This EV platform will help low-volume sports cars survive

Designing and developing EVs is an expensive game. Which is a problem for cottage-industry carmakers that only build a handful of cars every year. They don’t have the colossal cash reserves of the big guns, so they simply can’t afford to develop EV platforms of their own. Not ideal, given many countries’ intentions to prohibit the sale of new petrol- and diesel-engined cars in just a few years’ time.

That’s where this thing comes in. The Cornwall-based Watt Electric Vehicle Company has created an off-the-shelf platform especially for low volume carmakers that can’t, for whatever reason, put together their own.

Comprised of “lightweight extrusions that interlock and bond together”, Watt claims the aluminium structure is scalable to suit everything from sports cars to buses, can accommodate front, rear and all-wheel drive layouts and “complies with all ISO regulations and European Small Series Type Approval crash standards”.

Watt will demonstrate its platform’s capabilities with a car of its own – a “1950s-inspired” two-seater that will “focus on driver involvement”. The company claims the new car, which will be revealed sometime in the next few weeks, will have perfect 50/50 weight distribution and weigh less than a tonne. It’ll have a 40kWh battery for a range of around 230 miles.