What will it be?
Rolls-Royce takes its first steps in the fully electric field with the Specter. That is still an EV with batteries, but according to the CEO of the luxury top brand, it cannot be ruled out that Rolls-Royce will eventually go for hydrogen.
More than half a year ago, Rolls-Royce presented its first series-produced fully electric model, the Spectre. It has a large battery pack with an estimated 100 kWh capacity, with which the nearly three-ton Specter should be able to travel 520 km according to the WLTP cycle. Despite its size, it is therefore an EV that you do not have to deal with quickly range anxiety has to contend with. Does Rolls-Royce immediately have an ideal technical story? For now yes, says CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös, but he does not rule out a major change of course.
In conversation with Coach the German states that he is open to the use of hydrogen, but not to combustion engines: “That is not the most efficient way to use hydrogen. If hydrogen is used in the future, it will be with fuel cells. They are nothing more than batteries, only you get your energy in a different way. If the technology is advanced enough, then we at Rolls-Royce can certainly go after it.” Müller-Ötvös does not even rule out the possibility that batteries will completely clear the field. “We may be able to ditch batteries and switch to fuel cells.”
The fact that Müller-Ötvös is positive about hydrogen does not come entirely out of the blue. Rolls-Royce parent company BMW is also still very interested in hydrogen. Last summer, CEO Oliver Zipse even called hydrogen ‘the missing piece in the puzzle of electric transport’. With the BMW iX5 Hydrogen, it is taking steps in this area and in 2005 BMW already had a V12 running on hydrogen. We don’t have to expect the latter at Rolls-Royce, it becomes clear. The V12 will probably really blow the retreat with that brand, or it will have to run on synthetic fuels.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl