Electric Caterham Seven to launch in 2023 – report

Sports car manufacturer Caterham will launch an all-electric reinterpretation of its iconic ‘Seven’ model in 2023, according to a new report from Autocar.

The brand’s CEO Graham Macdonald – who has already driven a prototype of the vehicle – told the outlet: “It’s very much like a go-kart: it’s two-pedal, you’ve got rapid acceleration and it’s a different product to drive – no less exciting, but exciting in a different way.”

“However …  my ambition is to keep combustion engines going as long as we possibly can find an engine that fits our product,” Mr Macdonald said. “Everybody is going smaller and fitting turbochargers, and that’s not what we want.”

The report suggests Caterham is looking to keep weight to a minimum and maintain the model’s signature handling characteristics and agility – something that has historically been difficult to do in battery-electric vehicles. To achieve this it will likely forgo more complex systems such as regenerative braking.

Acceleration will reportedly match the existing flagship 231kW 2.0-litre supercharged four-cylinder 620R variant, which claims to complete the 0-100km/h sprint in around 2.8 seconds.

The Seven was designed by Lotus founder Colin Chapman in the mid 1950s, and the tooling was sold to Caterham in 1972. It has been in production every year since.

The Caterham marque was recently acquired by Japanese conglomerate VT Holdings, and the funding secured during the takeover has permitted continued development.  According to Mr Macdonald, the move will “see this brand continue for another 50 years.”

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