How luxury car brands are embracing electrification

Urban mobility is a big buzzword and if you think back just five years you might recall that many were expecting our cities to be full of small electric cars whizzing around. We were discussing electric scooters, last mile electric delivery vehicles, Uber pods and of course the electric car with many of these mobility solutions being showcased recently at the Smarter Mobility Africa event in Pretoria.

However, recent years have seen significant changes in the cars we drive, mainly because the world has gone SUV crazy. Suddenly the once diminutive Smart car has grown in size to become the Smart #1 crossover thing, Ford has announced the end of the road for the Fiesta, possibly the end of small hatchbacks as we know them and every carmaker is investing in this electric crossover or that electric SUV.

In SA we already have premium electric vehicles in the form of the Audi e-Tron, BMW iX and Jaguar I-Pace, with more on the way including a slew of Mercedes EQ models such as the big EQS SUV. It’s easier to electrify at the upper end of the market where manufacturers can roll their extensive research & development costs into luxury and performance models where buyers are less concerned about the price tag.

The new Rolls-Royce Spectre is expected to cost about $350,000 when it hits the market late in 2023. Its designer, Anders Warming, told us it is a Rolls-Royce first and an electric car second. This makes sense; luxury carmakers are building the cars we are used to, with the materials, comfort and space we expect, just electrified.

Bentley already has plug-in hybrid versions of the Flying Spur and the Bentayga, luxury models that provide the ability to drive around town in electric mode and then get on the gas on a longer journey. It’s a good interim solution for many luxury models. The British carmaker will follow this up with its first fully electric model in 2025 and then a new EV each year to 2030.

Land Rover has also gone the plug-in hybrid route for now, with this technology being used in the new Defender and the latest Range Rover. A full battery-electric Range Rover will be launched in 2024 but the company is also working on hydrogen fuel cell tech for its large SUVs, though these are in the early stages of development.

Even Hummer is in on the electric action. We drove the new Hummer EV bakkie in the US recently and while it’s not quite in the luxury league of Range Rover or Bentley, it’s certainly a premium model these days. It also shows one of the big issues with electrifying large vehicles — weight. It tips the scales at a hefty four tonnes. It requires not one, but two huge General Motors Ultium battery packs with a combined weight of about 1,300kg. Its quick though, with 1,000hp (745kW) and off-road launch control because that’s what you want to do in a four-tonne bakkie.

The larger the vehicle, the easier it is to not just accommodate more batteries, but to hide them too. More batteries mean more driving range and buyers of luxury vehicles don’t want a car that can only do 150km. They want to do their whole journey without having to stop at a public charger or worse still, risk running out of power.

Then there are the performance models, so far only really represented in SA by Porsche with its Taycan. They are coming though, with Ferrari and Lamborghini both promising rivals for some of the headline-grabbing models from new entrants like Rimac. Here, though, it’s not so much about the driving range from the batteries as the outright performance, but even the Taycan and a BMW iX M60 can give you a pretty good adrenalin rush when they pin you back in your seat.

Going electric doesn’t mean compromising, not in the luxury market, though it’s not without its concerns, especially in SA, but has the world given up on the small urban car? Batteries are getting smaller, lighter and more efficient, which could mean the return of smaller luxury models. You’re never going to see a small Rolls-Royce or Range Rover, the closest the luxury market ever got to a small car was the Mini Goodwood or the Toyota-based Aston Martin Cygnet. Yet look at some of the concepts that have come out in recent years and who knows, downsizing your car in the future might not mean downsizing your luxury.