PARIS: Over the past months, Rolls-Royce test and development engineers for the all-electric Spectre have shifted their focus from the extreme conditions of Arjeplog, Sweden, to more formal scrutiny in a location that reflects the Spectre's everyday use: the French Riviera.

Rolls-Royce said the French Riviera and its roads presented a perfect combination of the types of conditions that will be demanded from Spectre’s clients, ranging from technical coastal corniches to faster inland carriageways.

Forming a crucial part of Spectre's 2.5 million kilometre global testing programme, a total of 625,000km will be driven on and around the French Côte d’Azur. Spectre development is now 40% complete.

This phase is split into two parts, beginning at the historic Autodrome de Miramas proving ground, located in the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône in Provence.



Once a circuit that played host to the 1926 Grand Prix, the site is now a state-of-the-art test and development facility, incorporating more than 60 kilometres of closed routes and 20 test track environments that provide a vast number of testing opportunities over its 1,198 acre footprint.

These include irrigation units that create standing water, demanding handling circuits with tight corners and adverse cambers, as well as a heavily banked 3.1 mile three-lane high-speed bowl, enabling Spectre to be tested at continuous high speeds.

The second phase of testing in the region occurs in the Provençal countryside surrounding the Autodrome de Miramas.

This region is enjoyed by many of the marque’s clients, therefore a significant 55% of testing here has taken place on the very roads that many production Spectres will be driven on following first customer deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The carmaker said Spectre is the most connected Rolls-Royce ever and each of its components are more intelligent than in any previous Rolls-Royce. It features 141,200 sender-receiver relations and has more than 1,000 functions and more than 25,000 sub functions. This is around three times more sender-receiver signals than a typical Rolls-Royce.



Over the course of the testing in France, the marque’s engineers are painstakingly creating a dedicated control for each of Spectre’s 25,000-plus functions, incorporating variations of response depending on factors including weather, driver behaviour, vehicle status and road conditions.

Other highlights of the Spectre is that it has a 30% increase in rigidity enabled by integrating the battery pack into its structure, and that it will be the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce yet, with a drag coefficient of 0.25.