This 1,973-Pound Electric Sports Car Nails What Tesla Still Can’t
With their Longbow models, two former Tesla engineers set out to build simple, light, and fast EVs that Colin Chapman would’ve loved.
Simplify, then add lightness. It’s an aphorism often attributed to Lotus founder Colin Chapman, whose cars came to dominate motorsports in the early 1960s. Chapman would have probably appreciated the simplicity of an electric vehicle powertrain, with its fewer moving parts and no need for a transmission or a fuel system. But he would have found the adding lightness bit a whole lot harder. EVs need batteries. And batteries are heavy.
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Longbow cofounders Daniel Davey and Mark Tapscott are Chapman fans. They like light and fast and agile sports cars. They have also worked at Tesla and Lucid, on the frontlines of two of the world’s biggest and most successful EV startups. They’ve seen what can go wrong and what could be done better. And now, along with Swedish tech investor and the former CEO of electric boat maker X Shore, Jenny Keisu, they’re putting that hard-won expertise to work to create an electric-powered sports car of which Colin Chapman would have approved—the Longbow Speedster.
Lighter Than the Chinese Competition
Scheduled to hit the road next year, the Longbow Speedster weighs just 1,973 pounds, 40 percent less than a Lotus Emira V6 and 16 percent less than a Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Club. That low mass means the Speedster will reportedly be capable of a 0–60-mph acceleration time of 3.5 seconds with a single, rear-mounted e-motor developing some 270 horsepower (final power output has yet to be officially announced) driving the rear wheels. For the record, the Emira V6 takes 4.2 seconds to hit 60 mph, the Miata RF Club 5.6 seconds.
In the context of the Chinese-made MG Cyberster, the electric-powered open-top sports car that is perhaps currently the Speedster’s most logical rival, the benefits of Longbow’s obsession with light weight are clear. The Cyberster Legend we tested in China last year needed two e-motors, all-wheel drive, and 536 hp to hustle its 4,872 pounds from 0 to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds. The single-motor, rear-drive Cyberster Trophy, which weighs 4,651 pounds and has 335 hp, takes 4.9 seconds, according to MG.
Both Cybersters have a 77-kWh battery that delivers a WLTP-rated range of 276 miles and 316 miles, respectively. The Longbow Speedster will have a WLTP-rated range of 275 miles, according to Davey and Tapscott, which suggests it will likely have a 55-kWh battery under the floor. It’s a thin battery, too; the Speedster doesn’t have the high floor and high sills that make you feel like you’re riding on, rather than in, the Cyberster.
Modern Sports Car Style, Outsourced Hardware
The Speedster’s exterior design ticks all the right boxes in terms of classic sports car proportions and stance. Company COO Tapscott describes it as “a modern sports car that doesn’t look like something from the future nobody wants to drive and doesn’t look like a pastiche of something from the past.” There’s a hint of Exige-era Lotus in the Longbow’s voluptuous hips and rear fascia, but the way the front bodywork appears to have been pulled back to the rear of the car from the simple but striking front-end graphic—an effect highlighted by the two-tone paint scheme that will be available on the production version—is very 21st century.
Longbow hasn’t shown the Speedster’s interior yet because it’s still a work in progress. The car you see here has gone from being a digital rendering to a drivable prototype in just six months. That’s lightning speed in conventional automaking terms and a function of Longbow’s unconventional development and manufacturing process. Longbow has developed the car’s exterior design, but virtually all its hardware—the e-motor, inverter and power electronics, brakes, lighting—has been sourced from suppliers. The extruded aluminium chassis with multilink suspension front and rear is based on the modular passenger and commercial EV skateboard (PACES) platform developed by the British-based low-to-medium-volume EV design and engineering operation, Watt Electric Vehicle Company.
“Being vertically integrated is a trap,” said Longbow’s CEO Davey, who watched both Tesla and Lucid copy old-school automakers like GM and Volkswagen and Toyota and spend billions on developing and engineering their own unique powertrains, platforms, and other components, as well as on the complicated factories needed to produce the large number of vehicles required to get a return on their massive investments. “We buy off the shelf, and we have a 20 percent price penalty,” Davey acknowledges, “but I can still get great technology at a great price, and those two things mean we benefit from all the economies of scale without having to spend money to get it.”
