LongBow 3D-printed all exterior panels in 60 days without tooling, enabling low-cost customization, spares, and production.
LongBow Motors and RYSE 3D Ltd have completed what the companies describe as the world’s first fully 3D printed car body, delivering every exterior panel for the Longbow Speedster on UK-built, large-format systems in fewer than 60 days. The project, carried out in Warwickshire with a domestic design-to-delivery supply chain, eliminated the need for conventional tooling and molds, transitioning from raw CAD data to a fully fitted, finished body. The effort positions additive manufacturing as a credible route for low-volume, production-grade vehicle bodywork and frames the British startup’s “speed of lightness” philosophy with tangible process gains in cycle time, iteration, and cost control.
RYSE 3D, which designed, engineered, and manufactured the large-format printers in-house, produced and finished each exterior panel for the prototype program locally. LongBow Motors positions the Speedster, its first model, as a featherweight, driver-focused electric sports car designed, engineered, and manufactured in the United Kingdom. According to the company, the vehicle targets a mass below 1,000 kilograms, while maintaining performance metrics that emphasize power-to-weight rather than absolute output. In an exclusive VoxelMatters interview, published in our Mobility AM Focus in June 2025, LongBow’s co-founders tied this approach to additive manufacturing’s ability to collapse development time, reduce the need for adhesives and finishing operations, and support a modular design language that can evolve without retooling.
The LongBow build demonstrates how a comprehensive digital-to-production workflow can compress automotive schedules that typically span several months of tooling and surfacing. RYSE 3D reported that printing, finishing, and fitting of the Longbow Speedster’s bodywork took place at pace and without overseas dependencies, establishing a sovereign UK supply chain from design through final assembly. LongBow Motors described the result as production-grade quality at full vehicle scale, differentiating it from past showpieces or one-off demonstrators limited to isolated panels. While independent certification of a “world first” is rare in fast-moving additive segments, the partners state that the project delivers a complete, fitted body produced entirely by large-format 3D printing.
Building at the “speed of lightness”
The “speed of lightness” theme, which LongBow uses to define the Speedster program, extends beyond mass targets to the mechanics of product development. In the VoxelMatters interview, the company’s co-founders, Mark Tapscott and Daniel Davey, argued that additive manufacturing changes the cadence of automotive work by enabling parallel concept exploration and quick physical validation. “With 3D printing, we can test five different design approaches in parallel. We don’t have to guess—we can print, test, and decide,” said Daniel Davey, Co-founder of LongBow Motors. That process is central to the LongBow body program, where entire exterior sections were repeatedly refined without the cost and delay associated with conventional dies and molds.
The origins of LongBow’s approach are rooted in its founders’ earlier experience with early-generation electric vehicles. “We started our journey with the Tesla Roadster,” said Mark Tapscott, Co-founder of LongBow Motors. “That car changed everything, and it was contract-manufactured in the UK. However, after that, the industry shifted toward mass production—encompassing big SUVs and high volumes. Nobody picked up where the Roadster left off.” The company views the electric sports car as the best expression of the powertrain’s strengths—instant torque, a low center of gravity, and fine-grained power control—without adding mass and complexity that numb driver feedback. “We call it the first featherweight electric vehicle,” Tapscott said in the interview. “Under a ton, over 300 horsepower per ton. That’s our benchmark.”
RYSE 3D’s role was to turn that philosophy into a manufacturable exterior within a compressed window. The firm claims the program eliminated tooling costs and reduced time-to-market from months to weeks. By keeping every step—from large-format printing to finishing and fitting—inside the UK, the team avoided the overseas lead times and logistics that have become standard in low-volume coachwork and concept car fabrication. Davey argued that these gains go beyond schedule compression. The ability to print large body panels and integrate aerodynamic features enabled surface development that is both aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound, while reducing the need for secondary joining steps. “Using additive also means we can reduce adhesives, cut down on finishing steps, and lower our environmental impact,” Davey stated.
