Rolling onto the roads this month is the new Rolls-Royce limousine. Unlike its predecessors, this limousine has something new up its sleeve – it runs on electricity. The classy British car makers are proud to announce their first Rolls-Royce limousine based on the Phantom model, which is to cost a hefty 1 million pounds.
The New Rolls-Royce is a remodelled Phantom model, with a greater price tag. The original Phantom cost a mere 300,000 – kid’s money compared to the 1 million you need to fork out for the new electric Rolls-Royce. Although in fact the new electric Phantom or the Phantom Experimental Electric (EXP 102) will not as yet be available for general release, it will be displayed throughout the world to help gage public opinion on electric cars as they replace oil fuelled cars.
This limousine is a zero emission vehicle that can be charged from the mains in your home. It is environmentally friendly and cost effective, as it costs as little as 2p per mile, compared to 8.1 p for oil fuel based cars. It saves a large amount of money per year, perhaps, cutting costs by a quarter. Although you do need a substantial amount of capital to pay for the car to begin with.
Although like all luxury cars from Rolls-Royce, this car is for the super rich alone. But despite this, it is a great piece of engineering that proves electric powered cars can combine with luxury. It’s a great advancement for electric cars and could mean that not so far in the future most of us can own electric cars.
But for now as car manufacturers experiment with electric powered vehicles, we are to only see them on display till they become readily available. There are still a great number of problems, such as how harsh weather conditions affect performance, that need to be overcome as yet. Electric cars are still in the early experimental stages, but as technology keeps evolving, we are to see within the next decade a new fuel based vehicle on our road.
The Phantom Experimental Electric will be on show in 2011, starting in Geneva, in order to gage with their clients opinions and gain feedback. It will then be hopefully available for sale in 2012, just in time for the Olympics. So we better start saving up!
