Rolls-Royce to go fully electric by 2040
Rolls-Royce plans to drop gasoline engines in favour of electric drivetrains by 2040, partly because it feels battery-driven power plants are a good fit for the brand; and partly to meet changing international regulations.
“Electrification actually fits extremely well with Rolls-Royce because it’s silent, it’s powerful, it’s torquey, so in that sense it’s a very good fit,” Torsten Müller, chief executive of the BMW-owned British marque, told the Financial Times.
But the move is also being made somewhat reluctantly, with several countries looming EV and emissions mandates being the principal reason for the switch.
Rolls-Royce’s first electric vehicle should debut some time in the next 10 years, but its existing engines will be phased out over several decades. “We will definitely offer 12-cylinder engines as long as we can, as long as it is legally allowed to offer them,” Müller confirmed.
Both France and the U.K. are pushing for all vehicles on their roads to have at least partial electric power by 2040, and RollsRoyce figures other markets may follow suit. The chief executive confirmed, however, that the environmental impact of the company’s vehicles had nothing to do with its product planning.
“These cars aren’t used extensively, nobody is driving long, long distances, and so the mileage on a Rolls-Royce is lower than the average car would carry,” Müller told the Times. “But electrification is the future, full stop. You need to prepare yourself for that.”
Rolls-Royce previewed a hypothetical 2040s vehicle, the 103EX concept, two years ago, a “vision” of a battery-driven self-driving car. In 2011, it built a one-off “Experimental Electric” Phantom, the 102EX, to gauge customer reaction; the reception was lukewarm.