The former Saab factory in Trollhättan will come back to life to create the NEVS Emily GT.
Saab fans everywhere rejoice! Recently, Swedish motoring publication, Auto, Motor und Sport, confirmed that a secret investor has signed a letter of intent to acquire the Emily GT project as well as the Pons project. These were both created by former Saab engineers after the company’s assets were acquired by National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS).
The Pons was shown three years ago, when NEVS was still receiving funding from Evergrande Group. The Emily GT, however is the real star of the show. This was made by dedicated a team of dedicated ex-Saab employees who worked for 10 months to create a working prototype electric vehicle with four in-wheel motors from Prothean Electric. The really amazing part is that they made the prototype when NEVS was asked to go into ‘hibernation’ to avoid being liquidated. This is because Evergrande Group has catastrophically collapsed and can no longer fund many of its projects, including NEVs.
Fortunately, the team was able to get the Emily GT quite a bit of press coverage last month. This has attracted a secret investor who is looking to bring the project to production at the company’s historic Trollhättan plant. While it’s questionable that the Emily GT will be allowed to use ‘SAAB’ branding, the same factory, community and former staff will be responsible for building this new product.
The Emily GT has a theoretical top range of 1000km thanks to that in-wheel motor setup which allows a large 175kWh battery setup to be placed throughout the floor as well as where the axles are. The Emily GT can also be configured up to 653hp and 2000Nm of torque. The in-wheel motors add quite a bit of unsprung weight but they compensate for it with clever programming. Torque vectoring allows the Emily GT to dial in its steering by way of software – putting the appropriate amount of output on each electric motor for the desired result.
We wonder who the secret investor is. Perhaps it’s Christian Von Koenigsegg, who was involved in a previous NEVS tie-up. He did feature in a promo video for the Emily GT 2 months ago.
More news will come next month when the deal is finalized.
