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Lucky ducks rescued, ride in a Rolls-Royce to their new Goodwood home

The phrase "put it on the bill" has taken on a new meaning at Rolls-Royce's Goodwood, England, factory. The firm now shares its headquarters with 15 ducks that were rescued earlier in 2020 and re-released as adults. Rolls-Royce explained that James Caffrey, one of its security guards, spotted a group of seven ducklings in a company parking lot in April 2020. He spent several hours observing the unexpected visitors from a distance before realizing that the mother duck wasn't coming back. Concerned, he captured the birds with the help of colleagues and sent them to the Brent Lodge Wildlife Hospital, which cares for sick, injured, and orphaned animals. Brent Lodge's goal is to release animals back into their natural habitat as soon as possible, not to keep them in captivity. The seven siblings were reared into adulthood and sent back to Rolls-Royce's headquarters, along with eight additional ducks that were also rescued locally. The group traveled to Goodwood in the back of a Cullinan, an honor that few humans — let alone birds — experience. They traveled in cages, letting ducks loose in an SUV would be disastrous, and Rolls-Royce joked its engineers are now looking into using ducks as a unit to measure trunk space. Rolls-Royce's new tenants live near the lakes that are next to its factory, so they're fully self-sufficient. There is enough food available to sustain the entire clan. We don't know whether they'll be asked to contribute something in exchange for living at Goodwood; the 250,000 bees the firm keeps make honey that's exclusively served to guests, like customers who fly in to pick up a car. If duck eggs come with your new Phantom, you'll know why. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Watch the Rolls-Royce Phantom live reveal

Watch the live reveal of the all-new eighth-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom. For decades, the Phantom has defined what it means to be a luxury car. As with other Phantoms, look for metal, wood, and enough leather to support a small farming operation for years. Rolls-Royce Luxury Videos Sedan rolls-royce phantom

Ultra-luxury automakers like Bentley and Rolls-Royce need to hurry up with EVs

In the five years that I've worked at Autoblog, I've read a lot of press releases. They're all pretty flowery and self-serving, but the ones that go the extra distance with lavish words and pompous phrasing tend to come from the most luxurious brands, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. And something that they both love talking about is sustainably sourced materials for their vehicles. The descriptions read like they've seen the light about using resources responsibly. That would be great, except for one thing: There's nothing sustainable about multi-ton land yachts with eight or more cylinders. Only one of Bentley's models can be had with fuel economy better than 20 mpg combined when running on gasoline, and guess what, it's not one of the brand's two plug-in hybrids (which are to be commended, but still seem half-hearted when we're talking serious sustainability). And Rolls-Royce is even worse without a single model even hitting 15 mpg combined. These automakers should have at least one EV model apiece. Apparently, there are some coming, but they're still years away, and that frankly shocks and frustrates me for a number of reasons. One of the big ones is that these brands couldn't be better suited to electric propulsion. What makes these cars impressive is their refinement and performance. You can't get much better in either of those categories than with beefy electric motors, which provide nearly silent operation with no gear changes and enormous power and torque ratings. And it's all achievable with a lot less effort than making an 8- or 12-cylinder internal combustion engine quiet and smooth. Sure, battery technology is complicated, and it's expensive and heavy, but all of that is covered by these brand's typical products. They can command prices that would easily absorb the cost of batteries. And the size and weight of current cars mean that loading them up with batteries to achieve range comparable to their gas models wouldn't be a problem, either. Heck, that's the exact strategy being used by GM and Ford to get huge range in their electric trucks. 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S View 41 Photos And the cost of the EV technology shouldn't even be that great for Bentley or Rolls-Royce, since they're both owned by companies that are leaders in electric car development with existing technology and the ability to spread costs out over various brands.