March 30, 2022, Beijing
Winter testing of the Rolls-Royce electric model 55 km from the Arctic Circle was successfully concluded.
The Rolls-Royce Shining withstood the limit of minus 40 degrees in a professional test in Arjeplug, Sweden.
The rolls-royce "Shining" road test has a total mileage of 2.5 million kilometers, or about 400 years of use. The test is now a quarter complete.
The car has been determined to use Rolls-Royce's exclusive all-aluminum "luxury architecture" platform.
The Rolls-Royce "Shining" highlights the sensual design, size and split headlights, which can be described as a classic inheritance of the Phantom coupe model.
The "Rolls-Royce 3.0 Era" ushers in a new era of digital powertrain and chassis engineering.
For the first time, the "decentralized intelligent system" equipped with the Rolls-Royce Shining integrates 141,200 sets of transceivers.
For the first time, Rolls-Royce unlocks a new function in the battery area for the "luxury architecture": 700 kg of acoustic material for ultimate silence.
"Every new Rolls-Royce car is released with great expectations. However, the Shining is undoubtedly the most anticipated product in the contemporary history of the Rolls-Royce brand. It is not only a product, but also symbolizes Rolls-Royce's embrace of a promising electrification future and represents the magnificent transformation of Rolls-Royce power technology.
That's why we've created a test program that matches the importance of the Shining and unlocks extraordinary historical significance. This unusual road test tour will cover 2.5 million kilometers, equivalent to 400 years of driving time, and aims to forge the 'Shining' into a real Rolls-Royce. Today, I am proud to announce that the rolls-royce Shining's test journey is now a quarter complete and that the results are as expected and live up to expectations. ”
— Toston Muller Utfords, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motors
"The continuous improvement of the Shining's pure electric drive system is an extraordinary challenge in vehicle engineering. By eliminating the use of internal combustion engines, we need to significantly improve the operational capacity of individual components and build 'decentralized intelligent systems' for them. We will enter an unprecedented era of multi-control, multi-threaded, highly interconnected electronic systems and pure electric drive architectures. We call it the 'Rolls-Royce 3.0' era. ”
"Our mission is to make every component, every system, work and interact like a real Rolls-Royce car. This has also led to the shift of much of the vehicle engineering work from the traditional workshop to the digital space. For this, we have laid an important foundation in Arjeplug. This symbolizes an important step forward for the Rolls-Royce brand, a significant step in the electrification process. Although the Shining is still in its infancy, I'm sure the technology it comes with will deliver a pure Rolls-Royce experience. ”
— Mixia Ayyuby, Director of Automotive Engineering at Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce "The Shining": Background Information
In September 2021, Rolls-Royce Motors announced that it would launch its most landmark product, the Rolls-Royce Shining. It was the most historic release since founders Charles Rouse and Sir Henry Rice began working together on 4 May 1904 to create "the best car in the world".
In the use of internal combustion engines, Rolls-Royce is renowned for creating "the best cars in the world". The idea of electrification is no stranger to Rolls-Royce. Henry Rice began his career as an electrical engineer and spent most of his life building an internal combustion engine that simulated the characteristics of an electric car – quiet operation, instant response, smooth shifting.
Electrification has much more to do with the founders of the Rolls-Royce brand. In 1900, Charles Rouse personally drove an early electric car called columbia. At that time, he predicted: 'Electric cars are noiseless, very clean, and have no smell and vibration of fuel vehicles.' If a fixed charging station can be arranged, the practicality of electric vehicles will be very impressive'. The Shining Spirit fulfilled this prophecy.
The advent of the "Shining" represents the fulfillment of the Rolls-Royce brand's promise spanning a century. In 2011, Rolls-Royce exhibited a pure electric phantom test vehicle called the 102EX. The 103EX followed, showcasing an eye-catching design concept and a vision of a rolls-Royce embracing an electrified future. These electric test models have generated great interest among Rolls-Royce customers. They believe that the characteristics of the electric system are perfectly suited to the Rolls-Royce brand. Rolls-Royce Automotive CEO Toston Müller Utfords also made a clear commitment: Rolls-Royce will move towards electrification from this decade.
