21 Evice Rolls-Royce Corniche | Dossier E-Mobility Engineering | January/February 2025 to an OEM process as an 11-person company can do” when it comes to its design, build and development approach. The restoration and EV conversion industry is, Pearson says, a rather catchall definition that needs redefining: “There is nothing in common between a company doing an £80,000 conversion, or those saying they can do one for £30,000 or less, and companies – where all three of us used to work – selling million-pound-plus cars. “In our previous jobs within the industry, we saw no shortage of sales and interest coming through, but we saw a real inability to take a car from rolling in as a combustion car to actually delivering something worthy of the price point at the other end, and one of the main issues we saw was that vast swathes of the r&d process were being skipped. “Every conversion car, being a prototype, means you have to start from scratch almost every single time, so you can’t leverage economies of scale. Companies often make the mistake of not getting the foundations set properly or the core technology right, and also lack focus on how many different vehicle programmes to do. “At the low end of the market, you’re looking at second-hand components pulled out of Teslas or Nissan Leafs, secondhand batteries and things being put together very much by hand, but not always in the nice, artisanal way. There’s no bespoke software. It’s all a combination of pieced-together OEM systems. “Our approach is very different in that we treat every build like a brand-new car. We know that the end result has to be, in every single way, a world-class, incredible car – not just an electric version of something that once had an engine. The fact that we’re using a car that once had an engine is a small part of the overall process. “That means stripping and restoring the vehicle, keeping everything that we want to keep, and sticking within powertrains and in vehicle engineering, while Pearson specialised in leading engineering programmes across the automotive, aerospace and materials industries. Metcalfe, meanwhile, has a unique Formula One pedigree, having led track design and management for the Miami Grand Prix. “In a previous life, we would have certainly referred to ourselves as petrolheads, but now we describe ourselves as car enthusiasts,” quips Pearson, who admits to still having a passion for ICE-engined vehicles, despite acknowledging the future of automotive is electric. “When the three of us sat in a pub in Oxford and asked, ‘What do we want the car of the future to be?’, we all agreed it should look like a beautiful, classic car with chrome bumpers, combined with modern technology, and the ability to drive through city centres or in nature and leave it as it was found; no oil dripped down the road, no smoke belching out the back. “What is definitely different with Evice is that the founding team are technical, so we have an understanding of not only what a car requires to go together, but what it takes to make a car at the end of the process a really great product, and not just a forklift powertrain in something else’s body that technically functions as a car.” New-build approach Evice currently employs 11 people at its 6,500 ft2 home in Surrey, comprising an engineering office, a sealed-off, clean, battery build room, and a workshop and stores. Only founded 18 months ago, it is already a year into the development of its first vehicle, and recently rolled it out of the factory doors to begin slowspeed systems checks before launching a full-scale road-test programme. While the company essentially operates within what Pearson defines as the “electric resto-mod” industry, its founders see it as an entirely new-build constructor that is operating “as close Every conversion car, being a prototype, means you have to start from scratch almost every single time, so you can’t leverage economies of scale Evice develops its luxury vehicles in a modern facility in Surrey
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