Rolls-Royce's CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös has said that the automaker won't be building a production version of its 102EX electric Phantom concept any time soon.
The car was unveiled with a great fanfare in February 2011, fulfilling a two-year-old promise that the company would experiment with battery power. At the time Müller-Ötvös said that the experiment was crucial for informing future decisions on alternative technologies. It even set up a dedicated website to debate whether you could have a super luxury electric vehicle.
After letting members of the media and potential customers test drive the vehicle, it appears to have decided that Rolls-Royce's future isn't going to be electric. At least not for now.
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The company says that demand for such a car - that could end up costing as much £600,000, double the price of a petrol-fuelled vehicle -- isn't sufficient to warrant its production.
Müller-Ötvös told Car and Driver that the car's acceleration and silence were praised but the charging times (several hours) and the range (120 miles) were not acceptable. He was open to alternative powertrains, and admitted that a hybrid could work.
