EV Sports Car Maker E-Cite Will Make An Affordable EV Using Tesla's Batteries And Motors

The E-Cite Motors Group is America's latest boutique EV manufacturer, but instead of targeting high-rollers as Rimac does with its Nevera, it wants to produce a new affordable EV sports car codenamed EV GT.

E-Cite first hit the news in July this year after announcing that its budget EV sports car would be powered by Ford's Eluminator crate motor. But this week E-Cite announced that it's ditching Ford in favor of Tesla.

"After thoroughly evaluating all known potential options, the proven Tesla platform provides us with the best possible solution available. Using modified Tesla motors and batteries further reduces our engineering requirements, dramatically increases our performance capabilities, and due to shear economies of scale, reduces the cost of manufacturing that we can pass on to our customers. We also believe that customer confidence will be increased over using less proven platforms," said E-Cite's COO Gene Langmesser.

E-Cite will purchase stock motors and batteries from Tesla, and it will enhance these to increase horsepower, improve cooling, and to better adapt to E-Cite's proprietary chassis.

The only worrying thing is that E-Cite's upgraded motors and batteries will only be covered by a 24-month/50,000-mile warranty. In contrast, all Teslas, including the base Model 3, are covered by a four-year/50,000-mile basic warranty and an eight-year/100,000-mile battery and drive unit warranty. Considering the cost of a replacement battery, this is something worth keeping in mind.

E-Cite also announced that its first production vehicles will be produced for the 2023 model year, which means these cars went from an idea to the dealer floor in less than 12 months. We're also not sure this is something worth bragging about, but we hope to be proven wrong.