Britain's Longbow - Is This The Roadster We've Really Been Waiting For?

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1:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast, where today I'm going to be joined by Daniel Davey, the CEO of Longbow Motors. Now, if you've never heard of Longbow Motors before, first of all, go and give them a little Google. They are a company based here in the UK on a mission to create an electric roadster and speedster. Now, these two cars will be priced at 85k and 65k respectively, and will offer 275 miles of range, and both will weigh less than a ton. Now, in Longbow's words, they will be the purest expression of a British sports car, unlike anything that has come before the spirit of the past, engineered for the future.

1:44Now, with the name of the Roadster perhaps being a not-so-subtle swipe at the Tesla, it should come as no surprise that the Longbow team is composed of Tesla, Polestar, Lucid, Uber, and BYD alumni who all felt a proper electric sports car was missing from the EV lineup. Now in this episode, we're going to be finding out how on earth the Longbow team are going to bring these rather beautiful cars to fruition without falling foul of some of the woes that have troubled various EV startups and OEMs in recent years. Now all of that to come, but first, a very quick advert break. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and Cleantech are funded by our fun-packed, test-drivetastic events in Farnborough, London, the South West, the North, Melbourne and Sydney and next up, Everything Electric Farnborough and new for UK viewers.

2:33You can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingelectric.store. Now, back to the episode. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I guess, first things first, for those who might not have, you know, quickly gone to Google and Googled Longbow during the introduction. Can you give us the pitch, paint a picture for us, what are these two fabulous vehicles that you're currently creating? Yeah so Longbow our mission is to change how the earth feels about sports cars so we do that with a range of products. Our first product, our first vehicle is the Speedster so it's an open top free fall on the open road so it's very much in the style of speedsters that you'd be aware of so the Elva the Mons of the SP1 SP2 and really it's about experiencing the unrefined or like unfiltered wilderness when you're driving around on British roads so it's an on-road performance vehicle it's designed around driver engagement and around theatrics that's that's I think the best introduction for speedster and Roadster is a car that you can drive every day but that when you want to can give you that exhilarating experience that maybe is missing in a lot of sports cars today whether they're electric or internal combustion engine so we're more inspired by the cars that on-road performance the classic kind of British heritage of lightweight sports cars is what I think inputs both vehicles but on the Roadster it's a serious production car comes after the Speedster and is targeting global volumes, not just limited volumes.

4:09So that's 2 ,000 to 4 ,000 vehicles a year mass production for sports cars. And at the moment, you're thinking about that limited production, I think starting in roughly 2026. Is that right? Yeah, so targeted delivery for the first Speasters will be the end of 2026. And people can reserve them already, I think. Yeah, Speasters and Roasters are available on our website. So we already have quite a few customers for both Speedster and Roadsters. We've limited Roadsters to only 1 ,000 reservations. So we have time at Tesla, Lucid, and other businesses. We saw that your reservation numbers can run amok.

4:49And then you stop forgetting about the individual customers and reservation holders and start chasing stats. And we actually would much rather have a much closer relationship with 1 ,000 reservation holders than bragging rights on 10 ,000 or 20 ,000 reservation holders. So one of your slogans, and you mentioned it there, is around changing the way that the earth feels about sports cars. Why do we need to change the way that we think about them? And what kind of specific challenges Longbow are trying to address? I mean, interestingly, the first real change agent for the modern era of electrification was the Tesla Roadster, which was a sports car, actually manufactured in the United Kingdom.

5:30So it was a British lightweight sports car. Tesla came two and a half thousand rosas were sold around 800 a year in 2008 to 2012 and then so so electrification started in the sports car segment actually if you can all kind of think and a few of the smaller EVs that came before it and then no one's gone there since so So it, which is interesting because from a vehicle perspective, actually the best powertrain for a sports car we feel is an electric powertrain. And the most polluting vehicles on the road are sports cars. So typically small car, massive engine, idling outside schools. So people are not using them on open roads.

