The Ariel E-Nomad Is An 896kg Electric Buggy Made Of Plants

Electric cars can be very fast, and devastatingly effective in bends thanks to tricksy torque-vectoring tech, but what they’ve seldom been good at so far – with a few notable exceptions – is providing good, old-fashioned fun. This, the Ariel E-Nomad, could be one of the few exceptions.

Just a concept for now, it takes the Nomad buggy – a vehicle designed with the sole purpose of plastering an idiotically wide grin across the driver’s face – and swaps out its turbocharged Ford engine for a motor from US-based EV expert Cascadia Motion, with 281bhp and 361lb ft of torque.

The battery pack, meanwhile, is a 41kWh Rockfort Engineering unit. It’s vastly heavy batteries and motors that contribute to the titanic weight of lots of EVs, but here, the battery pack weighs under 300kg and the motor just 92kg. That goes some way to keeping the overall kerb weight at just 896kg – remarkably low for something battery-powered.

It gets two drive modes – Sport unleashes the full 281bhp for maximum silliness, while Eco pegs things back and increases the amount of regen.

It’s not just the powertrain that’s eco-minded, though. Those new body panels are made from flax fibre, and reinforced by natural bio-composite fibres. That means that, yes, this car’s made of plants.

The new enclosed bodywork contributes to a 30 per cent reduction in drag over the regular Nomad, much of which comes from the roof panel, which also cleverly stores a spare wheel. All of this means the E-Nomad will hit 60mph in 3.4 seconds, and manage a claimed 150 miles on a charge, which should be plenty for some off-road (mis)adventures.

Currently, Ariel has no plans to put the E-Nomad into production, but it says it’ll “monitor consumer reaction to inform its future plans.” In other words, if enough of you say you want one, it might change its mind.