When you’ve spent the past 125 years recording other people’s attempts to create car history, it feels pretty remarkable to be offered the chance to make some yourself.
But that’s where we find ourselves, after being approached by a not-at-all-hypothetical car-mad billionaire, a long-time Autocar reader who fancies setting up his own car firm.
Said billionaire – who, it must be stressed, we definitely didn’t make up for the sake of justifying a feature – has a theory: since the Autocar team knows so much about the car industry, we’d be the perfect people to set up and run their nascent car firm.
We were intrigued and, once promised full creative freedom and the necessary funds, agreed. We divvied up key jobs within the team, with roles assigned based on expertise, authority and the occasional coin toss. All we have to do now is actually invent our new car brand. So can a car magazine actually come up with a brilliant concept for a car company?
The big boss - Steve Cropley
The brief: Identify a market gap and opportunity for a new car firm, and set a general direction
Never waste a good crisis, Winston Churchill is alleged to have said at the start of World War II, implying that great challenges encourage greater solutions. Whether or not he uttered these precise words, we believe the sentiment applies very well to the current situations of Jaguar Land Rover and its Indian parent, Tata Motors.
We have formed a small management team of Autocar ‘experts’ tasked (at least, for the sake of this Christmas issue) with finding a plan for a plausible, profitable and all-new car company, based in the UK but capable of big-scale earnings from exports. Our notional launch backer is a major investment fund ready to invest billions with partners in this enterprise, provided there is great confidence it can work well financially.
After much deliberation, we believe the answer is to launch a brand-new company, Freelander EV Ltd, created initially to be a satellite of Land Rover (as Volvo supports Polestar) so that it can make selective use of JLR’s talents, resources and suppliers, but heading eventually for public flotation to provide its biggest backers (who, we are confident, would include JLR) with a major financial return once the products and company direction are well established.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Dear dear me.
Really?
This is without doubt less exciting than a new washing machine in a different colour.
It really goes to show how much cars are 'over'.
If people call for BEV's that aren't tall like SUV's then some other place needs to be found for battery packs, than to spread them directly underneath the passenger compartment. Battery packs are very large, if range is going to be accepably great. Thus they need lot of space. Let folks keep in mind, even if a BEV may look tall - be tall, like a SUV, assuming batteries under floor of passenger compartment and yet passenger compartment kept tall enough inside so passenger won't have heads touch roof-lining. The vehicles nevertheless shall have very low center of gravity -- because a very heavy pattery pack if placed at the lowest point in the vehicle. So yet it's going to be heavy, as after all battery pack that provides 300 mile range -- may mass more than 500kg. May thus weigh more than all other gubbins combined. As BEV logically has low center of gravity despite being tall -- it won't behave like we're used to tall SUV'ish looking vehicle shall, when the thing is driven along a bendy road. However significant weight seems quite completely inevitable as long as battery packs providing 300 mile range -- weigh at the very least around or more than 500kg.
Great, more SUVs, just what the world needs to waste energy unecessarily! How about something for enthusiasts to lust after that also has enough usability to carry the family and aerodynamic properties much more suited to maximising range from the electric powertrain? Something like a re-working of the compact exec estate, a segment that is in free fall thanks to the trend for high rise family cars?
SUV-look design is logical of EV, due to logical placement of batteries under passenger compartment, making for tallish vehicles. Thus I expect near all future EV designs, probably shall adhere to the SUV-ish trend. As that's logical when you place batteries under passenger compartment yet nevertheless ensure passenger compartment his high enough that people's heads don't brush the roof-lining.