First Drive: Rolls-Royce 102EX

Rolls-Royce has been using the wrong kind of power plants for the last 105 years. After one drive in the electric Rolls-Royce Phantom, code-named 102EX, we realize what a lousy source of power the internal-combustion engine is for such a car.

A piston engine is a collection of hot metal components all turning, pumping, pounding and grinding around and against each other. It creates a lot of heat and even more noise. And yet despite all that, it's still so limited in its design that it has to run through a box of gears simply to extract an acceptable performance envelope from its narrow power band.

This provides progress that is both noisy and subject to continual interruption by the need to change gear. What could be less suited to a Rolls-Royce?

A Taste of Rolls-Royce's Future
The 102EX (or Phantom Experimental Electric, as Rolls prefers to call it) sweeps up to its factory next to the Goodwood racetrack amid the gently rolling hills of southeast England.

On the outside, the translucent hood ornament and transparent cover over the charging socket are the only clues that this Rolls is unlike any other. Inside there's even less to spot: The unique power reserve meter now reads past 100 percent, to denote when the electric motors actually return power to the battery during deceleration. Otherwise, the only visual clue is a big red button in the center console.

This is a prototype, and only the fourth time it has ever moved under its own propulsion. We're told that should something go wrong, we're to stop the car, hit the red button and run. Well, they do call it the "experimental" electric after all.

No V12, Just 1,500 Pounds of Batteries
Before heading off, we sneak a look under the hood. A maze of wiring sits atop the largest battery pack ever made for a car. It takes up every ounce of space once occupied by its former resident, the mighty 6.75-liter V12, and it weighs 1,500 pounds alone.

Its energy is sent rearward to feed two electric motors sitting over the rear axle. Together they generate 389 horsepower, a significant drop from the 453 hp in the normal Phantom. The deficiency is more than made up for with an abundance of torque. In this case there's 589 pound-feet on tap compared to the 531 lb-ft of the piston-powered car. Oh, and the electric motors deliver it the moment you touch the gas.

Rolls knows it cannot sell V12 gas-powered cars forever.

Hitting that pedal elicits an odd reaction, to say the least. It doesn't rev, snarl, growl or even hum. It doesn't do anything, in fact, other than pitch you down the road unaccompanied by any sensation other than the accrual of speed. Cocooned away from the outside world in the vast cockpit, it's not even like a Tesla or Leaf, where you can at least rely on increasing wind noise to provide some other impression of performance gain. The sensation here is of sitting still while watching the countryside come to meet you.

In any other car it would be an unnerving experience, but in the Rolls it's not even slightly disconcerting. On the contrary it feels not only right for such a machine, but also makes you see that everything else that's powered luxury cars until now has been wrong. Smoothness and silence combine into a refinement beyond anything ever sold to the public.

Purely a Concept
But here comes the bit where we must inject a cold, hard dose of reality into this warm and cozy scene. Rolls-Royce admits it's not likely to build an all-electric Phantom like this. We only need a couple of hours behind its wheel to know why, as that's all it takes to run the giant lithium-ion battery completely dry. And then unless you have access to a very special power source, you're going to have to park for at least 24 hours if you want to fully recharge the battery. Hard to see too many owners happy with that arrangement.

It is also subject to the law of unintended consequences. Remove the sound of the engine and you start to hear all kinds of things you never noticed before: the sound of tires on tarmac, your hands moving around the controls, the sniffs and breaths of your passengers. We suspect some might regard these as a poor substitute for a 6.75-liter V12.

Still, the electric Phantom feels good. The extra 400 pounds it has to carry around doesn't make much of a difference given the car's already substantial weight. And the fact that its top speed is limited to just 100 mph hardly seems to matter. If ever there was a car in which it's not how fast you go, but how you go fast that matters, this is it.

The absence of a gearbox coupled to what was already one of the best-riding chassis of any car on sale means the Phantom glides like no other car ever built. Turning around in a golf course parking lot I noticed a gardener, head down, busily tending his plants. The front fender must have passed less than 6 inches from his rear, yet he never looked up. If I'd wanted I could have bumped him into his flower bed without him having ever heard the approach of his 3-ton assailant.

And the Point Is?
Why did Rolls spend an undisclosed but substantial sum creating a one-off prototype it knows will never make it into production? Simply put, it wanted to start conversations among its customers about potential future power sources. And let's face it: When you're Rolls-Royce you don't just e-mail a questionnaire to your customers and expect a response.

The fact is, Rolls knows it cannot sell V12 gas-powered cars forever. At some stage it believes legislation will make such engines illegal if not merely impractical. With that in mind, the company needs to find the right solution in time to develop, test and sell it to a suspicious public. The electric Phantom is the first part of that process.

How should it end? Rolls-Royce asked that very question of us.

Well, how about taking the next-generation Phantom, fitting it with this electric powertrain and then supplementing it with a suitable onboard generator to supply electricity? In other words, make it just like the Chevrolet Volt, only twice as large, twice as heavy and 10 times more expensive.

A tough sell, maybe, but once customers feel how quiet and refined an electric Rolls-Royce can be, it won't sound quite so ridiculous.

Edmunds attended a manufacturer-sponsored event, to which selected members of the press were invited, to facilitate this report.