6:17Anyone who's driving around in a Porsche 911 in inner city London is not helping emissions. Let's put it that way. and so it's something where you can make a very big impact very quickly from a um i think from a emissions perspective and let's not just think of carbon but the other emissions come out but also on the other side everyone will say you know evs are great for d-segment suvs but they'll never make good sports cars so this halo effect or this this view that for some reason the best cars in the market will always be ices has not been the halo has not been removed and so we want to go after that halo so the most desirable the coolest and the best sports car on the road should be an evie and no one no one else is doing it so we we want to go and snatch that halo so i think it's very important to change how the earth feels about sports cars one from a ground-up perspective because it's an important segment that is not being electrified at all but the other from a top-down perspective because um it just stops people saying that the best cars in the world or ICs because they aren't that's so interesting because I'd not stop to think about the fact that sports cars represent such a high polluting car because I guess it's a bit like when you travel uh first class versus economy in that if you're traveling first class you have more emissions because you're taking up more room in that plane that could have you know had additional passengers in similar thing goes for a sports car I guess the thing is is that often SUVs are not driven at full capacity and they just have one person in so the maths I guess can get a little quirky but why is it that an EV powertrain does lend itself so well to the sports car segment?

7:58I think the whole powertrain in general right you have a lot more opportunities on where you package it so if you put a V8 in something which you know have a very equivalent kind of torque rating there aren't a lot of places you can stick it there's not a lot you can do so if you look at when everyone thinks of a sports car, most of the design you're thinking of is having to figure out where to stuff a great big whopping engine. That just doesn't exist with electric vehicles. You have a lot more freedom in how you package, so a lot more freedom to explore around dynamics, center of inertia, center of gravity, even things like how do hub motors, for example, can they operate on a sports car?

8:38So I think you have a lot more freedom there. So one, packaging, you have more engineering, flexibility and opportunity that hasn't existed before. I think from a design perspective, that again, you're not looking at, okay, well, this takes up this space. Now we need to make it look pretty by skinning something over it. You have a lot more flexibility in how you even design vehicles from the beginning. You know, Lucid have done an incredible job of that with the Lucid Air. So from a space perspective and concept, I know you spoke with Peter last year or year before or something like that. Yeah, last year.

9:09And then again, no one's really looked at that from a sports car perspective. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And then finally, just as a powertrain, right, it is much more energy dense. You get a lot more, I mean, again, focusing on Lucid, but I think the Atlas motor is 24 kilograms and has 400 horsepower, and it's this big. There's nothing, there's no future past or present, no physics that allow you to do that with an IC, and we're early on in the electrification journey. So I think there's a lot you can do with a powertrain that is only a decade into being developed. so inherently it is better better power delivery better response you know the argument goes that there's less theatrics but I don't think anyone's really tried so I think if you focus on the theatre you can get out of an out of an electric powertrain I think you can deliver quite quite the experience for drivers as well.

10:01God that is such a brilliant engineer's answer about like you know the power drain itself is so energy dense and we have so much opportunity here we've only just started to skim the surface and I think part of that opportunity is also enabled by the fact that you know electric vehicles have taken some time to develop and certainly the first electric vehicles probably didn't lend themselves as well to sports cars a because the batteries were more expensive and b because they were less energy dense so it definitely feels like the timing is is so ripe to enter into the electric sports car segment but I mean between yourself and your co-founder mark you're co-founders i haven't just made yeah and yenni yenni's our third co-founder as well that was it um i was like i know that i'm doing someone a disservice here um but you have really interesting backgrounds i mean you've all spent time at tesla byd lucid i think polestar and uber and i imagine that you know obviously sometimes you create a business out of like you see this huge opportunity but i imagine you also created it out of some sort of frustration that your previous employers were not operating in that space.