In September 2021, Charles Rouse's monologue and toston Müller Utfords' unyielding commitment ushered in a historic moment for the Rolls-Royce brand. Rolls-Royce announced the opening of road tests of the brand's first-ever pure electric vehicle, the Rolls-Royce "Shining". It was an unusual task and the most demanding vehicle test Rolls-Royce has ever had. The vehicle will have a total test mileage of 2.5 million kilometers, equivalent to the total mileage of a Rolls-Royce car used for more than 400 years.
Rolls-Royce "The Shining": Winter Test
A new Rolls-Royce model always ushers in the beginning of its life cycle in winter. Rolls-Royce's exclusive custom test site is located in Arjeplug, Sweden, just 55 kilometers from the Arctic Circle, with temperatures of about minus 26 degrees Celsius and minimum temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Rolls-Royce has a variety of considerations for product testing in extreme environments. When the first prototypes are built, the engineering team conducts basic tests under extreme conditions to ensure that the vehicle's various systems function properly in cold weather environments and perform basic functions. The integration of testing and improvement is the first hurdle of testing and the basic threshold for whether an automotive product is worthy of the Rolls-Royce brand.
Testing begins with processes common in the automotive industry, such as NVH testing (noise, vibration and roughness testing). The variables that affect the NVH characteristics of a car are manifold, from the materials used in the main hardware components to the density of the door rubber, bushing compounds, fastening materials, and even the performance of adhesives. In the same way that the performance of these variables changes significantly at extreme temperatures, the energy efficiency of the car's heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and cooling systems can be affected.
As a true luxury brand, winter testing has an additional important part that means a lot to Rolls-Royce. The Rolls-Royce Vehicle Engineering team calls it a "sublimation moment." In the process, the vehicle engineering team will create a Rolls-Royce experience with incredible accuracy and handling through The Shining's chassis control system, powertrain management and electronic control system.
By driving on low-traction roads such as snow and ice roads and deliberately destabilizing the vehicle, the engineering team can create dynamic environments that typically occur at high speeds at low speeds. This allows the team to review and tune the vehicle in situ and slower motion, allowing for parametric control and fine-tuning of the vehicle's handling, reliability, stability, predictability and Rolls-Royce's exclusive "sense of elegance" in cold environments.
In the same process, the engineering team was able to create unparalleled detail based on the vehicle's test feedback, giving the Shining the same logic, operation and interaction as a real Rolls-Royce car. At present, the Rolls-Royce "Shining" road test is a quarter complete, more than 500,000 kilometers.
Rolls-Royce "The Shining": The Rolls-Royce 3.0 Era
Rolls-Royce 3.0 is the beginning of Rolls-Royce's indomitable commitment to an electrified future. "Rolls-Royce 3.0" refers to the continuous progress of the Rolls-Royce brand revival era. On 1 January 2003, Rolls-Royce embarked on a brand revival in Goodwood, West Sussex, UK. As the first Rolls-Royce car to be built in Goodwood, the Mirage kicks off the Rolls-Royce 1.0 era based on its unique Bespoke Haute Couture architecture. Since then, the reinvented, highly flexible Rolls-Royce exclusive all-aluminium space architecture has been introduced, which can be adapted to a variety of applications, and is installed in the current Mirage, Cullinan, Gurest and body bespoke vehicles, which is the Rolls-Royce 2.0 era. With the advent of the 3.0 era, Rolls-Royce will integrate pure electric drive systems and decentralized intelligent systems into Rolls-Royce's proprietary architecture.
At the vehicle component level, the complexity of the vehicle can be described as significantly reduced. However, the engineering requirements for the "Shining Spirit" are like carefully carved jade, and their difficulty is extraordinary. For this model, the definition of traditional vehicle engineering has been completely changed. Historically, Rolls-Royce's engineering was carried out on the shop floor, while the engineering design of The Shining has shown a trend of transformation into a digital space.
