Automotive startup Longbow is taking a shot at making a lightweight, all-electric sportscar

It’s surprising to hear Longbow’s claim that it is the ‘first-ever British electric sports car manufacturer’. Perhaps there have been other claimants in the not-so-distant past, but almost all have fallen by the wayside in an industry that is notoriously tough to break into. However, we’re well into electrification’s second full decade (the original Tesla Roadster debuted in 2008), and the technology has advanced to such a point that the previously high bar to entry is coming down.

Eschewing combustion has vastly increased the odds for chancers looking to get into the car making game. Previously, the only sure fire way to make a small fortune in specialist car-making was to start with a large fortune, hence the long list of admirable designs and noble brands that eventually ran out of funding.

Longbow wants to be different. Established by three experienced industry veterans, Daniel Davey, Jenny Keisu, and Mark Tapscott, the company is engineering driven and has set itself an unfussy, clear roadmap to production in 2026. This is the first look at Longbow’s portfolio, two electric sports cars – the Speedster and the Roadster.

With the motto ‘Celeritas Levitas’ (‘the speed of lightness’), Longbow clearly hopes to capture some of the ethos and enthusiasm that pooled around manufacturers like Lotus and Jaguar yet is no longer served up by those manufacturers’ current brand- and luxury-driven approaches. Longbow has more in common with firms like Caterham and Morgan, who have parlayed generations of experience into enthusiast vehicles with a loyal following.

Neither of the latter are quite ready for electrification, despite both fielding concepts in recent years (the Morgan XP-1 prototype and Caterham’s proposed Project V). Longbow’s Speedster and Roadster have the advantage of being electric from day one, carrying none of the physical or intellectual baggage of the combustion engine.

Instead, the founders point to their Potter-esque motto and the ‘FEV’ coinage as illustrations of how they’re doing things differently. Many key components – like batteries and motors – are off-the-shelf and chosen to limit exposure to single supply chains. Thanks to their all-new platform and drivetrain, Longbow is claiming a sub-1,000kg weight for their cars, a hitherto unknown figure in the weighty world of EVs.

To back up this target, the trio point to their collective experience working with Formula E, Lotus, Aston Martin, BYD, Ariel, Lucid and Tesla. The cars themselves, revealed here, have a fluid simplicity, with the Roadster the most minimal of the pair thanks to its fashionable absence of conventional windscreen and roof.

If everything goes according to plan, the Speedster will be first out of the (not yet established) Longbow factory, with a limited edition run 150 cars at a cost of £84,995. Reservations are open now, and buyers will certainly be tempted by the 895kg kerb weight, 3.5 second sprint to 62mph and a projected range of 275 miles.

It’ll be followed by the Roadster, with its more practical hard top. That adds a bit of more mass, but at 995kg it’s still a featherweight compared to the scant competition. MG’s new Cyberster, pretty much the only true two-seater sports EV on the market at time of writing, weighs in at 1,985kg for the all-wheel drive model. It’ll start at £64,995, with a brace of special launch editions kicking off production.

For cynical car enthusiasts who have been burned before, all this might sound too good to be true. However, with prototypes due to start testing within a few months, we’re hoping Longbow will be able to go the distance.

Longbow Speedster and Roadster, from ₤64,995, LongbowMotors.com, @LongbowMotors