11:07So I wonder if you could just share a bit about how this came to fruition and when was it, you know, how many beers had you all had together when you were like, we're doing it ourselves? I think anyone who's worked at Tesla or Lucid others would probably have their share of frustrations. But I don't think it was born out of frustration. I think the, so I first joined Tesla in 2010 with the Tesla Roadster programme and the company at that point so as employee 650 the product the mission um was such an exciting phase of the company's journey and i think mark joined shortly after i did or just after i left the first time around and i think for him as well that phase of the business was so exciting and it became and is a very very large and most valuable car company in the world and becomes a political machine churning out millions of cars right the customer is no longer at the center of the team that it's done right that there's a lot to do now but the interesting part is early on and same thing for i joined lucid very early on and you know great company but again very large business churning out those cars i think one is drawn to the phase of company you have early on and the excitement of launching something and building something from nothing very exciting especially with the benefit of hindsight because i remember first time around at tesla we had no idea how to sell electric car and if anyone ever thinks it was easy early on at tesla try selling electric car when no one's heard of the brand and there are no charges that that was that was what we had to do right yeah what's telsa where do i charge it you know there's and it was 120 000 pounds at the time so it wasn't cheap either so i think one is drawn to the face of the company and the other is again we're very focused on the sports car segment because mark and i are both car people and we're car people agnostic of powertrain um generally and we we just really think that and that's where we started we really think that an electric powertrain a lightweight sports car would be very cool and then we looked at the business case underpinning it we looked at the route to market and as we got now there's this thing at google moonshots where the main objective at google moonshots is to kill an idea so your performance metrics are how many ideas did you kill this week because if an idea survives killing then it's a great idea so i think at any every stage of this journey of longbow you know we've we've interrogated from every angle we've got an incredible board of advisors and seen that it's not just a it's not mark and i being crazy it's a great it's it's a great concept it works it's the engineering is sound and we have after launch such great response from customers press and everyone that um yeah we need to do it now I wonder if one of those pre-orders or reservations may come from a certain elon at tesla.com because I adore chatting to people who work in the automotive industry because they know exactly which other companies are buying their cars tearing them down taking a little look inside and it just wouldn't be a surprise to me if you may procure one for little interestingly I think the point where I realized I should leave Tesla second time around so I joined as employee 33 ,000 so I remember in the beginning it was David versus Goliath and there was a point when I was at Tesla second time around where a level of confidence and maybe arrogance of Tesla's position is as indomitable started coming about right so I think when when as a company you shift from being very humble and striving to be best striving to earn your customers delight when that shifts you know you've probably shifted to company so I wouldn't be surprised if many manufacturers um don't think we'll make it and if many manufacturers don't buy our cars which is fine for me we'll just um we'll just deliver a rose to before Elon that's what we have to do I think that is a great ambition um so I guess on that there are two things that I really really want to ask you the first is around your board of advisors because every time I've received a press release of who you know insert name is joining a board of advisors at Longbow I'm like what how on earth did you make this happen and two you know as much as you have really really scrutinized the plan and really understood the business case and we'll get into some of the the technical details around manufacturing as well there are so many EV startups that have come and gone and I'd love to get your perspectives on why you think Longbow is slightly different and also why you have that incredible board of advisors and what they see in Longbow as well.

15:51I couldn't agree more on the board of advisors so first of all the main reason we feel that they're a great board of advisors is just as people they're wonderful people to spend time with and very personable very honest have a high level of integrity across all level that's very important for us um i don't think we believe in advisors just as heads that you stick on a slide to show how good you are so they they need to be advisors and offer valuable advice and differing advice so the advice we received from mike from his time at kind of taking mclaren through the journey he took it through is very different from michael van der sander launching alpine or dan balmer kind of growing and building out the lotus retail network so their advice is there's overlap but generally they all have a different field of expertise and come from each other really nicely and most of it just happened with a conversation just an honest conversation where we spoke and told them what we're doing they you know they went away and then molded over and then a couple weeks later we'd have another deeper level conversation and they'd ask more questions and then I think it was only after they went they they were happy with the answers we gave and they did their own due diligence that then they you know we were fortunate enough to join us So I think they definitely did their homework and we didn't need to do ours because their names kind of speak for themselves.

