Driving the world's only electric-powered Rolls-Royce

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Since her first appearance in 1911, the Spirit of Ecstasy figurine heralding every Rolls-Royce has spread her cape on clouds of carbon dioxide. Except in this car — the Rolls-Royce 102EX, whose wardrobe-sized bonnet covers a 1,411-lb box of batteries. It’s everything right, and wrong, with driving on electricity.

This isn’t a prototype, and Rolls-Royce has no immediate plans to rip the 6.75-liter V-12s from the Phantom-driving chauffeurs hauling the world’s grandees anytime soon. Instead, the 102EX serves as a rolling customer clinic for Rolls-Royce and parent BMW, which have shipped the 102EX around the world over the past 10 months, asking wealthy customers for suggestions of how to navigate an ever-warming world.

While Rolls-Royce and other carmakers of its ilk represent the world’s wealth, as automakers go they’re almost proletarian. Making money in cars requires engineering and building one set of parts that can be sold several million times over, spreading overhead costs as thinly as possible. Last year, Rolls-Royce sold 2,711 cars worldwide. Ford sells that many F-Seriespickups in the United States every 36 hours.

Yet as the demands for more efficient technology grows, from both customers and government regulators worldwide, Rolls-Royce can no longer afford to sell big but outdated gasoline engines as it once did. U.S. regulations will gradually require Rolls-Royce to improve the 14 mpg average its models sport here, and European and Asian rules for carbon emissions from cars are even tougher. Plus, Rolls-Royce customers give  diesel engines the same regard Queen Elizabeth would give a brown-bag lunch.

That leaves electricity as the final frontier.