The Shining is the most connected Rolls-Royce model ever made, and each of its components is smarter than ever. It has 141,200 transceivers, more than 1,000 functions and more than 25,000 sub-functions. In contrast, the Phantom has 51,000 sets of transceivers, 465 functions, and 647 sub-functions.
The Electronic Control and Electric Drive System architecture of the Shining is significantly more intelligent, allowing details to be exchanged freely and directly between these more than 1,000 functions without the need for centralized processing. To achieve this level of intelligence, the vehicle engineering team increased the length of the On-Board Harness of the Shining from about 2 km to 7 km from the existing Rolls-Royce model, writing an algorithm that is more than 25 times that of the existing model, a crucial step forward for Rolls-Royce. Each set of "Shining" functions is equipped with dedicated control components that allow it to achieve unprecedented precision and refinement. Rolls-Royce vehicle chassis experts call it "the work of a high-precision Rolls-Royce".
Rolls-Royce The Shining: Exclusive architecture
Rolls-Royce has created a very aura, stylistic body design for the "Shining". This design can only be achieved based on Rolls-Royce's exclusive all-aluminium space architecture. In fact, the size of the "Shining" far exceeds that of other contemporary coupes, and it is a well-deserved electric super coupe. Rolls-Royce firmly believes that only one contemporary Rolls-Royce product can stand in this market segment, and that is the Phantom Coupe. The design team of the Rolls-Royce brand sees the Shining as the inheritor of the phantom two-door coupe spirit.
At the beginning of the design of the Shining, the Rolls-Royce design team had taken into account the size, posture and style of the Mirage Coupe and other ultra-luxury coupes of Rolls-Royce's past. The Shining's sleek silhouette and body size accentuate the sensuality of the design, and it also inherits the key design highlight of the Phantom coupe , the iconic split headlights. This is also a design principle that Rolls-Royce has been adhering to in recent decades.
This design direction was determined in consultation with Rolls-Royce and the customer. Rolls-Royce customers have suggested that the presence of a Phantom-class electric super coupe would be very tempting. Deciding to pursue this aesthetic, but also with strategic considerations, Rolls-Royce executives wanted the first purely electric Rolls-Royce car to be full of sensibility, based on electric drivetrain technology to achieve a pioneering, attractive and convincing styling design. The advent of the Shining is a historic moment for Rolls-Royce, and it has also witnessed a historic moment in the electrification process – writing electric technology into the rolls-Royce extraordinary experience.
Rolls-Royce's proprietary architecture will not be used in mass-market automotive products. This exclusive architecture enables the exterior design of Rolls-Royce models to achieve the size and form factor required for a true Rolls-Royce. The size of the wheel hub of the "Shining" fully reflects this. The Shining will be the first coupe since 1926 to feature 23-inch wheels.
The flexibility of Rolls-Royce's proprietary architecture also allows designers to make the coupe experience more tense. The design of placing the floor in the middle of the structural frame, rather than the top or bottom of the frame, gives the battery a very aerodynamic placement channel, and also allows the contour construction of the lower floor to be completed in one go. Similarly, the lower seating position creates a cabin experience with a strong sense of envelopment.
With the movement of the bulkhead position, the design team and vehicle engineering team were able to deepen the dashboard position, further creating a sense of envelopment for passengers. The extremely low windshield edges make the airflow profile extremely efficient. Coupled with other intelligent design solutions, such as the aerodynamically adjusted "Goddess of Celebration" statue, the wind resistance coefficient (cd) of the early prototypes can be as low as 0.26.
With the blessing of Rolls-Royce's exclusive architecture, the battery space can be further released, achieving another function commensurate with the Rolls-Royce experience. By creating wiring and linking channels between the vehicle floor and the top of the battery, the engineering team created a second feature for the vehicle battery area – a 700 kg acoustic material.
Rolls-Royce The Shining: The unusual mission continues
With the perfect end to winter testing, the "Shining" global road test will continue to advance. The all-electric super coupe still needs to travel nearly 2 million kilometers, and it is expected that the Rolls-Royce vehicle engineering team will consider delivering the "Shining" to the first customers after the completion of the global road test in the fourth quarter of 2023.