17:13So we're very happy to have them on board. And maybe why is Lumbo different? Just before we come to that, can you give just for the benefit of all the listeners, just just rattle off those names and their sort of alumni companies? So Mike Flewitt was the previous CEO of McLaren. I think he took it all the way from the P1 until the acquisition by the SIVEN, the investment fund of UAE, as well as establishing, I think it was the first CEO of 47. Yeah. Yeah. So incredible background. Before that, I think he was VP of global manufacturing at Ford as well. So even before joining McLaren, I had incredible, incredible experience.

17:55and then Michael van der Sander so Michael van der Sander actually was at Tesla before me was one of the first chief commercial officers reporting directly into Elon um we call it the Icarus zone where you fly too close to the sun and then you don't you don't last one removed from Elon is the best place if you directly report to Elon you've got a fire shield there yeah don't fly too close to the sun so he was in Icarus zone um then he was chief commercial officer Aston then he launched Renault Alpine and the whole vehicle program and then grew Jaguar SVO I think from when no one heard of it to where it is today so incredible background and and we overlapped at Lucid so he was managing director for a short period of time before he was in the Icarus zone of Peter Rawlinson and then and then Dan Balmer who was previous CEO and president at Lotus so very much focused on the commercial side and and the expansion once GLEAD took over looking at the new product suite as well as the Amira and the VIA and how those were launched yeah so so incredible overlap in the background and we've got a couple more that we're going to announce shortly as well so yeah just just just really great and you know it's just great to say you know Michael we're thinking about doing this what are your thoughts have you yeah I saw that before this is what we did at Alpine and this is what we did at SVO and I remember at Aston we had that as well this is how we approached it so we just yeah yeah and I guess like especially in those early phases where you've got to be strategic with cash having that deep deep incredible industry experience to say yeah that you're on the right track or like wouldn't do that must be totally invaluable absolutely yeah it is because you know we there is no um there's no rule book on how to launch a lightweight electric sports car company in the united kingdom right there are things we've learned before at tesla and lucid and there's things that they've learned before and they're specifically for this there's no rule book so um yeah absolutely it gets us further ahead and one of our principles so we have 24 principles i think for the longbow one of them is you can never have enough advice and so um and that doesn't necessarily mean you always need to listen to the advice or follow it but um you should always take as much as you can in because it helps inform the decisions and in terms of why longbow is sort of teed up for a slightly different trajectory of success compared to say some of the other ev startups that have become gone why do you think this time it's different i mean we've we've done it obviously so i think between mark gainy and i we've launched five different ev brands one in boating two in the middle east three in europe um we supported porsche with their um their direct to consumer organizational structural models and stuff so we you know we've we've done this before and and despite having done it before we think we want to do it again um so i think that experience so when we're looking at this it's not through some rose tinted glasses where okay we've got a brand and we're launching it'll be easy we we know the the steps that you need to follow to get there i mean that's the first point is we started from leaning into lessons we've learned and built our business plan and go to market around that experience as well as the experience of our advisors i think from a product perspective we're very clear on on what we're looking to do you know we won't deviate i think um and we're very and there have been some lessons we've learned from some of the other um some of the other failures in the marketplace you know concentration risk around so battery chemistries or battery types there's a lot of if you really if you really look at why all these other companies have failed or even struggled in the case of tesla elucid byd polestar there are a lot of lessons you can draw on how you create a different plan so you know we're incorporating all those even the successes have a lot of lessons to learn from um and then i think we we are fairly relentless so having worked in silicon valley companies our entire career is a very different pace of working from anyone we've encountered in the United Kingdom in the automotive industry so we are I think relentless is probably a very