Caterham Cars Reveals Plans For Its All-Electric Future

As mainstream carmakers with deep pockets continue to show the world that a shift to electric isn’t needn’t be scary, enthusiasts are rightly worried about the smaller players.

What on Earth will happen, they ask, to the likes of Caterham? A British builder of tiny sports cars weighing barely more than 1,000 pounds and with weather protection best described as optimistic, it is a commonly held fear that the ungainly mass of batteries will rob the Caterham Seven of its entire identity.

Not so fast, enthusiast. Speaking to Autocar this week, Caterham chief executive Bob Laishley revealed how, not only is business booming and the Seven will be built with an internal combustion engine for at least another decade, but that Caterham has a two-pronged electric succession plan in place.

Laishley says work on an all-electric Seven is well underway, although none of the company’s circa 500 annual customers has asked for one just yet. More notably, he added that the company is currently working on an all-new, all-electric coupé to be sold alongside the battery-powered Seven.

The car is only “an idea in people’s heads,” for now, Laishley said, but added that it is also the brainchild of Kauho Takahashi, the chief executive and “all round car guy” at the head of Japanese firm VT Holdings, which has owned Caterham since 2021.

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Autocar adds that the new car is to be built in greater volumes than the Seven, with the idea of 1,000 cars per year not dismissed by the CEO. The car might even arrive well before bans on the sale of new internal combustion cars hit the UK and Europe, potentially in 2026, ahead of the all-electric Seven, which will be held back until Caterham’s customers demand it.

Laishley said: “It will be prettier and more modern than a Seven – those will be big points of distinction – and maybe it will have a roof. We’re designing it as a pure EV from the start, with rear drive only, and it will be registered under SVA [Single Vehicle Approval] rules.”

As for the current Seven, Caterham hopes to keep producing it for as long as possible, and perhaps even beyond the UK’s ban on the sale of purely combustion-powered cars, which arrives in 2030, followed by a ban on new hybrids in 2035. Popularity in other markets without such enforcement, or with bans that are further down the road, is how Caterham hopes to continue selling its beloved Seven.

The US is a key future market, where the Seven is now permitted to be registered under the country’s ‘Show & Display’ car registration law. This allows cars that are “traditional or technically significant,” like a Caterham Seven, to be imported and driven up to 2,500 miles annually.