Modern Cars 2011: Electric Powered Palace, Sorry Rolls Royce

I was expecting to read this news for a long time, an electric Rolls Royce. I know many people would think, there is no point to have an electric Rolls Royce or who is going to buy it! Actually those people miss one single point, Rolls Royce is owned by BMW. And BMW is keen on developing efficient vehicles and introduced technologies like Efficient Dynamics (And yesterday introduced its Intel CPU branded vehicle range i3 and i7). From this ambition, I was expecting to see a hybrid Rolls Royce. However Rolls Royce disappointed me and revealed an electric powered one!

That’s true, the mobile British palace Rolls Royce is going to have an electric version and it will be based on 102EX concept which is basically the Phantom. RR Phantom is my favourite car, this car is the definition of exquisite luxury and passion. Even though it is built by BMW, you don’t notice any BMW bit at all! It has best exterior design, best interior, comfort beyond your imagination. And a front grills which always remind me British Museum.

Let’s go back to electric RR. Phantom is a really huge car and despite its aluminium structure, it weight 2625 KG. And this makes Phantom one of the fattest cars on market and very hungry one. It is consuming or eating around 25lt/km (12mpg) in city! And we all know that, test figures cannot be achieved by normal human beings. So they are impossible. With a very basic analyses, in order to move this huge object with electric power; Phantom needs to carry batteries which should be able to power British Museum for one week! And this means extra weight. And this reduces the range.

Electric Rolls Royce is an important milestone for ultra-luxury vehicle segment and it is important to see that RR is adopting new driving technologies, and aiming to reduce consumption levels. However I still wonder how RR will manage to move this vehicle with batteries. Current battery technology is not very effective, if you don’t believe just check your laptop or mobile phone. They are still in huge size, despite the improvements in gadget technology. I am really looking forward to hear about the range and battery size! They will be impressive like its front grilles!

Last point, that’s LED powered flying lady will be requested by some customers. I am pretty sure about that! Don’t be shocked if you notice that LED lady on a RR driving along the street.

http://www.electricluxury.com/