kind way of describing it but we we have a clear path and we will we will execute on that path as well yeah one thing that really strikes me is that you know to do something like this is highly stressful highly risky and clearly you and Mark have a very successful working relationship and I was there a point in your sort of uh working history together where you were like hmm we know that we are a good duo and I don't know just just if you could tell us a bit about that relationship because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast have come across a colleague in their working lives they're like there's just a different kind of connection that you have with that person compared to a lot of your colleagues and it's a pretty special thing i think yeah i mean absolutely i mean um the i think respect is a very important foundation i think moral alignment and testing that is a very important foundation as well to know that you're aligned on approach um i think those those are two given foundations and then you know we've been through the trenches together even before we founded longbow at tesla and other areas so we came into this not as the first time we came together you know and and then as you go through there are very challenging and trying times that that further test the relationship but if you approach it with respect and and we're best friends as well i think that that helps you you get through right and i think you also we're also both incredibly competitive and so neither of us would ever quit therefore both of us will never quit therefore we'll always just keep going so you know that that that helps as well sorry oh no worries still I hope that's Mark and his ears are burning was actually Mark that was I didn't even plan that that was literally Mark calling yeah I think I should also share that before we started recording you were telling me that you and Mark went on some sort of hike and got covered in leeches by accident the hike not being the accident the leeches definitely being the accident exactly if you've had to pick leeches off your co-founders back in some godforsaken backwater of kyrgyzstan i think that helps solidify that relationship as well yeah quite a quite a team building experience i would say um okay let's turn our attention then to the approach and specifically on the manufacturing side because one of the things that we see with a lot of low volume manufacturers is that you are disproportionately exposed to fluctuations in the supply chain low volume manufacturers simply don't have the same bargaining power that larger volume manufacturers do and that can mean that you end up with quite an expensive product um but i feel like you guys are doing things slightly differently so i wonder if you could share a bit about that yeah i mean it your your your costs are a function of the product that you designed in the first place so if you designed a car to be 0-60 in 2.1 seconds then don't complain about your bill of materials because you've chosen to have expensive materials in the first place and then they're doubly expensive when you're a small manufacturer so i think um it's kind of it's again it's simplified and add lightness right so simplify your product definition make it more achievable look at what the customer needs not look at your ego because you want the fastest car on the road and the longest range and all these things so it's just simplifying passing down what you need as a vehicle in the first place already does the hard work that's the first thing i think secondly even just in the last two years or three years the cost of you know per kilowatt hour is dropping i think i read the other day average cost per kilowatt hour by 2030 is going to be 60 60 dollars per kilowatt hour at the sell level which is i think tesla was paying two thousand dollars per kilowatt hour in 2010 maybe more so we were able to leverage some of those and same thing on suppliers on motors on inverters on the global supply chain is increasing but also where before maybe the global supply chain was dominated by large players like bosch and if you know if you if you choose a bosch motor and you want to change a line of code it costs you a million dollars that that's that's not a joke whereas you're seeing increasing increasingly there are smaller very reputable motor manufacturers that are driving innovation that we would be a big customer for because maybe they're they're servicing or other interesting same for battery module and pack manufacturers so i think the supply chain is evolving into the longer chain and we can we can benefit from that um but and then and then it's just as a program level it's just relentless focus right on your bill of materials weight and cost every day and just not accepting it um going up and and finding ways around it and and just again being fairly relentless so i think that there's no secret source there benefiting from some of the macro factors.