An EV powertrain is of course a lot less complex in terms of vehicle integration than an internal combustion engine, and automakers like Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Ferrari believe designing their own e-motors and power electronics systems will give them a performance advantage in the future. But there’s a growing number of third-party suppliers that now offer almost turnkey automotive EV powertrain solutions. “We can go to some of the best suppliers in the U.K. now and get an e-motor that does maybe 99 percent of what Tesla’s does,” Tapscott said.
That’s an approach with which Colin Chapman would also agree: Lotus never built its own internal combustion engines, sourcing them instead from mainstream automakers, a practice that continues today with Toyota’s 3.5-liter V-6 and the 2.0-liter Mercedes-AMG turbocharged four powering different versions of the mid-engine Emira. In another Chapmanesque touch, Longbow says it also plans to eventually sell the Speedster’s complete platform and powertrain to other low-volume manufacturers, echoing how the Lotus 7 chassis was initially sold to niche sports car makers Caterham and Donkervoort.
Longbow has yet to confirm details, but all the components of the Speedster, apart from the battery cells, will be manufactured and sourced in the U.K. “We think the best place in the world to build a sports car is the U.K.,” Tapscott said. “Germany does a great job, and of course so does Italy, but we have a lot of Formula 1 teams here, so the engineering talent pool and the supply chain is impressive.” U.K. media reports suggest the Speedster may be built in a new factory being constructed by Watt Electric Vehicle Company near Coventry to build PACES-platformed vehicles for EV brands on a white-label basis.
Not for the U.S. Yet
Just 150 Longbow Speedsters will be built, each priced from the equivalent of about $110,000. The car will be available in both right- and left-hand drive, and although Tapscott says Longbow could probably sell all 150 Speedsters in California alone, the car won’t be certified for general sale in the U.S.
However, U.S. customers will, Tapscott says, readily be able to buy the follow-up to the Speedster, the Longbow Roadster, essentially the same car as the Speedster but with a windshield and (confusingly) a roof. Longbow plans to initially build 2,000 Roadsters a year. It will be heavier than the Speedster, tipping the scales at 2,193 pounds—though that’s still only a mere 120 pounds more than the original NA-series Miata—and thus it will be a tenth of a second or so slower to 60 mph.
Longbow’s renderings suggest the Roadster, with its windshield and roof adding form and volume above the beltline, will be the better-looking of the two cars. While Tesla has been for years promising its own Roadster, a sport coupe priced at $200,000 or more, the Longbow Roadster is scheduled to appear in 2027 and will be priced from the equivalent of about $85,000.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by cars. My father was a mechanic, and some of my earliest memories are of handing him wrenches as he worked to turn a succession of down-at-heel secondhand cars into reliable family transportation. Later, when I was about 12, I’d be allowed to back the Valiant station wagon out onto the street and drive it around to the front of the house to wash it. We had the cleanest Valiant in the world.
I got my driver’s license exactly three months after my 16th birthday in a Series II Land Rover, ex-Australian Army with no synchro on first or second and about a million miles on the clock. “Pass your test in that,” said Dad, “and you’ll be able to drive anything.” He was right. Nearly four decades later I’ve driven everything from a Bugatti Veyron to a Volvo 18-wheeler, on roads and tracks all over the world. Very few people get the opportunity to parlay their passion into a career. I’m one of those fortunate few.
I started editing my local car club magazine, partly because no-one else would do it, and partly because I’d sold my rally car to get the deposit for my first house, and wanted to stay involved in the sport. Then one day someone handed me a free local sports paper and said they might want car stuff in it. I rang the editor and to my surprise she said yes. There was no pay, but I did get press passes, which meant I got into the races for free. And meet real automotive journalists in the pressroom. And watch and learn.
It’s been a helluva ride ever since. I’ve written about everything from Formula 1 to Sprint Car racing; from new cars and trucks to wild street machines and multi-million dollar classics; from global industry trends to secondhand car dealers. I’ve done automotive TV shows and radio shows, and helped create automotive websites, iMags and mobile apps. I’ve been the editor-in-chief of leading automotive media brands in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The longer I’m in this business the more astonished I am these fiendishly complicated devices we call automobiles get made at all, and how accomplished they have become at doing what they’re designed to do. I believe all new cars should be great, and I’m disappointed when they’re not. Over the years I’ve come to realize cars are the result of a complex interaction of people, politics and process, which is why they’re all different. And why they continue to fascinate me.Read More