Rolls-Royce Phantom EX102 Electric driven!
Is this the future world’s bestest car ever?
By Shahzad Sheikh
Yes I know the electric Rolls-Royce Phantom had been successfully driven around lakes in Geneva and, in fact, all round the world, but us journo types are a cynical lot. Sceptical, at best, is how you could have described my response to an invitation to actually drive the vastly valuable experimental ultimate high Roller at the Dubai Autodrome!
(Pictures and videos after the jump)
Let’s be honest, there’s been talk of electric cars for years, many years, but the only form of transport to have successfully used volts as motive power are electric buggies in resorts, airports and golf courses. Even the humble milk float that silently delivered the wholesome white stuff each morning to thousands of homes in Britain (resulting in the UK declaring in 1967 that it had more electric vehicles on the road than the rest of the world put together) has more recently been replaced by converted diesel vans.
Giant luxury milk float?
Plus those milk floats were slow and laboured. Next time you slip a new set of batteries in your R/C car, stack a collection of books and magazines on top and see how far the electric motors managed to get it. Not very far I’ll wager.
So aside from the concerns over how far an electric car will go before it runs out of amps, it never seemed to me a particularly potent form of transport fuel. Now bear in mind that this Rolls-Royce Phantom weights well over 2700kg (that’s nearly three tons!). Factor in that batteries don’t work particularly well in hot climates and that just trying to keep them cool will sap the power of a limited range electric vehicle, and you’ll understand my lack of faith.
The ever-genial PR rep on the other side of the phone line was playing along though, his professionalism unflinching as I offloaded a barrage of pathetic jokes about having to bring my own charger, or even a spare set of Duracells and insisting that I most certainly would not be pushing it back to the pits. ‘Har-de-har-har,’ he was probably thinking, ‘as if I haven’t heard all of these already a 100 times today!’
Driving the electric beast
Anyway the joke is on me. I’d been attentively watching the big Phantom saloon rolling serenely (literally) in and out of the pit lane, wondering when it would roll to a flat halt, it’s electrons and protons utterly spent.
Then it was finally my turn to have a go, and I have to admit I threw a final glance at the opaque Flying Lady, made of Makrolon for this one-off, and found it was continuing to glow a bright LED-lit blue with nary a flicker or shimmer.
Inside it appears to be an entirely regular Phantom, one of which (with the more typical 6.75-litre V12) was on hand for comparison. The controls are pretty much the same, you slip the transmission lever into ‘D’ and might only then notice that the ‘power reserve meter’ normally employed to reveal how little of the magnificent petrol V12’s might you are actually employing at any given time, is tweaked to indicate what could best be described as positive energy – when the batteries are being recharged through regeneration.
Tentatively feeding in the throttle, all doubts were immediately wiped out as the humongous car moved off, both silently and swiftly – no hint of a struggle or straining to move this amount of mass.
On paper this car is slower than the petrol Phantom, reaching 100kph in under eight seconds compared to the 5.7 seconds of the petrol car and will only reach 160kph compared to the 240kph of the fossil-fuel sucking goliath. But it doesn’t feel slow. The lack of drama, noise and palaver as it arrives at the end of the pit lane and continues to accelerate out onto the floodlit circuit, gives you sense of very rapid movement.
This has a lot to do with the 590lb ft of torque available over a wide range compared to the 531lb ft at 3,500rpm for the normal Phant. In fact, as the engineers will tell you, they actually had to dial back the torque, because such is the characteristic of electric drive that it delivers instantaneous torque from the moment you engage, which in this case risked ripping the drive shaft apart. Just think back again to your R/C car on a full charge and how it doesn’t build up to speed but shots off the line at full pelt every time.
Rolls engineers actually matched the power delivery characteristics of the EX to the petrol car – and they succeeded. There’s no engine noise, so you become more aware of the road roar, the high speed wind noise and the sound of the air con fan. But generally it’s eerily quiet in here – although having said that the big V12 doesn’t exactly shout at you either. Don’t forget this is a Rolls-Royce after all, and as they used to say, the loudest thing in a Rolls should be the tick-tock of the clock – except that the clock’s digital now and doesn’t do that anymore!
(Imthishan Giado also drove the electric Phantom at the Autodrom – watch video now)
How does it all work though?
