Rolls-Royce has once again given the public a look at its autonomous naval vessel concept, this time dropping some details on what the ship may be capable of, as well as details about its potential uses. The vessel, per Rolls-Royce, has a range of 3,500 nautical miles (4,028 miles) and will be able to spend more than 100 days out in operation on the water.
Rolls-Royce is keeping busy lately, notably by unveiling the new eighth-generation Phantom for 2018, but the luxury car maker is continuing to make progress on its upcoming SUV, the Cullinan. A new series of spy photos have turned up, offering the first look at the Cullinan since the prototype shown back in December. With a debut coming sometime in 2018, it looks like Rolls-Royce's first "all-terrain, high-sided vehicle" will soon be ready to challenge the rest of the luxury SUVs on the market.
A new Rolls-Royce is something special, but a new Rolls-Royce Phantom is something rare. Having debuted back in 1925, until now only seven generations of car have borne the nameplate. Now, with the arrival of the new 2018 Phantom, there's an eighth generation, and it promises to be the most luxurious, the most powerful, and the most cosseting of any to-date.
What is there to say about a car like the 2017 Rolls-Royce Dawn, an ultra-luxury convertible whose price tag can easily approach a half-million dollars? It's certainly easy to run out of superlatives when discussing the Dawn (which replaces the Phantom Drophead Coupe as the ragtop of choice in the British brand's showroom), as the car is rarefied air even in the world of the billionaires who park them in their air-conditioned 10-vehicle garages.
True luxury isn't going to your nearest car dealer and buying the most expensive model on the lot: it's calling up Rolls-Royce and asking them to make you a completely unique, one-off bespoke ride. Such is the story behind this, the Rolls-Royce Sweptail, the handiwork of several years of the automaker's expert designers and engineers, and a well-heeled (but currently unnamed) fan of the British marque. He wanted a racing yacht inspired coachbuilt car, entirely individual and reminiscent of the best of the automaker's projects of the 1920s and 30s.
Rolls-Royce promised us a super-luxury SUV for your multi-million garage, and the latest efforts of "Project Cullinan" are this imposing prototype. Shown for the first time, the storied marque's first entrance into the SUV space isn't, if you ask Rolls-Royce, actually an SUV at all. Instead, Project Cullinan is developing an "all-terrain, high-sided vehicle" which, if it happens to get pitted against the Bentley Bentayga and other luxe trucks, is surely just coincidental.
Back in the late '80s, it was in fashion for people to steal hood ornaments from Mercedes-Benz cars and wear them on a necklace. It's a bit foggy how this all started, but I think it had to do with one rapper or another wearing it in a video back when MTV actually played music videos. That means that every Mercedes within 25 miles of a school was missing its hood ornament. Rolls-Royce isn't having any of that.
The 2016 Rolls-Royce Wraith is something of an outlier for the British luxury brand - it’s the Rolls you drive yourself, rather than enjoy from the more traditional perspective of the rear seat. Past that, however, it's also a car that intends to make your time behind the wheel a bit more engaging than what your chauffeur would experience piloting the four-door Ghost sedan on which the Wraith is based. Either way, after driving this two-door behemoth in and around Montreal, there's one thing I can state without reservation: regardless of where you're sitting, being inside the Rolls-Royce Wraith is an event in and of itself.
It’s no secret that Rolls-Royce is working on autonomous ships for commercial use (read: self-operating cargo ships) — we heard about them years ago, and work on them has been relatively quiet since. That changed this month, with Rolls-Royce detailing what it envisions the future will hold in this regard; there will be the autonomous ships themselves, of course, but also control centers where the ships are monitored and controlled. If the company’s concept video and photos are anything to go by, these control centers will be insanely futuristic.
![Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 concept – A deeper look into the car [Video]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/rolls-royce-vision-next-100-concept-1-980x420.jpg)
We knew Rolls-Royce was showing off its Vision Next 100 concept in London, but we were thoroughly unprepared for what we saw. Taking a different approach than parent BMW did with its Vision Next 100 concept, Rolls tried to imagine what the super-luxury clientele of the future would want, versus the performance-minded enthusiast that BMW has traditionally appealed to.
The Rolls-Royce of the future will be an astonishing, autonomous, space-age coupe worthy of Minority Report, at least according to the brand's new VISION NEXT 100 concept. Latest in owner BMW's look ahead to the next century of automotive design and technology, the striking Rolls-Royce 103EX VISION NEXT 100 is certainly the most dramatic of the cars we've seen so far.
You might think that a regular Rolls-Royce would be the pinnacle of crowd-pleasing, but you'd be wrong. For that, you need to look to the automaker's newest designer label, Black Badge, and the epitome of selfie motivation, the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Wraith.