Rolls-Royce may build an electric car
18:27
Up to now, Rolls-Royce has pooh poohed the idea of building an electric car, but ever tightening government regulations may be changing the company’s mind. Soon, wealthy plutocrats may not be able to buy their way out of the green car revolution by simply paying a little more for the cars. Fines for non-compliance with European Union regulations will soon move from merely inconvenient to genuinely painful.
At the Frankfurt auto show this month, Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, head of the BMW division that owns Rolls-Royce, said, “Suppose we find a battery technology that can offer ranges that are acceptable to our customers.” In that case, he said, “I can definitely imagine a fully electric Rolls-Royce.”
That’s a lot of supposing and imagining. A Rolls-Royce today tips the scales at close to 6,000 lbs, and that’s before any people or luggage gets added. Theoretically, a battery could be made that is large enough to waft all that weight down the highway (the Tesla Model X may have a gross vehicle weight of more than 6,000 lbs.), but the charging network to keep the battery topped up barely exists anywhere in the UK or Europe.
Whether or not the Tesla Model S or Model X is quite the car a Rolls-Royce is, customers may prefer to own a car that has its own dedicated charging network rather than be parked on the side of the road waiting with a depleted battery, waiting for assistance.
Which raises this interesting possibility: Is the Rolls-Royce simply irrelevant in the modern world?
