Could a shock Saab comeback be on the cards?

Saab, having suffered the indignity of a thousand financial cuts under General Motors and latterly private Spyker ownership, finally died in 2011. It was the end of a company that had made some truly great cars over the years – the 99 Turbo, the original 900, the Opel Insignia-based 9-5 – and which had contributed much to automotive technology and especially safety, but that wasn’t enough to keep it going.

In 2012, what remained of Saab was bought up by a Chinese company calling itself National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS). It apparently dabbled a little with an electric saloon based on the old Saab 9-3, but nothing came of it in terms of production. Eventually, NEVS became part of the sprawling Evergrande company, a Chinese conglomerate primarily making its cash from real estate.

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However, it now looks like NEVS engineers – many of them Saab hands of old – were not idle. In fact, NEVS has created this, Project Emily, and it’s a staggeringly advanced electric car with a potential 1,000km range on one charge.

Make that very, very potential as at the moment, the Emily prototypes are running around with a mere 54kWh battery, taken from the stillborn electric 9-3, but there are plans for a huge 175kWh battery pack for that ultimate range, with smaller 140kWh and 100kWh packs also available.

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The Emily has four electric motors, one for each wheel and each one developing 120hp, for a total of 480hp. That’s surprisingly reticent on the power front – many electric car makers boast of power outputs up to 1,000hp when using individual wheel motors – but the NEVS people, in a very Saab fashion, are being more sensible. 480hp is plenty, it allows for better range, and the individual control of each wheel’s power allows for exceptional levels of control of the car’s dynamics, as well as boosting safety. In theory, the Emily can turn in its own length, by reversing individual wheels.

The team behind the car – led by former Saab engineer Peter Dahl who spilled the beans to Swedish car magazine Carup – have admitted that individual motors makes the unsprung weight of the car worse – the unsprung weight is the weight of things such as the wheels and brakes which are attached to the suspension – but that carefully calibrated air springs and adaptive dampers help to ameliorate this issue.

Why is Dahl giving away the secrets of this new car? Is NEVS planning to launch a production version? Has Saab AB (the aircraft manufacturer) given its blessing and relicensed the famous name?

The Emily isn’t badged as a Saab but it’s clearly a modernist take on classic Saab design cues

Sadly, the answer to all of the above is no. The reveal of the Emily project is effectively a fire sale. The Evergrande group hit serious financial issues – well-publicised ones – in 2020 and one of the budgets that it cut in response was that of NEVS. Instead of a planned 20 Emily prototypes, only six have been built, and of the 340-strong team working on the car, 320 have been laid off.

The hope now is that Evergrande can find a partner or buyer for the project as, effectively, a turn-key entry into the electric car market, one backed by decades of experience of making some of the coolest cars ever. The Emily isn’t badged as a Saab – it can’t be unless the aerospace firm that owns the name gives its assent – but look a the rear pillar, the shape of the side windows, the brake lights – it’s clearly a modernist take on classic Saab design cues.

Dahl told Carup that the prototypes are all fully working and driveable, aside from the need to develop some of the safety systems, and his estimate is that it would take about 18 months to get from where the project is now to full production.

Is anyone out there wealthy and enthusiastic enough to take one last roll of the dice on Saab?