- Our exclusive interview with British sports car company Longbow
- First car, the Speedster, poised for full production in 2026
- Coupe Roadster will follow
- Massive ambitions for the firm; "We want to be the best sports car company in the world"
- Longbow also targeting the leasing market for its vehicles
New British electric sports car start-up Longbow is stealing a march on the incoming Tesla Roadster - and it’s also taking aim at the UK leasing market.
That’s according to the company’s co-founder Mark Tapscott, who lifted the lid on the firm’s ambitions in an exclusive interview withSelect Car Leasing.
London-based Longbow was founded in 2023 by a team of experts who’ve worked for global heavyweights like Tesla, Lucid and BYD.
The goal is to produce lightning-quick, featherweight electric sports cars that won’t break the bank and which can carry the torch of spiritual successors like the Jaguar E-Type and Lotus Elise.
Longbow has unveiled two cars, which both share the same platform and weigh less than 1,000kg,
The first to arrive will be the Longbow Speedster, with a production run limited to 150 models beginning towards the end of 2026.
It’s a roofless rocket that weighs just 895kg and which can launch from 0-62mph in a scant 3.5 seconds - while still delivering a 275-mile range. The Speeder begins at £84,995.
Following in the Speedster’s slipstream will be the sumptuous Roadster coupe. It’s cheaper at £64,995 - not much more than the MG Cyberster - and will accelerate from 0-62mph in just 3.6 seconds while enjoying a range of up to 280 miles between charges.
That ‘Roadster’ name is significant.
Tesla is expected to reveal details about its own, second-generation Roadster next month, with production slated for 2027.
(Second-gen Tesla Roadster, above)
Longbow is nipping in ahead of the Californian giants.
Mark Tapscott adds: “We’re often asked why we chose the name Roadster. It’s bit of a poke at our old boss Elon. We want to beat him to the punch and launch our Roadster before he does.”
Significantly for Select Car Leasing customers, Longbow also has eyes on the UK lease market. Yep, you read that right – you could soon be able to lease one.
Keep reading to find out why.
(Longbow founders, L-R, Daniel Davey, Jenny Keisu, and Mark Tapscott)
So, Mark, when did the Longbow dream first begin?
"For me, it all started when I was a kid. Before I could get a car, I managed to convince my parents to not know that I had a motorbike! I pulled that apart, figured out how it all worked, and then graduated to a Kawasaki ZXR400.
That bike was the most fun I’ve ever had on two wheels. It was lightweight, you had to push it hard, and it felt like you were going fast even if you perhaps weren’t.
I think that’s what has been lost with recent sports car design and it’s something we want to put back into the market. We also believe the best form of motoring is with the wind in your hair. People will have to wait and see exactly what that means for Roadster…"
You designed and built race cars before ending up at Tesla - what did you learn from that experience?
"When I joined Tesla, I looked at the Roadster and thought, ‘The future’s here’. It’s relatively light weight, it’s electric, and we sold 2,500 units globally. But then Lotus wouldn’t sell us any more chassis (the original Tesla Roadster was underpinned by the same platform as the Lotus Elise) and that was it - game over.
For 20 years now, nothing similar has come along. Obviously we’ve seen the electric MG Cyberster but I think that’s quite heavy and perhaps not a sports car in its truest sense.
When the second-gen Tesla Roadster (the one that’s due to be unveiled imminently) was pushed back, we knew we had to do it ourselves.
With the Speedster and Roadster, we’ve tried to do something different, producing a car that looks expensive but which is actually cheaper than you might think.
Some people in online forums have been calling the Speedster the ‘Monza Miata’ - ie, a bit Ferrari Monza, and a bit Mazda MX-5.
And we’ll take that."
The Speedster and Roadster are sensibly-priced - what’s the thinking here?
"The world doesn’t change with another $2m dollar hypercar. I think we’ve got enough of those already. You can only affect change with vehicles that are within reach.
We’ve built something sexy that people can hopefully afford. It’s not rocket science. We’re just doing what a lot of people have been thinking for years.
Customer input appears to be a big thing with the Longbow design process - how has that helped?
We want to build something fun but useable. We learned so much from speaking with around 200 customers; one-to-one calls, 50 minutes each. We had originally specced the car in a certain way, which included a few extra bells and whistles. But most customers came back to us and said, ‘Actually, we want less’.
