Nir Kahn: ‘We don’t need anywhere near as much EV range as we think’
Award-winning automotive designer and composite specialist Nir Kahn reflects on the influence the Fiat X1/9 has on today’s electric vehicle industry, where the future of the EV market lies, and why his lightweight Urban Runabout concept has the potential to redefine the all-electric car landscape
In spite of the immense technological progress experienced by the EV world over the last decade or so, the fact remains that electric vehicles have a bit of a weight problem. After all, the average EV is approximately 30% heavier than its combustion-engined counterpart due to the heft of its batteries – a standard EV battery weighs in at around 454kg, with larger units weighing in at around the 900kg mark.
Alongside the growing discussions around EV weight, there has been a shift in consumer trends amongst buyers. While largely anecdotal, the days of quadruple-digit horsepower and turbo diesel-rivalling amounts of range are gradually being assigned to the pages of modern automotive history.
Replacing them are smaller, lighter, cheaper EVs or all-electric driver-focused cars with a good chassis, which isn’t just reliant on massive firepower for driving thrills. The back-to-basics Citroen E-C3 a case of the former; the riotous, sub-£40k Abarth 600e Scorpionissima the latter.
A leading voice in the push for the wallet-friendly, yet fun-to-drive lightweight EV is automotive designer Nir Kahn. A Transport Design graduate from Coventry University’s class of 1998, Kahn began his award-winning design career in the September of 2001.
Inspired by a Lotus legend
From 2001 to 2024, he worked as a designer specialising in composite materials for a variety of firms including Oshkosh Defence, Lockheed Martin, and International Motors. During his 23 years working for various defence firms, he was key to introducing a cost-effective composite architecture for mass-produced armoured vehicles.
During those two-and-a-bit decades, Kahn didn’t just become synonymous with his effective use of composites. He also earned a name for himself as a visionary when it comes to efficient, modular designs with their own distinctive aesthetic.
In his own words, Kahn explains that his way of thinking towards automotive design was inspired by Lotus founder, Colin Chapman, and his early years in the defence sector.
“I’ve always been a ‘car guy’ and I’m very much Colin Chapman’s ‘simplify, then add lightness’ philosophy across the board,” he explains.
“When I first started my career designing armoured vehicles, they had been welded steel boxes since forever.
“There were a few firms who tried to introduce composites into their construction, but they went about it the motorsport way by making a hugely expensive composite box.
“What we did was break down the armoured vehicle into bite-sized chunks like a Lego kit or an IKEA wardrobe. To massively oversimplify things, there were six major parts: a floor, two sidewalls, a front-end, a rear-end, and roof. That’s it.
“Each of those were a composite component, which could be mass-produced because they were relatively flat. This meant we could put together thousands of composite vehicles a month – and that’s a lot of vehicles – on an assembly line in a kind of bolted and bonded kit. Back then, I think the only other automotive manufacturers going down the composite route were the McLarens of this world, and they were producing just a handful of vehicles a month.
“When I closed this chapter of my career at the end of last year, I decided to bring that lightweight composite approach to regular civilian vehicles – EVs especially – to bring costs down.”
The switch to civvy street
In February 2024, Kahn announced that he would be focusing on bringing his expertise and “doing more with less” to road cars via Namiir Design; an automotive design consultancy firm. Kahn’s first foray into the automotive mainstream is the ‘Urban Runabout’; a lightweight, all-electric rival to the likes of the Citroen Ami and Fiat Topolino quadricycles.
Set to enter production in the near future, the ‘Urban Runabout’ is a culmination of Kahn’s personal car history and an underlying pragmatic design philosophy.
“When I was 21 and a student, I bought a 1978 Fiat X1/9,” he explains. “It was about £1,200 if I remember rightly, and I used that as a daily driver for a couple of years. For someone who didn’t have a family or those kinds of commitments at the time, I didn’t need a lot of space.
“It had a reasonably-sized boot, it’ll do the weekly shop, it’ll run around town, it’ll take you to work, and it’ll do all of those things with fun. By no stretch of the imagination was it a highly-powered car, because it had 74bhp, but it weighed just 900kg.
“The X1/9 was also mid-engined, rear-wheel drive, and very direct and analogue. It was a huge amount of fun at low speeds, so you didn’t have to drive like a lunatic to get a smile on your face. These days, I daily a Subaru BRZ and it’s very similar in character to the Fiat.”
Ensuring the Urban Runabout is safe and “doesn’t look like a tall box” are also priorities for Kahn; here again, the X/19 serves as a source of inspiration.
“Besides looking extremely cool, the X1/9 was a very clever piece of car design. That thick roll hoop it has is pretty much solid steel and I think it was the first car to have steel impact beams in the doors. This made it weigh around 900 kilos or so, which was pretty heavy at the time considering a Golf GTI or a Triumph Spitfire was about 700kg.
“Still, this extra weight didn’t stop the X1/9 from being fun. It had all of these building blocks of lightness, safety, and driver engagement we need in EVs today. I genuinely think we can learn something from these older cars, in terms of styling as well.”
For reference, the Urban Runabout’s construction revolves around a pultruded composite structure, making it just as safe as what Kahn describes as a “full fat” car while complying with the regulations of a 450kg quadricycle. While very much a product of Kahn’s mind, the Urban Runabout’s X1/9 bloodline is evident thanks to an angular, shark nose-esque front end, and a prominent c-pillar.
The virtuous spiral of weight and efficiency
The issue of economics and need is a point the Urban Runabout addresses with its battery. Currently, the average cost of an EV in the United Kingdom is around £46,000. Moreover, the average UK motorist drives approximately 583 miles per month.
“This question all comes back to lightness and range again,” Khan explains. “Until recently, the EV market was asking the question of ‘how far can I go?’, so if you’re a vehicle manufacturer you answer that by putting an 80kWh, 120kWh battery in it and great – you’ve got a 500km range.
“But batteries are costly to manufacture, they’re heavy, and you end up with a two-tonne car that’s expensive to buy. A big battery doesn’t really help your charging time, which in many ways is more important than your range because realistically, how many miles do you actually drive every month?
“By downscaling like we’ve done with the Urban Runabout, you use a composite architecture that’s light, so you can get away with fitting a smaller battery because you’ve made the car more efficient by taking weight out.
“Now you’re in virtuous spiral, because you’ve saved on the battery’s cost and weight. From a manufacturer’s perspective, you’ve saved yourself $500 with the smaller battery. If you take can out 170 or a 180kg out of the body, you have a car that’s 10% lighter and 5% more efficient. You’ll absolutely feel that in your pocket when it comes to buying the car, too.”
Unsurprisingly, then, that when the Urban Runabout comes to market, it will be at an accessible price point; albeit with a significant advantage over similar L7 category cars.
“The bookends we’ve given ourselves are between £8,000 and £16,000 so in terms of cost it’s not really competing with the likes of the Ami and the Renault Twizy, but neither is it competing with the Fiat 500e or the Renault 5, which are about £5,000 more expensive. I like to think we’re creating something small and fun like a Mazda MX-5, but at half the price.”
When it comes to the future of EVs, Kahn is equally as optimistic. It will, however, lie in motorists taking a practical approach to addressing what they actually need.
“As the market matures, I think removing weight and smaller batteries will be where things are headed,” he concludes. “We’ve massively overstretched the performance and the range thing. If we’re honest, we don’t need anywhere near as much range as we think, and we certainly don’t need the 300, 400bhp that your average EV produces these days.”
