From Milan to Mottarone in a Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge: let the electric prophecy begin
From Charles Rolls-Royce's prophecy 125 years ago to reality: from Milan to Mottarone with the Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge, between hypnotic torque and muffled silence. Electric is better than the twin-turbo V12 of Ghost and Cullinan Series II, but still with craftsmanship, technology and a comfort that makes the journey memorable.
"The electric car is quiet and clean. It does not produce any smells or vibrations. It will become very useful when an infrastructure of charging stations is available'. Those words, written in 1900 by Charles Stewart Rolls, even before he met Henry Royce, sound like a fulfilled programme today. More than a century later, the company they founded has turned prophecy into reality with Spectre, the first all-electric production Rolls-Royce.
We leave Milan at the crack of dawn. The already awake city glides by in silence. The Spectre Black Badge 'switches off' the traffic with its total silence and replaces it with a velvety progression, immediately more intense than in the 'standard' Spectre. The Black Badge is the amplified alter ego of the electric coupe with its 650 bhp of maximum power in Infinity Mode and a peak of 1,075 Nm in Spirited Mode, for a 0-100 km/h sprint in just over four seconds. It is, quite simply, the most powerful Rolls-Royce ever.
On the slip road to the A8 the magic comes true: heavier steering, roll under control, set-up that 'reads' the road surface. The Goodwood engineers have recalibrated damping and pitch stabilisation to give more feedback without betraying the famous Magic Carpet Ride, now filtered by electrical instantaneity. The result: you ride on a flying carpet that reacts in high definition, but remains impassive in the face of joints and bumps.
The exit towards Lake Maggiore is the threshold between two worlds: on the one hand the motorway, where the Spectre travels with a trickle of gas with the elasticity of a turbine; on the other the coast road, which demands measure, precision, serenity. Here, the regeneration selectable from the "B" control on the steering wheel-mounted gear lever and the carefully calibrated mechanical brake come in handy: it modulates on tiptoe, always recovering energy, while deceleration remains smooth. The 102 kWh battery, integrated in the aluminium structure, adds 'good' inertia and soundproofing: 700 kg of structural silence. Left to the one-pedal system, stopping at traffic lights is worthy of the best Chauffeur. If, in fact, at Goodwood they boast that 100 per cent of Rolls-Royce customers choose to drive their own cars, it is also true that the British car brand is also chosen by large companies, such as the Peninsula luxury hotel chain that trains its drivers in the "White Gloves", the course offered by the British manufacturer to become certified Rolls-Royce chauffeurs.
