The electric car company bringing Ferraris and Bugattis to test drive at THE HEAT

Sep 05

BY JOE ROWAN, September 5 2024

THE HEAT, VOYAGERS.io’s first-ever climate-tech festival, is taking place on Friday September 20 2024 at the extraordinary Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

THE HEAT will be a hands-on, practical, mind-expanding, friendship-building, exploratory, curiosity-led, science-based, creative, artistic, participatory, decentralised, experimental, edgy, live, risky, urgent and unpredictable gathering of the talented people working on climate technologies. THE HEAT is not a conference. Don’t expect dull panels or awful coffee. Instead, come to make new friends, experience science in action, learn and share your knowledge, inspire and be inspired. Bring your most engaged and curious festival mindset.

Hedley Studios updates classic cars by making them slightly smaller than the originals, and fully electric. It will be bringing two of its hand-built Bugatti Baby IIs and two Ferrari Testa Rossa Js to 🔥THE HEAT for participants to test drive around Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

🧠 Learn more about Hedley Studios in our article below and at https://hedleystudios.com/ and come meet the team at 🔥THE HEAT on September 20 2024 at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

Hedley Studios updates classic cars from up to a century ago with a couple of slight twists — they’re slightly smaller than the originals, and are fully electric. The Oxfordshire company, founded by VOYAGER Ben Hedley, will be bringing two of its hand-built Bugatti Baby IIs and two Ferrari Testa Rossa Js to THE HEAT — allowing participants to test drive them around Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

Hedley Studios’s Bugatti Baby II (left) next to the original Bugatti Type 35 (right)

Founded in 2019 as The Little Car Company, Hedley Studios builds handcrafted electric cars in association with brands such as Ferrari, Bugatti, Aston Martin and Bentley. It takes scans of classic cars and scales them down typically to 75% of their original size, while ensuring that the chassis, suspension and handling remain faithful to the original. “We don’t make them the same size because people don’t like replicas of the original,” says Hedley, a serial entrepreneur and former world-class speed skier. “We reinterpret them for the brands. They’re fully sanctioned, so we make the only Ferraris that haven’t been made by Ferrari, meaning we have to make them to Ferrari standards.”

The business started when Hedley, 47, was approached by Bugatti six years ago to reinvent an electric toy car from the 1920s for six- to eight year-olds. Hedley had the idea to make the car bigger so that it could be driven by adults. He announced the project at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. “Suddenly I had over 500 expressions of interest overnight, and I realised I had a business here,” he says.

Hedley Studios’ mission is to show that electric vehicles (EVs) don’t have to be boring. “A lot of petrolheads [car fanatics] are like, ‘I can’t stand EVs’. We’re trying to bridge that gap, and show that EVs can be used in a clever way — just don’t stick batteries in a 2.5-tonne SUV, because you’ll turn it into a 3.5 tonne SUV.”

Hedley Studios is not his first rodeo. He has founded five startups, including Clear, the first government-approved carbon-offsetting company, and his own online learning business, the Expert Academy. He competed for Britain for a decade as a speed skier, reaching eighth in the world and a fastest speed of 182.7km/h — before retiring after an 177km/h crash at the 2017 FIS World Speed Skiing Championships, which left him with a broken neck, arm and ribs.

Originally a one-person venture, Hedley Studios has now grown to over 70 people, turning over around £15m last year. On top of the Bugatti Baby II and Ferrari Testa Rossa J that will be brought to THE HEAT, its collection includes the Aston Martin DB5 Junior and Bentley Blower Jnr. One of its most popular cars is the Aston Martin DB5 Junior, No Time To Die edition, which imitates several elements from the James Bond movie. Its version has headlights which drop and mini guns which come out and rotate, accompanied by a speaker that plays gun sounds, as well as a smoke machine in the back, “skid mode”, and the 007 logo on the car.

The Aston Martin DB5 Junior, *No Time To Die* edition

Later this year, the company will begin producing the Tamiya Wild One MAX. Based on a radio-controlled car that Hedley had as a child, it’s a street-legal, full-sized vehicle with two seats that weighs just 450kg, a third of a VW Golf’s weight. “I had this idea in the pub. We make big cars a little bit smaller, so let’s take a small car and make it full-size,” he says. He is investigating if solar panels can be installed on it too, which would give drivers 11km worth of battery per day if the vehicle is parked in sunshine.

Learn more about Hedley Studios at HedleyStudios.com and test drive one of its cars at THE HEAT on September 20 2024 at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus near Oxford (more at THEHEAT.io).