The entire engine block has been replaced with the largest passenger car battery in the world – large format Lithium-Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese-Oxide (NCM) pouch cells with an overall capacity of 71kWh and peak current of 850A. We’re not sure what that all means, but we readily believe it to be a lot. The 96 cells are arranged to mimic the shape of the engine and gearbox they replace, and it all weighs 640kg.
Somehow they’ve managed to keep the front and rear weight distribution exactly the same as the petrol Phantom, thanks to positioning a pair of very substantial electric motors behind the rear seats in place of the fuel tank – and hence leaving luggage-space unchanged. Which means that the car handles pretty much the same too. Not that there was any risk of my trying to exploit even the lowlier limits, despite us being on a closed race track, this is too valuable and too rarefied a vehicle, plus hurling a Phantom saloon into a corner just seems so crass. But what I did conclude was that there was none of the nose-heavy sensation I was expecting and the steering felt as light and easy as you’d expect.
I stayed in the pitlane until every journalist had driven it, and there was still plenty of juice left in it at the end of the evening. So all my foreboding predictions of the Phantom being stranded out on the club-link section, were never fulfilled. According to the engineers, it was predicted to be able to cover 200km between charges in our conditions.
Getting charged up
So how long does it take to charge? Well plug it into your normal socket and it’ll take an absurd 20 hours. However use ‘three-phase’ charging and that time tumbles to just 8 hours.
However this Rolls-Royce is also trialling an experimental new charging technology that is wireless and could, in my opinion, address a lot of the infrastructure issues of electric cars. It works through a set of induction plates, one fitted under the car and another to the ground where the car would park. The transfer pad on the ground ‘beams’ power up to the other plate with power frequencies magnetically coupled.
They reckon this method is about 90% efficient, you don’t have to align the plates up perfectly and it’s completely harmless to animals or humans (I did ask) – the electromagnetic radiation is well within agreed limits.
Precedent of the electric Rolls
Believe it or not, Henry Royce himself was an accomplished electrical engineer before he turned to making cars. In fact he made his money from selling dynamos and electric motors. At the time one of his clients developed a two-seater electric car powered by an electric motor.
Charles Rolls also experimented with electric cars, selling the electric brougham. It’s thought this was part of a ‘City and Suburban Electric Car Project’ – we’re talking early 1900s! A century later, we still haven’t got viable City and Suburban Electric Car Projects!
So is the electric Rolls a goer then?
First off it must be said that Rolls-Royce has no plans to put this vehicle into production. This is simply an experimental test bed, which happens to actually work. Hence they are currently touring the world with this car inviting VIPs, Rolls-Royce owners and hacks like me to try it out and tell them what we think – ie, is this ‘perfection or compromise’?
And the answer? Well it’s not as clear-cut as it was for me when I first arrived at the Autodrome at the beginning of the evening. Then the answer would have been ‘forget about it’.
The reality is that a Rolls-Royce is meant to be supremely smooth, comfortable, effortlessly quick and spookily quiet. And the 102 EX is all of those things. Not only has the ripping out of its traditional heart not compromised it, but it’s actually improved the experience because whilst it’s still a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, there is no longer a transmission tunnel with the only thing running fore to aft is cabling, not a drive shaft. Thus inside the cabin you get a flat floor and hence more space for the typical thick-pile carpet – though none was fitted to this car.
So it drives and wafts just as a Rolls should. Result? Not exactly. There’s still reservations, one physical and one purely emotional.
As good as the charging technology is getting, if you’re heading to the east coast in this from Dubai, the Phantom will come to halt two-thirds of the way, and there isn’t a decent resort for miles to relax in, whilst you’re driver plugs it in and you have to while away eight hours at minimum.
The induction plate technology is awesome and could be the answer, but only for city driving, nothing beyond, and the Rolls is nothing if not a stupendous grand tourer.
And then there’s psychological stumbling block of not having a proper honest-to-God, pulverisingly mighty combustion engine in it. We’re really excited about Johnny English’s Phantom Coupe in the new movie because it has a V16 engine! Two electric motors just doesn’t float the boat of paid-up petrolheads like me.
But then what do we know?
Still I don’t think, as good as it is, the 102EX is realistic. However hybrid technology is definitely worth considering, and surely, the ‘best car in the world’ should be at the very forefront of technology and as we know, electric power is old hat. What we’re looking for now is viable fuel cell technology, or failing that how about Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor – that’s about due in 2015 isn’t it?