The Longbow Speedster itself is being developed for late-2026 deliveries, with the body program serving as a proof of capability for both partners. LongBow emphasizes that the car is designed to last for a century and to invite an emotional connection consistent with historical sports-car brands. “It’s not just about performance—it’s about creating something people want to own for a lifetime,” Davey said. Tapscott framed the company’s market position as deliberately exclusive rather than volume-driven, drawing a comparison to brands that cultivate long waiting lists and close customer relationships. Rather than optimizing for quarterly deliveries, LongBow is focusing on materials, weight, tactile controls, and the kind of open-air, roofless interaction that prioritizes driver engagement over screens and automation.
From concept speed to production logic
What makes the LongBow Motors project notable for manufacturing teams is the way multiple additive practices combine into a coherent production logic for low-volume vehicles. Large-format printing of body panels has historically been used in concept studios and showrooms, where parts can be fragile or require heavy post-processing. RYSE 3D’s program, by contrast, positions printing as the primary body-in-white surrogate for a Speedster prototype that is intended to drive, test, and evolve ahead of final homologation. By doing so, the partners shift the cost model from upfront tooling to iterative digital design, reserving capital expenditure for components that truly need high-volume tools.
Tapscott describes the result as “CapEx light,” an approach that aligns with startups and specialty manufacturers who might build tens or hundreds of cars per year rather than hundreds of thousands. Without steel dies or composite molds, revisions that would normally take weeks can be encoded directly in the CAD model and printed as fresh panels within days. That responsiveness is especially valuable for aerodynamic surfaces, panel gaps, and interface features where millimeters matter and the cost of iteration can spiral. The partners reported that multiple design options were trialed in parallel, allowing engineering to select a direction with physical evidence rather than relying on simulation and best guesses.
The design language of the Speedster reflects that freedom. Davey explained that surfaces were shaped to resemble skin stretched over the vehicle’s mechanical core, a visual effect that relies on tight panel transitions and a weight-conscious structure. Additive manufacturing enabled LongBow to test how far those surfaces could be pushed before fit, finish, or serviceability were compromised. It also opened pathways to integrated features—ducts, louvers, and trim that would be prohibitively complex or expensive to tool in the early phases of a low-volume program.
By keeping production domestic, the partners reduced logistics footprint and avoided the shipping cycles and expedited common in bespoke bodywork. The tight digital loop cut rework and scrap associated with tooling changes. Although neither company disclosed specific life-cycle metrics or material data, the iterative process implies fewer wasted panels and less idle inventory. LongBow also connects sustainability to longevity, arguing that a desirable, durable sports car that can be kept on the road for decades represents a credible path to lower material throughput. “Our cars are designed to last 100 years,” Davey said. The long-tail vision includes spare parts printed on demand years after initial production ends, a use case now moving from concept to practice across industrial AM.
Toward customization and a UK-centric supply chain
The Speedster body program also acts as a template for customer-facing customization. LongBow’s Voya initiative, still in development, would allow buyers to personalize select components using additive methods that scale to one-off production. Davey framed this as both an emotional and a practical benefit. Additive manufacturing enables the company to deliver unique elements—such as interior details, aerodynamic accents, or surface textures—without incurring prohibitive costs. It also makes a longer service life more practical, as parts can be refreshed, replaced, or updated without needing to search for legacy stock. Tapscott added that LongBow is evaluating continuous fiber composites, Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), and PolyJet for future interiors as the technology curve continues to improve. “We’re looking five years ahead, not just at what’s possible today,” he said in the interview, noting that cost and sustainability trends could make these options competitive at production scale by the time the Speedster program matures.
