The Rolls-Royce EX102

Car and Driver

Rolls-Royce is turning heads with its new prototype for what could be the world’s first $600,000 battery-electric vehicle. For this concept-car edition of its stately Phantom, Rolls replaced the V12 gas engine with two electric motors powered by a massive, 1,400-pound lithium-ion battery pack. The EX102 supposedly has a 124-mile range—“more than enough to get you from Monaco to Cannes and back.”

The London Telegraph

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Amazingly, the EX102’s performance nearly matches that of the standard Phantom. Step on the accelerator, and this car “wafts away” with a familiar composure. Its one truly insurmountable flaw might be its “insanely long” recharge time: Rolls hasn’t yet figured out a way to rejuice the battery in less than eight hours.

Automobile

“The guilt-free surge” that a driver experiences as this car accelerates on battery power alone is not what Rolls-Royce’s experiment is about. The EX102 is about the luxury automaker’s long-term financial sustainability—about trying to identify an alternative to gas-guzzling engines before the world’s oil runs out. In the shorter run, the creators of this “extraordinary” car may “find it very hard to resist the customers who arrive with open checkbooks, asking for an EX102 of their own.”