Swedish electric-car company Uniti (www.uniti.earth) has named Northampton-based KW Special Projects (KWSP) as the official engineering partner for its new electric-vehicle (EV) production facility at Silverstone Park.

The deal will see KWSP’s carbon composite vehicle platform used for the Uniti One vehicle build — because of its light-weighting, thermal management, and structural properties.

Called ToPCat, this platform can be developed for a fraction of the cost of traditional methods and offers an alternative to the more-conventional carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) thermosets traditionally seen in motor-sport programmes.

While CFRP can be expensive to process, labour intensive and not easily recyclable, ToPCat is fully recyclable and has been proven to shorten engineering cycle times by 83%. Moreover, independent tests have demonstrated financial savings in both tooling costs and unit costs.

Built through modular construction using a repeatable manufacturing process, ToPCat uses thermoplastic materials and innovative manufacturing processes to meet the need for reduced vehicle mass and increased modularity of manufacture.

Kieron Salter, managing director of KWSP (www.kwspecialprojects.com), said: “Uniti One is a really exciting project, which will demonstrate the lightweight and structural advantages of ToPCat when compared with alternative methods of chassis design and manufacture.

"Made possible by co-funding from Innovate UK, ToPCat was key to attracting Uniti to the UK, where the company hopes to take advantage of Britain’s expertise in materials development and lightweighting.”