Companies employing motorsport experts to produce green Porsches and Rolls-Royces at a cost of up to £500,000 are starting to attract investors
The acceleration is relentless, the handling crisp, the feel through the steering wheel among the best. The only thing missing is the distinctive engine noise of one of the greatest cars of all time: the 1991 Porsche Carrera 911 “964”.
Why? Because this 964 is electric. Built by Bicester-based Everrati Automotive, it packs 500 horsepower, a 200-mile battery range, and a whole host of breakthrough technologies that the car giants would love to get their hands on.
“Electromods” — electrified classic cars — are in high demand among the super-rich, who want guilt-free motoring in the world’s greatest four-wheeled machines.
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Matt Rogers, the tycoon who co-founded home automation start-up Nest before selling it to Google for $3.2 billion in 2014, is one of them. He has invested in Everrati — one of a new breed of firms dedicated to turning old motors electric. “Not every automaker can invest in the research and development needed to build its own electric vehicle designs,” Rogers said. “For small players making lower production vehicles, a modular EV solution like Everrati is a great option.”
At Everrati, classic Porsche, Land Rover and Mercedes models cost between £180,000 and £500,000. The Porsche 964 I’m tearing around in on the disused military airfield in Oxfordshire, where Everrati is based, sells for £300,000. Established in 2019, Everrati builds its battery-powered cars in the UK and California, generating annual revenues of about £5 million.
Ninety minutes away in Guildford, 2023 start-up Evice Cars is turning out electrified versions of the 1980s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and Corniche at up to £500,000 each.
Such cars date back to an era when the only electric vehicles you’d see on the road were milk floats.
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
As well as making cars for well-heeled EV-heads, Everrati and Evice also offer consultancy services to the big carmakers, as well as selling their EV powertrains — the batteries, motors and transmission system that make the car move.
The first electromod businesses raided junkyards for the powertrains of bashed-up Teslas or Toyota Priuses to install in classic cars. Then, as the market progressed, they bought new components from car industry suppliers.
But the new parts were disappointing in their versatility and capability. So, Everrati and Evice, which still employ only 25 and 11 respectively, started designing their own.
Each employs former top-tier motorsport engineers, drawn from the Mercedes-Benz F1 team, Formula E teams, and supercar makers, including McLaren. And they’ve drawn the attention of investors such as Rogers.
“Growing up in the early Nineties, my dad owned a classic Porsche. I have fond childhood memories of riding in the tiny back seat,” he said. “Fast-forward a few years to when I was looking to purchase a vehicle reminiscent of my dad’s and I still loved the brand, but felt strongly about trying to avoid emissions associated with old petrol cars. Commissioning the Porsche 911 with Everrati allowed me to relive the love for the classic vehicle without the negative emission impacts.”
Everrati founder Justin Lunny says that F1 and Formula E engineers move to the likes of Everrati because they eventually get tired of the international travel and pressures of elite motorsport, and relish the challenge of the EV ideas race. Most F1 teams are based within easy commute of Everrati HQ, so such a move makes sense if they have young families.
Lunny, a former fintech entrepreneur, was originally inspired when he watched the 2018 royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, when the newlyweds drove away from Windsor Castle in a converted electric Jaguar E-Type.
A year later, he had set up a workshop in an ex-RAF bunker at the former Upper Heyford air base. Everrati produced its first 964 electromod in 2021. To date, Everrati has produced “several dozen” electrified Porsche and Land Rover “Series” cars, and a Mercedes-Benz Pagoda.
Meanwhile, Evice came about after its three founders, former Bath University engineering graduate friends, frustrated by their roles in automotive, motorsport and aerospace, collectively quit their jobs in 2022, and headed for the pub.
Over beers in the Big Society hostelry in Oxford they decided to take the plunge, initially funded by a secretive investor who commissioned Evice’s first EV Silver Shadow. Equally secretive London and Middle Eastern investment followed.
Chief executive Matthew Pearson’s team — the founders’ average age is 27 — moved into a new HQ, 25 minutes from McLaren’s Woking base, focusing on design, development and production of re-mastered Rolls-Royces.
Pearson said: “Almost all other companies in this space are paying others to deliver the tech. Not us. We have so much more control over how the cars feel. No other company can claim that its electrified classic cars drive better as EVs than they did when powered by their original engines.”
Tony Fong, Everrati’s head of engineering, said that their secret was preserving the original handling of the famous 964. “We strategically positioned the battery modules to optimise weight distribution and maintain a low centre of gravity,” he said.The 964’s 500bhp is double that of the petrol-powered original meaning it can hit 0-60mph in less than four seconds.
Little needs to be changed with Evice’s Rolls-Royces: removal of the engine, gearbox and fuel tank creates adequate space to maintain weight distribution with the new electric kit installed.
Lunny said Everrati’s ideas, intellectual property and EV powertrain packages were attracting a lot of attention from carmakers looking to build out their EV expertise. “With us, carmakers can buy proven drivetrains, reduce time to market and save on engineering costs,” he said.
“It takes us weeks, rather than the months carmaker suppliers or manufacturers can take to pull together the package and make it work. We can fine-tune the characteristics for cars, commercial vehicles, buses, boats, even light rail.”
Evice is eyeing possibilities in the same space. Pearson has received interest from the marine, defence and automotive sectors. But, like the Everrati team, Evice is deeply secretive about its clients and projects. A tour of its facility involved diversions away from no-go rooms, and certain cars and components hastily hidden under covers.
Everrati’s belief that it replicates the handling of the original cars is certainly borne out with the 964 they let me test. The original 964’s sibling, the 911 Turbo, with “just” 360bhp, was so famed for unexpected loss of rear-end grip at cornering extremes that it was known as the “widowmaker”.
True to form, as I hurtled from a wet disused taxiway and onto a soaking former runway, the only noise that of the spray, suddenly I was sideways then pirouetting. As they say in motoring, I’d run out of talent.
That’s one thing of which there’s no shortage in Britain’s on-the-charge electromod industry.
Source: The Times by Iain Macauley
Photography: Adrian Sherratt for The Sunday Times
