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Yet to Deliver the Griffith, TVR Promises to Go Electric by 2024

Borgward died in June 2021, just a few years after being revived. Datsun also bit the dust more recently in India. That shows how difficult it is to bring a brand back to life once it is gone. TVR has been waiting since 2017 for that to happen, and the latest we heard about the company is that it will have an electric version of the Griffith by 2024.
TVR Griffith will have an "electrified, limited edition variant" 19 photos
Photo: TVR
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On April 26, 2022, the company announced that it received a multi-million-pound investment from Ensorcia Metals Corporation through Ensorcia Automotive, one of its affiliates. That money will help the company with “the production preparation of the V8-engined Griffith, development of the brand’s first in a family of EV models, an electrified, limited edition variant of Griffith, as well as repayment of debt previously provided by the Welsh Government.”

TVR announced it had reached a “funding and technology partnership” with Ensorcia Metals Corporation in November 2021. According to Autocar, the carmaker will sponsor three Formula E races: the Monaco e-Prix on 30 April and the two London e-Prix races on 30 and 31 July. We suspect the Ensorcia Automotive funding allowed TVR in the sponsorship.

According to Auto Express, the Griffith with the 5-liter Ford V8 motor should arrive by the end of 2023. That’s when the Ebbw Vale factory in Wales will be ready for production. To Autocar, the company said the “electrified, limited-edition variant of Griffith” will be available in 2024 – or some months after the V8 is ready.

The Ensorcia investment should put TVR’s focus on electric vehicles. The V8 Griffith may become the brand’s farewell to combustion engines, especially considering how it describes how it will use the money it received from its investor.

If we got TVR right, it would have two electric cars: “the brand’s first in a family of EV models” and the electrified derivative of the Griffith. It could also have used all those words to talk solely about the electric Griffith, but that would sound really strange.

Ensorcia is described as a company with “green lithium mining and processing,” thanks to “a patented brine extraction process producing high-quality lithium with maximum environmental and operational efficiency.” It is natural that it wants its investments used to help sell more of what it produces, even if the demand for lithium worldwide would be more than enough for that to happen. TVR must be grateful it will help it avoid the same fate as Borgward or Datsun.
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Editor's note: The gallery contains images of the TVR Griffith.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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