Opinion

Man likes incredibly luxurious car shocker. I know. But two things.

One, it wasn’t a given that Rolls-Royce would get its first electric car as right as it has done. And two, the new Kia Picanto isn’t available yet, otherwise I might have nominated that.

But to the Spectre. It does all of the things that a Rolls does properly, which are things we’ve spent 20 years since BMW relaunched the brand being happily impressed by, only now with electric power.

And electric power suits this car. It’s like the V12 of other Rollers has spent the past 20 years trying to be like the motors: completely hushed and incredibly smooth, with a relaxed step-off from rest and no discernible gearchanges.

The only major motive difference, in fact, is that the more dynamic internally combusted Rolls coupés allow a bit of engine sound to enter the cabin if you’re accelerating hard. This one can make some fake sounds, but it’s not quite the same.

It cruises serenely, albeit with a bit more float on straight roads, I think, than the best of the ICE coupés.

Rolling comfort is excellent and it likes being driven quickly way more than I expected.

There’s a (very) big battery to give it an extensive range. Enough for the Cotswolds to Glyndebourne and back in one hit.

Not that owners would be likely to suffer charger anxiety if it had a shorter range – they would just drive something else. The only owner I know who has received a Spectre has also just had an Aston Martin Valkyrie delivered. So, y’know, owners have options.

That broad appeal – of the sort that makes hypercar owners want one – is what makes the Spectre special. Rolls isn’t pushing electric power as some kind of mandated compromise. It makes the car more Rolls-Roycey.

I have never turned up to a launch in a worse state to drive a car.

Okay, maybe just once, when I drove the Ford Mondeo so hungover I had to stop to throw up at the side of the road. But that was 30 years ago and I was young and quite colossally stupid.

This time, the fault was not mine but British Airways, who got me up at 3.30am on consecutive days to catch one flight it cancelled and another it merely delayed by many hours.

Which is why I turned up a day and a half late to the two-day Aston Martin DB12 launch in the south of France. I was exhausted, had a blinding headache and was quite heroically hacked off.

By which point all the kind folk of Aston Martin could do was fill me up with Diet Coke and paracetamol and point me at the hotel, a mere five hours’ fast drive away. “See you there…”

Quite unintentionally, BA and I had devised the toughest test a car like this could face.

It had to be exciting enough to keep me awake, yet sufficiently comfortable for me not to want to drive it off the edge of the Col de Vence. And its all-new operating system had to be not even slightly annoying.

Eventually, I arrived at the hotel, where a familiar face asked how I was feeling.

“Fine,” I told her, and only then remembered this was the same kind lady who’d been ladling out the painkillers five hours earlier.

Truth is, after a great drive in a fabulous car, I felt terrific.

It was probably the most vivid, convincing demonstration of all a grand tourer should be I have ever witnessed. And to think that without British Airways, I might have missed it altogether.

This is a cheat choice, really, because I’m not so fussed about the folding metal roof. Nevertheless, it’s the clever arrangement that tucks a solid roof panel beneath the huge, lifting rear deck that makes the Maserati MC20 new for 2023, so I sneaked it in here on that basis.

In truth, I would settle for the fixed-roof MC20 if it were my supercar, but the Cielo still gets my vote just because it’s such a huge joy to see Maserati get its mojo back.

So much so that I chose the MC20 over other likely contenders, including the Abarth 500e (which I adore for bringing an unashamedly over-the-top and fun-focused attitude to a small EV), the Porsche 911 T (it’s a manual, rear-wheel-drive 911 – need I say more?), the facelifted Mazda 2 (a straightforward, affordable, fun small car in the same mould as the late Ford Fiesta) and the Ford Bronco (so terrible yet so brilliant, in true original Land Rover Defender style).

But while I shuffled through all of these options, the Maserati kept springing to mind.

This is a brand that, pre-2020, I genuinely feared for as it plugged along with a limited range of outdated models and no apparent ambition or plan to evolve.

