Rolls Royce Black Badge Spectre First Look: The Most Powerful RR Ever Is Electric
No V-12 here! This Rolls uses the same battery and motors as the standard Spectre to go just a bit faster, and now with more power.
One of the most expensive regularly produced electric cars in the world is the Rolls-Royce Spectre coupe, which starts above $400,000. Now it’s getting even better, and even more expensive, with a Black Badge edition that unlocks more power, chokes a bit of the range, but makes this the most powerful Rolls ever. Here’s what makes the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Spectre (yes, in that order) so special.
The newly-minted “most powerful Rolls-Royce ever” is good for a whopping 659 horsepower and 792 lb-ft of torque through its electric powertrain, spinning from 0 to 60 mph in a fresh 4.1 second estimated time, making this also one of the quickest Rolls-Royces to ever roll. It has an all-wheel-drive layout to put power down at all four corners through two electric motors linked to a massive 102-kWh battery pack.
The Black Badge series is meant to, yes, offer more power and stuff, but also to offer a different flavor of luxury from what Rolls typically offers, with darker accents and edgier design choices that are meant to communicate “a dynamic edge and unapologetic attitude” that the standard cars don’t typically offer. This debut color is called “Vapour Violet” inspired by 1990s club culture apparently, with a black hood, and it sits on new five-spoke 23-inch wheels with darkened brightwork around the exterior. The light-up front grille is now available in “Tailored Purple, Charles Blue, Chartreuse, Forge Yellow, and Turchese” colorways as well.
The interior gets complex Technical Fibre diamond-shaped woven surfacing with a light-up star motif throughout, with the Black Badge infinity symbol showing up in both rows of seats to symbolize the specialness of the series and represent “infinite power” as the top-of-the-line model. The driver display has a choice of Vivid Grellow, Neon Nights, Cyan Fire, Ultraviolet, or Synth Wave colorways.
To unlock the full potential of the new Black Badge Spectre, a driver must activate two new modes: Infinity Mode unlocks the full power on tap, for when you need the top end of the power band, and a new Spirited Mode is what unlocks all of the torque, for doing fun stuff in your EV like controlled launches. You push a button on the steering wheel to activate Infinity Mode, and depress both pedals with the car stopped to activate the launch control. On 23-inch wheels, the range of the Spectre drops from the standard setup’s 277 miles down to just 251, but you can salvage up to a total of 266 miles on 22-inch wheels. Pricing is said to start around $490,000, and some folks already own secret Black Badge Spectres as part of a pilot launch program due to high demand, so some are already on the road.
