- EV sports car upstart Longbow wants to “add lightness” with its first two-seater launching next year.
- The first model is the Speedster, of which only 50 units will be made, followed by the more affordable Roadster.
- The company states that the first year of production has already been allocated, but it has yet to confirm when deliveries will start.
One of the British car industry’s greatest contributions to the automotive world has to be the small, lightweight sports car. Building tiny cars that weighed almost nothing, which didn’t need much power to be quick, was a recipe very common until around the 1970s. Only Lotus has managed to carry the featherweight sports car flag through the decades, but now a new player wants to step in with a fully electric two-seater, which not even Lotus offers yet.
Earlier this year, Longbow, a startup founded by former Tesla and Lucid executives, announced plans to develop small electric sports cars. This week it unveiled its first working prototype for the vehicle that it wants to start manufacturing next year. They call it an “aesthetic dynamic demonstrator,” meaning it looks and drives like the production Speedster, which will be built in a limited series of 150 examples.
Photo by: Longbow Motors
You can already order one in the UK for $111,700 (£84,995), although you will have to wait until 2027 to get one because the first year of production has already been allocated.
The electric Speedster weighs just 1,973 pounds (895 kg), and its single rear-mounted electric motor pushes it to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. That’s a pretty good acceleration time, but it’s a lot slower than some EVs, the quickest of which easily dip below 3 seconds. This car’s featherweight construction promises to make it good through the corners.
Photo by: Longbow Motors
What’s even more impressive about it is its claimed WLTP range of 275 miles (442 km). The company doesn’t state the vehicle’s exact battery capacity, but it probably is smaller than you think for a range rating like that. It doesn’t have much weight to push around, so the vehicle is likely very efficient. On its website, Longbow notes that its cars are “lightweight, allowing for a smaller battery pack to provide unprecedented range.”
The design of the Speedster has more than a whiff of Ferrari Monza SP2 about it, which is to say it looks very good. The lack of a windshield in the front likely means you’ll have to wear a helmet even when driving it on the road, but a more conventional hardtop model is on the way.
Photo by: Longbow Motors
That will be called the Roadster (even though it technically isn’t a roadster), it will be mechanically identical and considerably cheaper at $85,400 (£64,995). It’s a tenth slower to sprint to 62 mph, because it weighs 100 lbs (45 kg) more than the Speedster, but it has 5 miles of extra range for a claimed total of 280 miles on one charge.
Longbow offers its vehicles in both left- and right-hand drive configurations and plans to sell them in the UK and Europe first, though it hopes to expand sales elsewhere in the future. It promises to begin deliveries next year, but it has yet to set a date when customers will get their hand-built electric British sports cars.