The choice to keep the entire body program within a sovereign UK supply chain is as much about control as it is about national capability. By consolidating design, printing, finishing, and fitting in Warwickshire, the partners retained direct oversight of tolerances, materials, and surface quality. That control helps ensure the body’s structural and aesthetic characteristics remain aligned with the Speedster’s lightweight brief. It also creates a blueprint that other specialty manufacturers can follow to avoid long overseas lead times and protect their intellectual property. RYSE 3D presents the effort as proof that British manufacturing can deliver full-scale additive vehicle outcomes, not just concept parts. LongBow views the same outcome as a way to iterate faster than larger original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) while spending less capital per change.
The implications for time-to-market are straightforward. A conventional low-volume body program often requires months of scheduling for molds and tools, followed by weeks of adjustment once parts begin to emerge. In the Longbow Speedster effort, that calendar was replaced by printing schedules and finishing workflows that can be started, stopped, and reconfigured as designs shift. The partners state that the program moved from CAD to a finished, fitted body in less than two months, a window more commonly associated with show cars than with prototypes intended for performance evaluation. While the companies did not disclose exact material choices, printer parameters, or per-panel cycle times, the overall cadence suggests that a team is using additive manufacturing as the default method rather than a prototyping crutch.
In positioning, LongBow deliberately sets itself apart from software-defined vehicles and the high-volume EV mainstream. “We’re not building a washing machine,” Tapscott said. “We’re building something that makes you feel alive when you drive it.” That philosophy manifests in decisions such as the Speedster’s roofless format, analog-leaning controls, and an emphasis on immediate response over features that add mass and complexity. Davey described the experience as closer to riding a high-speed monowheel than sitting in an insulated capsule, a framing that depends on careful weight management and rigid surfaces. The additive body project supports that aim by keeping the car’s skin as light as possible while allowing structural and aerodynamic elements to be integrated where they deliver the most benefit.
The VoxelMatters AM Focus interview also emphasized that LongBow is not aiming to overhaul the entire automotive market. The startup is producing a specific kind of vehicle for a particular customer—enthusiasts who value engagement, craftsmanship, and the ability to personalize. In that context, additive manufacturing is not a gimmick but a method that aligns cost, speed, and design flexibility with the company’s objectives. The promise of printing spare parts on demand, even decades after initial production, is particularly relevant for long-lived sports cars where traditional parts inventories become a liability. Davey suggested that production runs in the tens of thousands for certain printed components are no longer out of reach, a scale that can support boutique manufacturers while maintaining differentiation.
What happens next depends on how well the approach scales into crash-worthy structures, durability testing, and repeatable finish quality across multiple builds. The partners did not disclose validation data or regulatory milestones, and achieving consistent color, gloss, and gap standards on printed panels remains a challenge that requires both material science and process discipline. Still, LongBow is taking an important step forward by showing a complete, fitted body built entirely through additive methods on domestically produced equipment. The Longbow Speedster body demonstrates what can be achieved within 60 days when digital design, large-format printing, and finishing operations are organized around speed and weight, rather than legacy tooling.
The practical question for the market is where this model makes the most sense. The immediate fit is clear-cut: boutique EVs, limited-series sports cars, restomods, and engineering mules that need production-like skins on an aggressive clock. There is also room to use the method for early customer clinics, where full-scale bodies help validate design directions before committing to tools. As print quality improves and materials with better heat and UV stability become mainstream, more elements of exterior construction may shift to additive. If those advances arrive on the timeline LongBow’s founders anticipate, the balance between additive and traditional methods could tilt further toward printing for specialty manufacturers.
LongBow Motors plans to commence Speedster deliveries in late 2026, continuing to utilize additive manufacturing for concept parts, interior details, and exterior components as appropriate. The company’s view of customization through its Voya program, together with on-demand spares and a UK-centric supply chain, outlines a development path that prioritizes agility and customer connection over scale. Whether that becomes a blueprint others follow will depend on execution over the next year, as the Speedster continues through development toward its stated delivery window and as the partners refine materials, finish, and process control. For now, the 60-day LongBow body stands as a case study in how “the speed of lightness” can be expressed not only in kerb weight but in the way a car gets built.
