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Origins
Detroit Electric — the storied name that sold silent town cars to Edwardian ladies and Thomas Edison — was revived in 2013 around the SP:01: a battery-electric two-seater on Lotus Exige architecture, claiming 155 mph and sub-4-second acceleration, positioned as a purist's EV sports car against Tesla's departed Roadster. Production plans wandered from Detroit to the Netherlands to Anglo-Chinese arrangements; a handful of cars emerged as the venture's financing thinned, leaving the SP:01 effectively a limited artefact. The episode fits a recurring pattern — heritage badges resurrected on Hethel underpinnings — and preserves a neat symmetry: America's original electric marque returning precisely as electrification arrived, and missing the wave it had foreseen by a century.
Detroit Electric SP01 rear · Minseong Kim · CC BY-SA 4.0
