Source: BMW BLOG
This signals that even the most tradition-bound luxury brands recognized by 2011 that electrification wasn’t a future option but an immediate legitimacy requirement—a watershed moment where going electric became defensive brand insurance rather than innovative positioning. The fact that Rolls-Royce chose its flagship, most iconic model for this statement reveals that luxury manufacturers understood EV adoption would eventually cannibalize their core products, so they had to own the narrative first or risk irrelevance.