Detroit Electric plans sports car, SUV and saloon by 2021

Detroit Electric has confirmed plans for an electric supercar, SUV and saloon, in an assault upon the electric vehicle market from the British manufacturer. 

The brand, which has plants in both the UK and China, plans to sell around 50,000 units per model, per year, although the supercar will be lower volume, with around 1000 units per year mooted.

The first car the brand will launch will be a sports car next year, which will establish the brand’s platform, off of which the other cars will be made. Although the brand remains tight-lipped on how fast the sports car will be, there will be a significant difference between its performance and that of its more mass-market siblings. 

Starting at around £180,000, the supercar is priced to rival the Porsche 911 Turbo, McLaren 720S and Ferrari 488; this will be for the lowest-performance iteration of the car. Higher-performance versions will be priced higher. In the meantime, the Detroit Electric SP:01 will be phased out.

Ranges of the cars will start at around 310 miles (510km), although depending on the model, it could rise as high as around 500 miles (800km). Detroit Electric would not reveal who its suppliers will be. 

The brand’s SUV will be launched in 2019, and will be priced to compete with other high-end luxury vehicles, suggesting a price rivalry with the Bentley Bentayga. Richie Frost, CTO of Detroit Electric, said: “We’re a high-end luxury brand like Bentley, but there isn’t anybody who has established themselves as a high-end high-perfromance manufacturer of EV sports cars.” 

“There are several USPs around the cars; it will be the tech and design of the cars which set it above everything else, though.”

The cars are currently in the design stage, but the company is working on the first engineering vehicles which will be completed next year. Testing and homologation will follow this. The company is concentrating on right-hand drive markets initially, with other markets like the US coming between nine months and a year later. 

It’s targeting a worldwide spread in terms of sales; the company is targeting 30 percent of sales to be Europe, 30 percent to be Asia and 30 percent to be US-borne sales. The rest will be spread across the rest of the world. Half a billion dollars is being spent on upgrading a Chinese production facility; “The focus is on building technical teams up and getting an operations strategy mapped out.” said Frost.