26:53I think focusing on the right product definition from the beginning, because if we said it had to do 0-60 in 1.1 seconds with SpaceX boosters, you're adding cost, complexity, weight. So yeah, I think those are the key pieces. I mean, as you say, it isn't rocket science. Having that very, very clear product definition from the start is going to avoid scope creep and suddenly cost creep and all the rest of it. So you've kind of alluded to this a little bit already with the idea that, you know, it's not going to be the absolute fastest car on the planet. And I think I've heard you speak before about not over-specking.

27:32And for a product that is fundamentally quite an emotional purchase, it's not the most practical car in the world. It's not the most rational car in the world. How do you begin to go about that process such that customers still get that surprise and delight and joy of the craftsmanship? so we we as i said before we have 24 principles we have a mission and we have three core guiding principles so the first one is simplifying the design engineering manufacturing process without compromising focusing on beauty authenticity and connectedness not on stats and the final one is adding lightness to the program through decentralization the right partners and a relentless pursuit of excellence not not building empires or procrastinating so those are three core principles through which decisions and as a company and a product level are viewed so actually what's more important in a sports car is it stats which everyone's doing because they're driven by boards and they're faceless corporations um or is it the driver experience and and those things are very different very very very different right because a car that's going to get you around the Nürburgring quickly is going to be awful to drive on the road right so we we're doing none of that we're focused on an on-road performance car from the beginning so just just by focusing the product on an on-road performance vehicle we strip out weight we strip out cost we strip out complexity it's already going to be nicer to drive because we're not trying to get an ego lap record time with big fat tires and you know 2 ,000 kilowatt motors whatever it is so that helps and I think then we we always talk about theater in the vehicle and and we think fundamentally it's one of the issues that's missing so until now i had this conversation the other day so you know electric cars aren't good as sports cars i was like well you can't really say that you because all the electric cars are suvs that's like saying a mclaren's not a good sports car because a vw toureg is not a good sports car like the powertrain is not the car right yeah because everyone when think of an ev thinks of a d-segment suv because a new d-segment suv is launched um every time you click your fingers a new d-segment suv is launched somewhere in the world not a sports car um so just by building a sports car it's going to inherently have theatrics of a sports car because it's a sports car and it doesn't have a roof our first car so that's that's a lot of theatrics in the beginning but then we're very focused on driver engagement so tactile interfaces you know not looking at stripping not having hyper screens and these kind of things so the the cockpit experience is going to be very tactile it's going to be very elemental and and it's going to engage the driver so i think um i i feel like i'm getting around on the question but i think that that's how you you bring it together and then you look at then the stats sit after that right it's kind of the start with the y and then at the end you populate a number well it can't really be slower than 3.5 even if it's four seconds still be great but we think 3.5 is the right 0 to 60 number 250 to 270 miles range is the right range number and that comes afterwards because we've we've defined what the car is and more importantly maybe what the car isn't as well and also that 0 to 60 number which ultimately is quite arbitrary but it 0 to 3.5 or 0 to 4 is will feel extremely quick when you're the car is lighter and smaller and you're more exposed to the elements like I know that I've said this about a thousand times on this podcast before but I remember the first time I rode a motorbike I shouldn't say a motorbike a moped that's who am I kidding and I felt like that exhilaration and I thought this was the most amazing thing and you look down and I was going 25 miles an hour so it's like a relative absolutely as well yeah I remember early days in Tesla with a roadster test drive and this gentleman showed up with an albus 39 special which is like a 1940s if it's a real petrolhead they're going to correct me in this maybe 50s sports car and he let me drive in it and i was doing 60 and i was terrified yeah absolutely terrified but exhilarated so i think you know you you are exactly right i think driver assistance features i think all the cabin things that makes it sound double wall and removing all the the experience from the vehicle you homogenize that experience and then all your your effective experience just just forward and sideways motion there's no other theater it's just you could be in a you know a um a centrifuge right for all you care that's that's your experience so the thing that this really sounds like it's boiling down to is that deep consideration to the drivers and the experience that they're going to get and I love asking this question for new companies or newer companies sorry because you don't have that legacy of the brand to kind of draw upon and I know that somewhere on your sort of google drive or whatever drive there will be a who do we think our customer is so who do you think the customer is what do you picture I mean we know who our customers are so we've spoken to every single one of our reservation so we don't need to guess we know who our customers are um and we not by accident very purposefully make the longbow proposition um universally appealing so we're not looking at saying okay we're targeting the eco warriors and we're not targeting the extreme petrol heads or the collectors or the um even i would say particular nationalities so i think we we very purposefully um communicate our brand and our product in a way that we think appeals to a core crowd of automotive enthusiasts but I think also technology enthusiasts that may be looking for something that isn't on the market currently.

