Protean Electric

Britain's in-wheel-motor pioneer is on the cusp of greatness. FELIX PAGE finds out why

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Surrey-based EV motor developer Protean has its roots in a firm called PML Flightlink, which made headlines in 2006 when it fitted four in-wheel motors (IWMs) to a Mini Cooper to give 640bhp, a sub-5.0sec 0-62mph time and a £200k price. The outfit was later acquired by NEVS, the Chinese-owned successor to Saab, before EV tech specialist Bedeo took it over in 2019 and began using its innovative IWMs as part of a range-extender conversion package for diesel vans.

Today, Protean - winner of this year's Innovation Award - has around 120 staff spread across four global facilities: the UK engineering centre in Farnham, a factory in Tianjin, China, a supply chain office in Shanghai and a new production site in Istanbul. Last year, Protean built 1500 motors, around a third of which went to parent company Bedeo for use in the RE-100 van. But CEO Andrew Whitehead says it could make 10,000 units as things stand, before scaling up to 20,000 and then, 18-24 months later, 100,000.

Unlike many an ambitious tech start-up, though, Protean's growth plans are not founded entirely on enthusiastic optimism and unbridled self-belief but rather a demonstrable appetite from key industry players to embrace disruptive new technologies and explore different ways of designing and engineering vehicles. Whitehead says the company is already in discussions with a number of “major, well-established, global OEMs”, and he estimates the worldwide market for IWMs could be worth more than £15 billion by the middle of the next decade.