Yet, with the Stellantis merger behind it, Maserati has come to life and reinvented itself in just a few short years – and the MC20 is the poster child of that reinvention.

Stunning to look at in precisely the right classic yet modern fashion, and high-tech with its thumpingly powerful bespoke Nettuno V6, but also appearing in a matter of months with a pure-electric powertrain that the carbon tub was always designed for. The best of piston and battery power in one model? Here’s hoping.

I was also blown away by the usability of the MC20, which, ultimately, feels rather like a hugely powerful Porsche 718 Cayman.

So, sure, I like the Cielo roof, but more than anything (even though it’s years after the MC20 originally arrived) I’m still just overflowing with delight (and not a little bit of relief) that Maserati is back – future-proof yet still eccentrically, beautifully, unmistakably Maserati.

Lights are twinkling in windows, Jona Lewie is on the radio and my notebook still has a load of column ideas in it that I haven’t yet managed to write about this year.

Some of those I’d like to get ticked off before 2024.

Such as: “What’s the point of a car with a long range?” That’s what I was asked after I wrote about my Alpina D3 S Touring and how I could get 628 miles out of its diesel tank.

“But surely you’d have to stop at some point during that distance anyway, wouldn’t you?” Of course. But there’s something about the choice of stopping when you want to, rather than when you have to, that makes a long road trip roll by more pleasantly.

A healthy range in a car is a factor that works for me and several other high-mile drivers I know, even for the weekly commute. It’s all about time management, I suppose. 

Time is one of the reasons why people would drive along a Nottinghamshire road with a river crossing in it called Rufford ford. It’s longer to go around, so they would drive through, sometimes to comical effect.

Videos of people attempting to ford the river and flooding their vehicles have become an internet staple.

One famous clip shows a motorbike rider approaching the ford at speed and, to be fair, making it out the other side – just without his motorbike. Anyway, because of people like him and crowds with camera phones, we can’t have nice things, so, presumably to the relief of the locals, the crossing has been barriered off.

I wanted to write a longer column about a politician who earlier this year said that cars were “for the elite”.

The trouble is, I was travelling when I heard it and noted it and now can’t find the quote. But by gum it makes me cross, the sort of nonsense talked by people who apparently have never left London to know what life is like elsewhere.

I have some low-paid workers in my family, and do you know what unites them? They all have access to a car. Because the alternative is that they wouldn’t be able to go to work.

Item ticked off, then, but it’s not very festive. I think I’ll revisit this another time.

I have thoughts on lane closures, when two lanes go to one. Even though signs today say “use both lanes when queuing”, it still causes angst: there are those who think they can delay the onset of a queue by merging early, then get irritated by those they see as pushing in, resulting in argy-bargy that surely ultimately adds to a delay.

The signs should be clearer: repeated ones that say “don’t merge yet” on approach, followed by “merge in turn now” (or “zip merge now” or just “merge now”) when the time is right.

Moving on. Evidently I was taken earlier this year by an engineer saying they were a “fan of straight-six engines”. Me too. Perhaps more than any other layout.

I suppose this is the kind of fact that will gradually get forgotten by all but the most niche of old-school enthusiasts as time goes by, but the straight six has not just a perfect primary balance of all its reciprocating masses (which is not atypical and occurs at engine speed) but also a perfect secondary balance – vibrations at double engine speed.

I used to be able to work out why this was. Perhaps, in 2024, I’ll do so again. That kind of techy deep dive, a reader has suggested, we should do more with electric cars too. Noted. I’ll do more of that in 2024 as well.

Finally, then, all that remains on my to-write list for 2023 is to thank you for reading, watching and listening to us at Autocar, however you do so. It means more to us than you know. Have a great Christmas and New Year and see you in 2024.

Early electric cars were defined by range. While range remains an important part of an EV's spec panel, a broader understanding of battery sizes and efficiency, as well as the reliability of the charging network and the speed at which an EV can be recharged have become just as prominent and important as that ultimate range figure.  

