As an unabashed fan of electric vehicles, even I have to admit that most of them are pretty boring. Their smooth, quiet and calm demeanors don’t offer much in the way of intrinsic personality, which has led to many brands slapping on outré designs and fake engine sounds to try and dial up the excitement.
To that end, a pair of offerings coming soon from UK-based EV startup Longbow Motors looks to deliver exactly that. The Speedster and Roadster are high-performance electric machines built using advanced in-wheel motors from Donut Labs. Those motors and a bespoke design enable an astonishing curb weight of just 2,200 pounds.
For comparison’s sake, that’s over 100 pounds less than a Mazda Miata, the current king of lightweight roadsters. Longbow brought just the Speedster to CES 2026, displaying it on the show floor at the Donut Lab booth. Donut is a spinoff of Verge Motorcycles, which was the debut platform for the company’s hub-less electric motor, creating a unique, Tron-style aesthetic.
But the technology is about a lot more than creating physics-defying motorcycles. Donut Lab is expanding its motors to all sorts of platforms, from scooters to heavy-duty trucks, creating a platform for easy adoption by electrified startups.
Donut Labs’ motors in the Longbow Motors Speedster (Tim Stevens for Engadget)
Of all those platforms, though, Longbow’s implementation is the most compelling I’ve seen. The appeal starts with the style. Co-founders Daniel Davey and Mark Tapscott (who, with Jenny Keisu, founded Longbow after stints at Tesla and Lucid) told me they wanted to offer a classic but also modern and compelling look. The roofless Speedster has an edge over its glass-topped Roadster in terms of visual simplicity, but a complete lack of any protection from the elements — even a token windscreen — will make it viable only for the most committed of open-air enthusiasts.
Exposed or protected, you’ll find yourself situated in an extremely spartan interior. Things like the gauge cluster and primary controls were covered, set to be revealed later, so I can’t say for sure exactly what the Longbow looks like on the inside. But it was designed to be basic and minimal to an extreme, an abject rejection of the rest of the touchscreen-laden machines on the road today.
There is one seemingly unnecessary piece of equipment in the interior, though, and that’s a shift knob. EVs, of course, rarely have transmissions, so there’s no outright need to shift. The purpose of that lever is also a mystery for now, as neither Davey nor Tapscott would confirm its function, but it seems safe to expect some sort of simulated gearshift action, a la the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N.
The Longbow machines don’t just lack a transmission, they lack a traditional drivetrain layout at all. The direct-drive Donut Lab motors are situated right inside the wheel, freeing up space inside the vehicle’s chassis and helping it to maintain its pert dimensions.
Longbow Motors Speedster (Billy Steele for Engadget)
They also provide a distinctive look, filling up the wheels as they do. There is a downside to this arrangement, that being the heft of these motors hanging on the outer edges of the vehicle. The suspension, then, has to work a bit harder. But co-founder Mark Tapscott told me that the positives outweigh the negatives, and that the handling benefits of having multiple motors alone are worth it.
To keep the rest of the Longbow’s weight centralized, the car uses a battery pack that runs largely along the center of the machine, stacked vertically rather than spread throughout the floor. This keeps the mass centralized in the vehicle while also enabling the kind of ultra-low seating you want in a machine like this.
It looks like it’ll be quite a fun package to drive, and while exact power output from those Donut Lab motors hasn’t been confirmed yet, the Speedster is said to sprint to 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds. That’s supercar-like performance, but unfortunately, that performance won’t come cheap.
The Speedster starts at ₤84,995, or just under $100,000 by current conversion rates. The Roadster is a fair bit more attainable at ₤64,995, or about $75,000. However, given the wonderfully chaotic state of international tariffs right now, expect the actual pricing here to be somewhat higher when they go into production later this year. Reservations are open now on the company’s site.
That’s a little too rich for my blood, sadly, but if you’ve got the budget, a left-hand drive version will be available. And yes, it’ll be fully road-legal in the U.S.
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