The market is full of fast EVs these days, and you certainly are spoiled for choice when it comes to those offering big luxury, long range, and dashboards filled with more displays than NASA’s Mission Control. But if you want something simple, lovely, and lightweight, you’re more or less out of luck.
That’s about to change. Meet the Longbow Speedster, the first offering from UK-based Longbow Motors. It’s certainly eye-catching, but more importantly, it promises to offer a driving experience unmatched on the EV scene, with a curb weight of just 2,200 pounds and a zero-to-60 time of 3.5 seconds.
Origin Story
Longbow is the brainchild of three co-founders. Jenny Keisu brings a legal and private equity background to the mix. Daniel Davey spent a few stints at Tesla helping the company extend its foothold in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Finally, Mark Tapscott likewise spent time at Tesla before helping BYD and Lucid expand their business interests in Europe and the Middle East.
I met up with Davey and Tapscott on the bustling show floor of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. For nearly 60 years, this event has been the annual haunt of gadget lovers and tech gurus. Increasingly, it’s a place to showcase the latest and greatest automotive wares as well.
Most of the time, though, the cars that debut at CES are on the bleeding edge of tech-for-tech’s-sake innovation. This year, I saw plenty of machines offering the latest AI agents or displays running the full width of the dashboard, plus plenty more promising to drive themselves better than you can.
The Speedster is the antithesis of all that.
Roadster Reboot
“We’ve kind of walked ourselves into this position somehow, where a Mini today is pretty much the same footprint and volume as a Range Rover in the 1980s, and nobody seems to have noticed,” Tapscott said. “Obviously, safety has been introduced, but there are also features and functionality in cars that a lot of us don’t want most of the time.”
Speedster, then, is something of a reboot moment. Yes, it’s electric, but its design is meant to deliver the kind of engaging drive that you can typically only get in a tiny roadster like a Mazda Miata. In fact, the Speedster will weigh more than 100 pounds less than a Miata and should offer a similar level of feel.
Part of that comes to the seating position: As possible. Most EVs feature a sandwich of batteries in the floor, necessarily elevating the seats by a few inches. The Speedster instead runs much of the batteries down the center tunnel of the car. This means there’s less between your posterior and the road.
Quad Motors
The bigger layout shift compared to a typical electric car is the electric motors that make the thing move. EVs typically rely on one or two motors mounted inboard, between the wheels, which then send power outward through traditional differentials and driveshafts.
The Longbow uses motors from a company called Donut Lab that actually mount within the wheels themselves. This simplifies the internal packaging of the EV, enabling up to four motors that take up zero room in the chassis.
The tradeoff is more of what’s called unsprung mass, weight out by the wheels that puts greater demands on the suspension. Unsprung mass is typically a no-no, but Davey said the multi-motor advantages more than outweigh the challenges.
“The driving feel that you can gain from torque vectoring will easily outweigh any unsprung mass feeling that the driver might have,” he said.
It also creates a distinctive visual look, making the Speedster look even more purposeful.
“When you consider how lightweight the car is, the size of the brakes you need for that car looks ridiculous,” Tapscott said. Instead of equipping unnecessarily large brakes just for aesthetics, the motor fills the wheel quite nicely.
Longbow Motors hasn’t confirmed a final horsepower output at this time, so we can’t say for sure just how aggressively those motors will turn those wheels. But it is targeting a 3.5-second time to get to 60 mph.
Modern Minimalism
While the Longbow team wasn’t ready to fully reveal the Speedster’s interior, what’s for sure is that it’ll seat two and won’t have a giant touchscreen spread across the dashboard. What there will be, though, is a shifter, something rarely seen in EVs and certainly not needed here with those in-wheel motors.
Tapscott told me the shifter will play into a car that will create a bit of “theater” when you drive it, something missing in your average electric car.
Whether we get some sort of simulated shifting system or something even more advanced remains to be seen, but even ignoring that, there’s plenty of technology wrapped up in the Longbow to make it such a petite and powerful machine. Davey says that comes not despite it being made in the UK, but because of it:
“It is the best place in the world to build a sports car, and most of this is a sports car, not an electric car,” he said.
Longbow Motors’ identity is reflected in the company’s name and the logo stamped on the rear. The longbow is the weapon that, in the Middle Ages, was mastered by the Welsh and later used by the English to repel their invaders and ultimately go on to build an empire.
And in the company’s logo, the woman so stylishly wielding the weapon isn’t just some shapely silhouette. That’s Boudica, a tribal British queen who bravely led a revolt against invading Roman forces 2,000 years ago.
The prototype Speedster I got a closer look at was in keeping with that British heritage, with the steering wheel on the right. But Tapscott confirmed that they’ll also make left-hand-drive versions. They’ll be certified for American roads, too, including all the airbags and additional safety equipment required to meet our regulations.
Despite that, the aim is to keep the weight low, to deliver the same nimble feel. One way of doing that? By including neither roof nor windshield. If that sounds like too much of a commitment for you, or the climate where you live, there’ll also be a glass-topped Roadster version.
That one will even be a bit more affordable. The Roadster will be available starting at ₤64,995, while the Speedster is a bit more dear at ₤84,995. American pricing isn’t available yet, but at current exchange rates, that’s $75,000 and $100,000, respectively.
That honestly sounds like a hell of a bargain to get in early on a new sports car company, and if all goes to plan this is just the beginning. Longbow’s founders have set their sights on bigger targets for the next release.
Tapscott is aiming for the Porsche 911. “If we want to win at building the best cars, we’ve got to take a slice of that,” he said. America’s Corvette, though, is also a target. “If you really want to make an impact in the sports car market, you hit both of those products,” Davey said.
That’s an aspirational goal from such a small company, but then you wouldn’t want to bet against Boudica, would you?