They’re demanding a driving experience without excess. So, we ended up paring back on a few features to give people what they actually crave - something that’s not a floating YangWang U8 that can sail across the Yangtze!" (you can watch a video of it floating here)
The Roadster and Speedster went from the drawing board to working demo in six months - how did you manage that in such a short space of time?
"It speaks to the biggest challenge Longbow faces, which is perception.
There is a graveyard full of British sports car makers. It’s usually a guy in a shed with a great idea but not much substance behind it.
With Longbow, we’ve learned from all of the challenges we’ve faced in launching other car companies. We’ve built Longbow from a spreadsheet and then applied the passion on top of that.
We spoke with Marc Tarpenning, the original founder of Tesla Inc before Elon came in. He told us how Longbow is doing precisely what Tesla tried to do 20 years ago, but what it couldn’t achieve due to supply chain issues. They had to make their own motors, pulling batteries out of laptops and sticking things together with a glue gun.
Fast forward 20 years and we don’t need to invest in a gigafactory to build ourselves a motor. We can go straight to some of the best suppliers in the world who’ve already done the R&D and invested millions."
Where will the batteries be sourced from?
"With Longbow, the only thing not made in the UK are the battery cells. When we start to talk about the actual drivetrain, I think people are going to be really surprised about what’s going into this car.
We go to suppliers, take those products and, like chefs, we put those ingredients together. That’s how we can deliver a robust car very quickly without huge amounts of capital expenditure.
With the battery, we’re using standard cylindrical cells which we can purchase from multiple suppliers. When UK manufacturing of those cells comes online, we can switch over to British suppliers.
Overall, we don’t rely on any technology that doesn’t already exist. We can build today with what’s already available."
Is Longbow still seeking investment and funding?
"We’re super lucky. We’re backed by venture capital (VC) private equity (PE) and a few angels as well.
You can never have too much funding, but if we ever did you’d see a Longbow Formula 1 team!
We’re able to get to production this year with the Speedster and then, at that point, because we’re built from boring spreadsheets, we’ll start producing Roadsters and become self-sustaining."
What about a UK assembly site for Longbow?
"We’ve been privately funded all the way through but now we’ll maybe look to leverage what support is available from the government while taking advice on locations.
When you look at the Midlands, we’ve lost so many automotive jobs in the region. It would be strange for us not to be in Motorsport Valley (which cuts a swathe through the Midlands and Oxfordshire) where the talent exists. That’s where we hope to be when it comes to assembly."
Are there any current EVs that you admire and might have used as reference points in creating Longbow?
"The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is incredible. It sits high, it’s heavy, it does lots of things that we’re fighting against right now. But what I think that car has done is to change minds about what’s possible with electrification. The Ioniq 5 N has shown there’s a future in EVs that can be engaging and enjoyable."
(Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, above)
Are you looking to replicate the Ioniq 5 N’s synthetic engine sound?
"Authenticity is really important. Once you start pushing past that you begin to question everything else. For us, when we think about sound we think about ‘theatre’. The noise of the original Tesla Roadster, for example, was sampled for the Batpod bike in The Dark Knight. An EV already makes really cool sounds, it’s just that every EV that most people drive is sanitised and quiet. We want to emphasise the natural sound and remain authentic."
What does the next five years look like for Longbow?
"A lot of companies get caught up in potential before they achieve what they’ve set out to do. We’re focused on delivering cars. Once we’ve done that, we’ve done something that most start-ups never achieve.
Then, if you want to be the best sports car company in the world, you have to do two things; you’ve got to be better than the Porsche 911 and, in America, you have to go after the Corvette. That’s our ambition."
(Longbow advisor Dan Balmer sitting in front of design sketches)
And you’ve got the UK leasing market in mind specifically?
"Fifteen years ago, I was helping to launch Tesla in the UK and Select Car Leasing, and maybe one or two other leasing companies in the UK, were the only ones that were forward-thinking enough to say there was a future in mass-market EVs.
You would not believe the challenges we faced, even just trying to confirm residual values was a struggle - we had to create our own for leasing companies to even go near the product.
Things have changed.
Is the leasing market something we’re actively considering for Longbow? Absolutely! Wide accessibility to our cars is important to us and we’re already engaging the right channels to ensure the best residual values."
Finally, tell us about your favourite driving road!
"I grew up in and around Sussex, between London and Brighton, there’s a road I always used to take going from my parent’s house down to Goodwood. It’s the A272, a lovely country road for bikes and cars.
You know it’s a good road because of the number of speed cameras and police cars you’ll find there on a sunny summer’s day."
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