33:21So it's a bit of a cop-out but it's kind of everyone and we don't want to, I think we will do things on the car that if someone's really at the performance end and they really want something super special they can get and they will have the opportunity for. but if someone's just um they want to use it as their daily driver and they want a two-seater sports car that's electric but there's nothing else in the market um and they like design and they like what cars look like it's priced accordingly that they can also buy it so perhaps even from a pricing perspective it's designed to appeal broadly and that that's that's it's not marmite so yeah it's it's not marmite so i think you can have a product and we'll get into like the ethos of timeless timeless beauty at some point as well but you can have a product that is um uh not marmite but isn't beautiful and i'm going to say the model three and from the very beginning i think it's a great looking product but it's not you're not going to put a picture of a model three on your wall so that's a level of beauty and design that is not divisive but it's also not inspiring and exciting and then you can have beauty that is timeless and people put on its wall and i think we're more inspired by that and i think that that as i said right one of our core principles is focus on beauty authenticity and connectedness and i think as a brand as a product those are the key things for us to communicate because i think then people will buy it because it's beautiful people buy it because it's an ev or buy it because they want a driver's car and they they like going out for drives on a Sunday so um yeah we want to stay fairly broad in our customers so I'll just share this with you because um we went to the pub with and we were meeting a number of people who work for Callum which is the design agency set up by Ian Callum former Jaguar designer and Ian Callum was there and we parked at that time the Model 3 got out went into the pub and Ian Callum said oh how did you find driving your appliance here which I think is probably a little bit harsh but you're so right it is a it is an iconic car for many many different reasons and I'm not going to get into the Tesla debate but the spirit of what is beauty in a car it's like a it's a hard thing to describe but when you see it you know it and I wonder how well first of all who designed both the speedster and the roadster at Boulombo.

35:49And two, how did you ensure that that timeless beauty really came to fruition? We've been very clear, so Mark and I and Yeni, we've been very clear from the beginning on what the car is and what we're looking to achieve. And again, very much inspired by cars of the 60s and 70s and 80s, nothing after that, maybe tail end 90s, but nothing beyond that. So that's really where we draw inspiration from. And then work together with Avant Design, So father and son, Chris and Jonathan Gould. And what's interesting there is, you know, Jonathan is a veteran and has gone through all the clay modeling and all these pieces and brings that side to things.

36:28And Chris's son is probably at the forefront of using 3D modeling and virtual reality to design vehicles. So I think a clear vision with how they approached and how they view the product is where we ended up. And actually, you know, we were, let's say we were supposed to go through five design sprints. So we got to three and we were like, that's it. And we just, that's the design. We're done. And they're like, no, we need to do two more. No, stop it. We're done. We've hit it. And then you iterate a little bit. But yeah, we arrived. And just final thing on there, not a lot of people know. It's actually the duality is key to it.

37:06So when we initially viewed it, there's this duality of it being electric vehicle, but then wanting to be inspired by classic design. So if you look at the car, there's a two-tone paint scheme for a reason. The rear of the car is supposed to be the more modern aspects of the vehicle and automotive and the electric powertrain. And the front is a skin that's stretched over the vehicle that represents more classic design and more classic vehicles. So a concept of duality, I think, helps us achieve that. And if you really look, there are not a lot of cars in the market that have actually two-tone as their core design aesthetic.

37:38So I think that helps us achieve it as well. God, that's really interesting. and you know you see this in in various different brands i think maving is probably a good um example as well of drawing that inspiration from the past and projecting it into what it should be today with the available technology um so hearing you describe that i'm like yeah i i i can totally see that um now you've chosen to have your operations here in the uk which i would say is is well there's an abundance of automotive talent so that makes total sense but it's not necessarily the easiest place to set up manufacturing operations.

38:13And I think you said earlier something around decentralization, and I know that contract manufacturing comes into this as well. So why is it that the UK makes sense? And how is it that you're operating to ensure that the UK does make sense to build these vehicles? The UK is the best place in the world to build electric sports car. There is nowhere even close. If I want to go and build a D-segment SUV, China is the best place in the world to build it China is not the best place in the world to build a sports car they've never built one they built one, it weighs two tonnes and it's based off of a SUV or a sedan I think so if we agree the UK is the best place in the world to build a sports car it follows through that the UK is the best place in the world to build an electric sports car in many ways so I think start with that, I think the talent is here the smaller suppliers, the larger suppliers and I think from our vehicle, 90 plus percent of the vehicle is UK supply-based.

