spectre EV is going swimmingly, thank you very much. We last saw the ultra-luxury electric car undergoing development in the arctic circle but now, it has headed somewhere quite a bit sunnier: the French Riviera. Specifically, Miramas, since that's the sort of place production Spectres will eventually end up being driven anyway. And also because you would go there too if you had access to Rolls-Royce's corporate travel expense account.
Apparently, about 390,000 of the Spectre's total 1.5 million test miles were done here. This included a visit to the historic Autodrome de Miramas where it proved its continuous high-speed mettle on a banked, 3.1-mile bowl.
Newly confirmed technical details include a new smart suspension system that aims to deliver an impeccable, Rolls-Royce-style, magic carpet ride. Electronic roll stabilization gets new parts and a system that reads the road ahead for bumps while using GPS data to anticipate corners. On the straights, anti-roll bars can actually be decoupled to prevent rocking.
Thanks to the integrated battery, Spectre claims to be 30 percent more rigid than every current Rolls and will be the stiffest Rolls-Royce chassis ever. It will also be the most aerodynamic RR to date, with a coefficient of drag of 0.25. As for another Rolls-Royce superlative, the Spectre's five-foot-long doors are the longest of any Rolls-Royce ever. The single-piece side panel, meanwhile, stretches from the A-pillar to the taillights, measures about 13 feet long, and is the longest "deep draw" part ever made by the company.
The ultra-luxury automaker says development on what the company describes as an "electric super coupe" is currently 40 percent complete and that the first customer deliveries are scheduled for late 2023.
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