We visited ECD Automotive’s new facility where it’s building electric Jaguar E-Types with Tesla motors
After visiting ECD Automotive Design’s original footprint in Florida earlier this year, the custom EV conversion specialists invited us back for a tour of its its new 100,000 square-foot facility up the street. It’s here that the company is setting up a second assembly line to build all-electric versions of the Jaguar E-Type to join all the classic Land Rovers it has been converting for years.
ECD Automotive Design is a custom vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Kissimmee, Florida, founded by three Brits whose love for UK classics like the Defender and Range Rover has propelled the company’s status in becoming one of the most prominent producers of custom Land Rovers in the world.
As we showcased in our first visit to the original facility last February, ECD’s focus on the utmost quality, luxury, and willingness to never say no to a customer’s request has garnered a loyal customer base, some of which who purchase two or three bespoke vehicles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
As a company that works to continuously improve and evolve, ECD Automotive Design has begun offering more and more electrified versions of its lineup. As its order book continues to fill up, so does its demand for all-electric builds, including the Jaguar E-Type – ECD’s latest all-electric offering initially announced in June.
The custom vehicle designer is now up and running at its new facility around the corner from the single garage unit the three founders started in a decade ago, so the team invited us out to tour the new space, see where the electric Jaguars will be assembled, and experience some of the technologies it is using to deliver perfection to its customers. Check it out.
ECD Automotive Design gets major upgrade with new facility
While my latest invite to Florida was a joy to experience, I’m glad I got to visit ECD’s original facility earlier this year for comparison. Nothing against the old building, but this is a tremendous upgrade for the custom vehicle specialist in every department, and its founders won’t disagree.
After my first visit, I reported how impressive ECD’s astute attention to detail was, and that granularity extends well beyond the quality of its vehicles throughout its entire production process from square one. Since my last visit, ECD has set up its own UK logistics hub where it locates the Land Rovers and Jaguars, then ships them to Florida.
As ECD co-founder Scott Wallace toured me around 100k square-foot facility, he explained that ECD is completely self-sufficient now, and thanks to its UK hub, has cut overseas shipping times down from 100 days to about 24. Wallace explained, “We control everything now. Every single aspect of our builds. Other vendors just couldn’t keep up with us.”
The ECD leaders enable their employees to work in any way that makes them most happy, as long as they’re also at their most productive. Wallace explained that this freedom empowers its staff to work hard and strive toward the consistent delivery of quality the brand demands, especially as it continues to raise the bar for its clients on each custom build.
Wallace pointed out that ECD partnered up with 3M for the new facility, who provides the equipment for sanding and other body work. Dust is down 95%, ensuring a safer work environment that’s also much cleaner. What’s interesting is that it was the employees who chose 3M, not Wallace or his partners. He explained that the team members who work with those materials and machines each day know best, so they were the ones who spoke with to the respective company reps to decide which one to partner with. 3M came out the winner.
Same goes for PPG Paint and ECD’s new state-of-the-art, custom built booths. Again, designed by the painters themselves, not the owners or industrial professionals. As we navigated past the new assembly lines, all the air-conditioned spaces for wiring and upholstery, and into paint, I was surprised when Wallace opened the booth door for me and explained it was time to do some painting myself.
Shoutout to my teacher John who walked me through the entire mixing, spraying, and finishing process, giving me a final score of 92/100. Scott Wallace was impressed by my score and told me I was hired. As you may recall, Wallace had me try a hydro dip last time I visited, now I’m painting. I joked that he’s grooming me to join the team and next visit I may get thrown onto the assembly line of a new electric Jaguar E-Type.
Speaking of which the upcoming Jaguar was the main focus of my recent visit and is already setting the stage for ECD’s further leap into quality electric vehicle conversions.
A majority of Jaguar E-Types on order are electric
Following news of the company’s addition of the Jaguar E-Type to its lineup, I got to see the assembly line where the electric versions will be built and view a couple inspiration models up close. As you can see above, the new South Line at ECD HQ will be dedicated specifically to building Jaguar E-Types, and a majority will be electric to start.
Co-founder Tom Humble took me for a ride in a combustion version of the E-Type, which will also be available to customers, but explained there’s more of an appetite for the electric version out of the gate. Before ECD Automotive Design officially released news of its custom Jaguars, Humble sent out am email to a couple dozen of the company’s top customers to gauge interest.
He explained that ECD got 10 or 12 Jaguar E-Type orders from that group alone, and seven of those were requests for the electric version, including the very first customer build. The staff in charge of performing the Jaguar builds is currently familiarizing itself with the E-Type inside and out before production begins, and it will be slow start.
Scott Wallace told me they anticipate the Jaguar will spend 30 days at each station on the assembly line. For comparison, the custom Land Rovers being built on the North Line spend four days at each of the 20 stations, down from five days per station at the old facility. While the Jaguars will be slow to start, output is expected to pick up as the staff becomes more confident in the build process. Wallace explained that they all have learned a lot the last ten years, and the team will apply that know-how to the assembly of the E-Types as well.
Like the current Land Rovers, the electric versions of Jaguar will be converted using a 450 hp Tesla Model S motor and a 100 kW battery pack. Due to the design of the E-Type however, ECD thinks it might be able to utilize one solid battery pack instead of having to split it up 40/60 like it does in the Land Rovers.
