The Longbow Roadster is a 995kg British EV deliberately named to annoy Elon Musk

Meet the Longbows. A pair of all-electric British sports cars forged by brains who’ve launched Tesla, Polestar, Lucid, Uber and BYD. But what the EV start-up CV from heaven needed was a proper sports car.

The Speedster (the one without a roof and a windscreen) comes first: 150 examples, just 895kg in weight and 275 miles of range for £84,995. It’s rear-wheel drive and claims 0-62mph in 3.5 seconds.

For people who aren’t keen on bumblebees for breakfast, it’ll be closely followed by a Roadster model which is actually nothing of the sort – it’s a fixed-roof, two-door, two-seat coupe that’s 100kg heavier, but still good for 0-62mph in 3.6 seconds, 280 miles of range, costing £64,995. 

The strange name is a swipe at Elon Musk’s infamously rubbish timekeeping, but we’ll come back to that later.

Longbow Motors is the brainchild of British engineers Daniel Davy and Mark Tapscott. After successful careers elsewhere in the EV and tech industry they’ve cashed in their lot to create an electric sports car company because, quite frankly, they were annoyed no-one else was bothering. 

“I used to design and build Lotuses, but realised electrification was the future,” explained Mark, “and the other day I spoke to ex-Lotus CEO Phil Popham, and laid it on a bit thick that this is the car the Chinese won’t let Lotus build."

“If you want to sell cars, make it cheap,” said Daniel, rather more simply. “Whatever anyone tells you, if you're not Ferrari or Bugatti or a known brand, if you want to sell cars, make it as affordable as possible. That's how you move volume. That's a lesson from both Tesla and Lucid.”

One lesson they’ve learned from previous EVs is not to wade in and try to build everything on its own. Complicated stuff like batteries, motors, brakes (all of which will be linked by bespoke software) can be sourced elsewhere.

Longbow’s answer is to take a tried-and-tested leaf out of the successful British sports car playbook. Leave all of that to someone else. Well, it works for Caterham and Ariel. It worked for the Elise for almost three decades.

Daniel said: “If you start with a software-defined vehicle, then effectively motors, batteries, inverters are plug-and-play. If you're not looking to get from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, you're not having to squeeze every last volt out of specialist chemistry. We have a 240-kilowatt motor: there are 12-15 we can buy off the shelf. We personally have good relationships with all the major Chinese semi-state owned businesses and suppliers.”

Currently, the plan is for a 2170 nickel-cadium cells powering a 240kW (322bhp) motor, with the possibility for a dual-motor version left open for later on. The design is modular and swappable: changing the motors, the battery chemistry or the power output won’t require a fundamental rebuild – just like Caterham adapting Sevens from Rover K-Series to Ford Duratec engines, or Ariel swapping from nat-asp VTEC to turbocharged Honda engines.

To keep costs in check, there’s no fancy McLaren-esque carbon tub or panels here. The structure is aluminium, clad in sustainably-produced lightweight composite panels. The team are happy to point out that details like lights and mirrors will be parts-bin supplied, because it’s scarily easy to spend a couple of million quid on a light cluster, which the customer won’t care about, and doesn’t make the car any sweeter to drive.

Said drive will be a deliberately simple affair. There’s electronic power steering and anti-lock brakes, but Longbow has no plans for augmented Hyundai Ioniq 5 N gearshifts or Star Trek soundtracks. Daniel points out Christopher Nolan used the whine of a Tesla Roadster as the backing track for the Batpod bike in The Dark Knight, so EVs don’t necessarily need to shout fake exhaust notes down the street to be menacing.

The challenge is of course to grow a totally new sports car outfit before Alpine and Lotus lock their sights on replacing the A110 and Emira with EVs, and Porsche drops 2025’s most controversial car: the electric 718 Boxster and Cayman. Longbow says it’ll have a running prototype by summer, and cars will be with early signing-on owners as quickly as next year.

And the name? Well, the Longbow part’s easy: that’s a nod to the symbiosis between an archer and his weapon. Neither is deadly without the other. That sense of accuracy and connection – of human and machine in harmony – is said to have inspired the company’s ethos. And it’ll wind up the French, which is never a bad thing. Maybe they’ll sell an Agincourt Edition next.

The reason for the sports car being called ‘Roadster’ is more modern. A not-at-all veiled swipe at the perma-delayed, gimmick-packed Tesla Roadster MkII. “A lot of customers have put deposits down for a Roadster that they can't get," said Daniel. "So we thought we'd be the first electric Roadster to follow the Tesla Roadster.

"If people want to get back their $250,000 deposit for a 2020 car and put it into a better car, they're going to get one sooner. They're welcome to do it. Our Roadster's going to be on the ground first.”

Can Longbow stick the landing where so many EV start-ups and British sports car makers have failed? Click here to read our chat with the founders, and why they think they’re onto a winner...