39:11So it is a UK-designed, engineer-manufactured. Our battery modules and pack are British. Motors, British, panels, brakes, suspension, steering. Most of the car is British. So it is a British car. It's a British car company. It's the best place to build it. And you talked about talent as well. so engineers on anything from you know cfd fluid dynamics all the way through to suspension engineering it's the best place in the world for eight of the 10 formula one teams are based in the uk so it is the best place to build it and we have a rich history of building lightweight sports cars the sports cars are really only built in the uk in italy or in japan in higher volumes in the us in higher volumes so um yeah i think i see that evolving even into the electric powertrain as well you know not that we're working with them but Yasser as an example is incredible technology and they're just one example of a number of other suppliers that are evolving out of the UK for for electric vehicle supply chain as well so yeah and I think moving forward the the government really understands that the new advanced propulsion center drive 35 initiatives around government funding really recognize that and they're looking to support the supply base looking at supporting OEMs and manufacturers like us.

40:29So I see it as continuing to be, and we want to be a big part of growing the UK as the best place to build electric sports cars. Carl, what a hopeful answer. And I don't mean that hopeful as in your answer is hopeful. It's a very pragmatic answer, but definitely gives a lot of hope to the UK automotive industry. Do you see that continuing as you hopefully take the road beyond the low volumes that you've described and scale up those operations as well? I think so. I think, again, everyone says low-volume manufacturing, but we want to be at 10 ,000 units by 2030, which is, by Tesla standards, tiny, but in sports car world, I think reasonable.

41:10It's, you know, 200 ,000, 250 ,000-odd sports cars are built a year. So, you know, not a huge part of that, but 5%. I think the UK is a great place to build it. I think North America is going to be a key market for us. So even if the base platform and the majority of the vehicle is here and we do some final assembly in the US, I think the UK will always be the base of our operations, the main manufacturing footprint for us and where we want to build jobs and build capabilities and build IP and everything. It's part of our DNA. We are Longbow. I don't think Longbows were ever made in North America.

41:47So it would be weird for us to build our cars in North America. we're coming to the end of this RISP podcast and it's evident that you have this very laser focused vision of the future and commitment to the mission and everything that it's going to take to bring these cars to life but I imagine there are also days where it's like come on, this is a little bit frustrating so if by the power of the podcast you could be granted a wish of something that would just make this whole journey a little bit more straightforward what would you wish for? i just i think the wish of awareness you know i think um people to be aware of what we're doing how serious we are about it and that we're much further ahead than people would think we would be at this point you know we'll have some exciting things to show very shortly as well on the road so a power of awareness because that's that's the start so i think people first of all need to be aware that long we're doing what we're doing and why it's important and how we're going about it and I think that leads into a we're at the start and by 2030 10 ,000 cars um so yeah we need to now get more and more people aware of it and then start delivering on on the promises that we make well I hope that this podcast um at least contributes to that and if not then we'll just have to do an episode where we review one of the beautiful vehicles so uh absolutely absolutely yeah thank you so much to daniel for taking the time to join us on the podcast i personally found that a really fascinating insight into what it takes about the combination of having the right timing the right experience the right focus the right product and i really have everything crossed to hope for their success we will of course be following their journey super closely um but that is all that we have time for today before you go if you could do us the honor of liking, subscribing, sharing with a friend, or all of the above.

43:37We so appreciate it. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it. It really, really does ensure that we can carry on speaking to interesting people like Daniel Davey. Thank you to Louis from our team who'll be editing this particular episode. Thank you to you for listening. So yeah, if you have been, thank you for listening and watching. Leaders aren't born, they're made, and they're made like everything else, through hard work. Well, the Chevy Silverado was made for hard work and designed to handle the big jobs. With over 13 ,000 pounds of towing capacity and trailering sway control, Chevy Silverado can haul the biggest loads on the roughest roads.

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