[Video] AIM EV Sport 01 debuts at the 2023 Festival of Speed | GRR
The AIM EV Sport 01 made its world debut at the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard and, while it’s just a design study for now, it could go into limited-run production. The Japanese company behind the project has competed at the Le Mans 24 Hours between 2008 and 2010 before focusing its efforts on EV technology. The Sport 01 is its first road-going car, and Nissan GT-R designer Shiro Nakamura was called in to lead the project.
The brief was to create a car that evokes curvy sportscars from Europe and Japan in the 1960s, and the soft curves are contrasted by modern details such as the LED lighting. It’s a similar story inside the cars where traditional materials and architecture sit alongside exposed carbon-fibre and modern instrumentation.
The Sport 01 was originally conceived as a showcase for AIM’s APM200 motors but initial reaction to the car when it was shown in April was positive enough for AIM to investigate a short production run. There are to things that make the car particularly enticing – one is that it’s rear-wheel-drive (as opposed to the four-wheel-drive we’re more used to seeing from twin-motor cars), and secondly it weights 1,425kg, which is light for an EV with an 81kWh battery on board.
Mass has been kept down thanks to an aluminium spaceframe chassis and a carbon-fibre tub. The exterior panels are made from carbon-fibre laminate. The dimensions are relatively modest, too, the Sport 01 casting a shadow only a little larger than an Mazda MX-5. Propelling the two-seater is 490PS (360kW) from the twin motors, and you can see how quickly it gets off the line in this video.
The Sport 01 is among several new electric sportscars at the 2023 Festival of Speed that are putting the excitement into EVs that we’ve been craving.