Hey, pssst, wanna buy a discounted Rolls-Royce Spectre?

Here's a sentence you never thought you'd read: Rolls-Royce is giving a discount on one of their models to help sales. How much discount is the British car maker willing to give to convince you to actually buy a Spectre, you know, the fully electric Roller? About three fiddy.

In reality it's a bit more than that. But only a bit. If you're going to a dealership right now, cash in hand, willing to deal, the luxury automaker will give you no more and no less than 5000 dollhairs off. Yes, you read that correctly. On a car which will probably amount to about half a million of those dollars, you get 1 percent of. 1 percent.

It gets even funnier, because Rolls thinks the discount is necessary to offset the discontinuation of the 7500 dollar tax credit in the US. Correct me if ChatGPT is still not good at math, but according to our calculations that still means the Rolls-buyer will be paying 2500 bucks more than he had to if he ordered earlier. Half a percent is half a percent and is probably worth fighting over if the Britons think 1 percent discount will finally get millionaires and billionaires to buy the Spectre.

All stupidity aside, I think it's weird Rolls-Royce is discounting their only EV. Yes you could argue that it's a pricy EV which, due to that very specific fact, is a car nobody wants. If there is one thing we've been told over and over again is that expensive EV's don't sell. But that argument mostly boils down to the lack of the combustion engine which provides extra emotions, you know, the tingling in the nads when you rev the 8-liter W16. But the thing is, even when you rev the impeccable V12 in a Rolls, you'd be hard pressed to know it's even there.

Driving a Rolls-Royce is not about emotion, it's about comfort and class. And that, I can tell you first hand, is delivered in bucketloads by the Spectre. It's deadsilent inside, has ample power and more than enough torque to propel the four wheeled cushion to cruising speed without you getting even the least amount of discomfort in the process. I'm not the only one in claiming the fully electric Rolls might be the best iteration of a Rolls out there. The electric drivetrain only adds positives to the experience, with the only downside the time it takes to charge the thing. But if time is money, then we can safely assume the owner of a Rolls has enough of both.

Might the Spectre have an image problem? It is of course an electric car. That means having to charge it like all other paupers do with their shitty EV's. I mean, it did feel kind of strange to be standing at a FastNed charger in a half a million dollar car next to someone who's trying to fast charge his first edition Nissan Leaf, which is physically impossible.

Then again, are the rich people of the world not the ones that give us regular folk the finger when driving their superior cars? Oh wait. That's it. Electric driving is no longer the thing you do to show you're better than the rest. It's the thing everyone does because it's cheaper. No rich person wants to be associated with that. Not even if they can get 5000 dollars off to do so.

In other news:

Two important people are leaving Tesla. Well, actually only one. One of them, Siddhant Awasthi, is responsible for the Cybertruck, which has been proven to be everything but a success. I grew to loathe the thing more and more every time I saw one during my last trip to the US. I even assumed that the person driving the wedge with wheels had to be mentally or at least visually impaired. The other guy who's leaving Tesla is Emmanuel Lamacchia, he's the one responsible for the most popular EV in recent years: the Model Y. It's strange to see the two announce their departure within 24 hours of each other, which adds fuel to the fire of speculations of troubles at Tesla. But it could also come down to a simple difference in opinion about the future of the car company. Or should I say robotics and AI company. The two guys leaving are very much car guys...

Wait, how's is Aptera still not dead yet? The little car company that is struggling every stept of the way into building actual three wheeled solar cars somehow made it to production. At least, that's what is seems like. The brand is building it's first validation line on which the first models of the final car will be built and is the base for a full production line in Carlsbad, California. Keep going, Aptera! I'm rooting for you. I won't be buying a car from you, but keep it up!

I once asked Adrian van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Design, what he thought of the negative reactions to some of the more controversial designs he made. He then proceeded to explain to me that a lot of the stuff BMW puts out there is not meant to be appreciated at the time of launch only, it's to be appreciated over a longer period of time. In other words, BMW design should age like fine wine. And I got into that believe until my eyes got damaged by the sight of the BMW 2K2. It stems from, you guessed it, 2002 and thankfully never got beyond the concept stage. I'm not posting a picture of it here, because I don't want to hurt you. But if you really want to see how milk ages, click here.