Unless a car's range is notably smaller compared to the market norm or notably greater, then it can be 234 miles, 256 miles or 291 miles and that can typically be defined as being somewhere between enough and more than enough. EV drivers have realised running out of charge is ultimately as likely as running out of fuel in a petrol car, even if it's a more complex situation to be able to avoid.

Yet overall range is fast making a comeback as the biggest number in town due to the relationship it has with the car's price. Executives from Mazda, Toyota, Polestar and Nissan have all recently dropped not-too-subtle hints in interviews with Autocar Business that the fastest way to reduce the cost of electric cars – which are proving prohibitively expensive to be able to crack past the early adopters and incentivised fleet buyers – is to reduce the size of the battery and thus the range, while speeding up charging at the same time.

Lexus's design boss Simon Humphries put it bluntly when he said: “Costs can come down if the acceptance of range comes down. Customers can decide.” When the battery is widely accepted to be anything from 40-60% of the cost of a car, you can see why.

There is a related argument that by using smaller batteries you will ultimately use fewer natural resources, too. This is why Toyota so passionately still pushes forward hybrids with small batteries for real-world efficiency, yet the same can be said for EVs.

Mazda's chief financial officer Jeff Guyton was quoted in this column earlier this year: "From a consumer standpoint, people often think that bigger is better, right? The MX-30 [Mazda's first EV], I think, offers people a usable daily driving range. Doesn’t it make sense that if you have a 30-something kWh battery instead of a 100kWh battery, then three people can have those precious resources that are in that battery?"

Polestar boss Thomas Ingenlath believes it’s faster charging that can ultimately bring down battery sizes and therefore costs. His firm has invested in a company called StoreDot, which has developed extreme fast charging using existing battery technology and architectures that can achieve 100 miles of range in five minutes

“It will allow you to reduce the resources you put into the car," he says on faster charging times. "From a material perspective and from the customer's money you put into a car, it’s much better to find the efficiency with fast charging and higher efficiency of a car. If you go towards smaller batteries, everything benefits, including the weight.”

All of which begs the question: how much range is necessary? For now, a larger range nearly always means a larger battery and thus a much larger cost.

The likes of Lucid, BMW and Mercedes have all broken through the 100kWh barrier with premium electric models that cost more than £100,000. Yet the fact that jumbo battery packs are now being offered in 4.5-metre-long crossovers with the likes of the Peugeot e-3008 soon to offer a near-100kWh battery shows that range is still considered the ultimate selling point for EVs. Given the standard e-3008 with a 73kWh battery costs almost £50,000, the price of the larger 98kWh one and its 435-mile range that will follow at the end of next year will be eye-watering.

Nissan's Cli Lyons, vice president for product and services planning across Nissan's AMIEO region, which includes Europe, says her firm thinks differently when it comes to range.

"Customers think of destinations: journey lengths and journey times," she told me. "For us, range is the reality of driving distance and the total journey time. If you have a bigger battery, you stop less and then take longer to charge. If you have a smaller battery, you stop more but charge for less time. It's then different by segment, but you need to understand customer needs and usage.

"You should never ask customers to change habits, instead offer solutions that fit into their lifestyle. We'd never say we want to have, say, a 110kWh battery, we'd say to do this journey in this time, and then be competitive with rivals."

Ultimately, there's a direct link between charging infrastructure and battery size and therefore vehicle cost that won't be uncoupled until the former is truly fit for purpose. Batteries have been made bigger to compensate for a lack of charging infrastructure and consumer confidence in charging is lagging and will take time to shift.

"At some point, customers will feel comfortable with range as the network will be able to support them," says Shunsuke Shigemoto, Nissan's vice president ePowertrain technology, research and advanced engineering, with ultimately confidence in charging allowing for an acceptance of smaller range and the healthy by-product of less cost.

"Customers will go on this journey with OEMs and society, but it's not going to take us to a 200kWh battery."