Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, most of us have become even more reliant on cashless transactions, especially contactless payments with our cell phones.
If you’re like us, you’re probably paying for gasoline, coffee, groceries, clothing, and pretty much anything you can buy in a store with your phone. But in China, as always, they take the concept to the extreme and pay for entire cars with their cell phones.
And we’re not just talking about Volkswagen Golfs or Toyota Corollas. No, we’re talking about seven-digit luxury cars that were bought and paid for with a touchscreen.
A source close to Rolls-Royce told us that several very special cars were recently sold on the Chinese WeChat app. WeChat is best described as a cross between Whatsapp, Instagram and Paypal and is mainly used for sending and receiving messages, much like the messaging apps we are familiar with in the west.
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But it also gives the user the ability to buy things instantly and has become an indispensable trading tool for any company doing business in China. Think eBay’s “Buy It Now” button, but instead of buying a $ 15 iPhone cable and used copy of Call of Duty, commit to buying one of 20 Rolls-Royce Phantom Tempus sedans to buy.
Introduced at the Shanghai Auto Show last month, the Tempus is a phantom sedan that has been modified on the theme of time and space. The Phantom’s famous night sky headliner has been redesigned with hand-laid fiber optic lighting. The dashboard features 100 individually contoured pillars machined from a single piece of aluminum billet.
The traditional watch is omitted to give owners a sense of “time freedom and its limits” when they are brought to the next appointment in their packed diaries. The body is painted in a special Kairos Blue finish to mimic the night sky. And finally, an individual date and location is engraved on the Spirit of Ecstasy, which is unique for each buyer.
The price? Rolls-Royce doesn’t talk about the prices of its limited-edition cars to the general public, despite the fact that a standard Phantom costs $ 535,000 and it reportedly set its 20 buyers back by at least $ 750,000 and possibly as much as $ 1 million.
The British luxury car manufacturer announced the release of the Tempus to its top Chinese customers via the WeChat app. According to a source close to the plant, several of these customers agreed to buy one without seeing the car or talking to someone at Rolls-Royce about it.
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