Westhampnett, SEPT 29: Rolls-Royce on Wednesday announced its first fully electric car, the “Spectre”, will be available in late 2023, the luxury BMW group brand adding that all its vehicles will be electric by 2030.

“This is not a prototype. It’s the real thing, it will be tested in plain sight and our clients will take first deliveries of the car in the fourth quarter of 2023,” said CEO Torsten Mueller-Otvoes.

“I am proud to announce that Rolls-Royce is to begin the on-road testing programme for an extraordinary new product that will elevate the global all-electric car revolution and create the first — and finest — super-luxury product of its type,” he added.

Mueller-Otvoes noted that Charles Rolls (co-founder with Henry Royce) had “truly prophesied an electrified future for automobiles. In April 1900 he experienced an early electric motor car named the Columbia and declared its electric drive to be ideal”.

With the increasing switch over to electric, “now is the time to change the course of the future of luxury,” he added, with Rolls Royce seeing electric propulsion as perfectly adapted to the brand’s ambitions.

The group had already presented two electric-powered prototype models.

In a video Rolls showed off the Spectre coupe, complete with the marque’s trademark “Spirit of Ecstasy” bonnet sculpture. The Spectre is based on the aluminium chassis of its 2017 Phantom limousine launched in 2017.