The team expects the electric Jaguars to deliver between 180-200 miles of range and come equipped with a J1772 plug. Looking ahead, ECD Automotive Design is exploring additional EV features like DC fast charging and dual motor powertrains – two options I expressed could truly help entice even more customers, especially as the demand for electricification grows in its orders.
Looking ahead, ECD has plans for a third assembly section next to the Jaguar South Line that will be dedicated to prebuilt models, for those customers who don’t want to wait through the 2,200 hour design and build process.
With the new facility, the team expected to be able to produce about 120 custom builds a year, but Wallace explained to me that it’s looking more like 180, and could be even larger once the Jaguar lines start humming.
For our next visit to ECD, we intend to drive the custom, all-electric Jaguar E-Type and document it for you. Until then, you can check out the live feed of cameras throughout ECD Automotive Design to see what one-of-a-kind vehicles the company is working on right now.
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Tesla has started to release its (Supervised) Full Self-Driving (FSD) v14 update, its first significant update in a year, to customers.
Here are the full release notes:
In late 2024, Tesla began rolling out FSD v13 to owners with the latest HW4 computers installed in their vehicles.
It has been the last significant update to Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” program despite CEO Elon Musk again claiming that the automaker was on the verge of solving “unsupervised self-driving.”
Tesla’s excuse for not releasing any significant update for almost a year was that the team was instead working on its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas.
FSD v14 has been described as Tesla using what it learned from the Robotaxi program and rolling it into software for its consumer vehicles.
Musk has been hyping the update for the last few months. He first said it would come in September, but he revealed that Tesla found a “bug”, which delayed the release to late Monday night.
Tesla HW4 owners are now starting to download the update.
Here are the full release notes for FSD v14:
Tesla FSD v14 release notes
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
- Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances).
- Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
- Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
- Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
- Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
- Improve handling of several scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school buses.
- Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and recover smoothly from degraded operation for enhanced reliability.
- Added automatic narrow field washing to provide rapid and efficient front camera self-cleaning, and optimize aerodynamic wash at higher vehicle speeds.
- Added alerting for residue build-up on the interior windshield that may impact front camera visibility. If affected, visit Service for cleaning!
Upcoming Improvements:
- Overall smoothness and sentience
- Parking spot selection and parking quality
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
Under your supervision, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) can drive your Tesla almost anywhere. It will start from a parked position, make lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, make left and right turns and park at your destination. You and anyone you authorize must use additional caution and remain attentive. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent.
Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is enabled on your vehicle. To use the feature, press the Start Self-Driving button on the UI, or press the right scroll wheel button once. You can disable Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in Autopilot Settings.
UI Improvements
- Start Self-Driving with a tap of the touchscreen from Park, or any time during your drive.
- Adjust settings like the Speed Profile and Arrival Options directly from the Autopilot visualization on the center display.
Speed Profiles
FSD (Supervised) will now determine the appropriate speed based on a mix of driver profile, speed limit, and surrounding traffic.
- Introduced new Speed Profile SLOTH, which comes with lower speeds & more conservative lane selection than CHILL.
- Driver profile now has a stronger impact on behavior. The more assertive the profile, the higher the max speed.
- Right scroll-wheel up/down now adjusts Speed Profile setting rather than your precise max speed offset selection in mph/kph.
Arrival Options
- You can now select an arrival option such as Parking Lot, Street, Driveway, Parking Garage and Curbside for Robotaxi-style drop offs.
- Your preferences for arrival options and preferred parking positions are persisted for each destination.
- Our reasoning model will assess the suitable options for your destination and pick an intuitive default.
Brake Confirm
Brake Confirm for the Start Self-Driving button is now defaulted off. When disabled, Start Self-Driving will not require you to press and release the brake to confirm engagement.
You can enable Brake Confirm in Autopilot > Brake Confirm.
Electrek’s Take
This is exactly what we expected. Tesla is adding some of the features of Robotaxi, such as improved parking capabilities at your destination, and much-needed performance upgrades after a year of regression based on crowdsourced data.
As I previously stated, I expect at best a 2 to 3x improvement in miles between critical disengagement, which sounds great until you realize that that brings Tesla to a max 1,200 miles between critical disengagement and the automaker needs to be closer to 10,000 miles for a limited unsupervised ride-hailing service, and then 700,000 miles to be level 5 safer than humans as promised.
We will have to wait a few days, and ideally a few weeks, to gather enough data to gauge the significance of those improvements.
As usual, I like to point out that FSD would be truly impressive and likely a praised product if it were sold and marketed for what it is: a level 2 driver assistance system.
However, we have to compare it against what Tesla is selling and claims it will become: a level 4 fully autonomous driving system – something it is not.
FSD still requires driver attention at all times and can make very dumb and dangerous mistakes.
Furthermore, Tesla is clearly starting to reach the limits of HW4, even though it will likely need to ~10x performance from FSD v14. It means that, as Tesla already admitted with HW3, the automaker has sold “Full Self-Driving” on cars that don’t have the hardware to make it a reality.
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Zero Motorcycles, one of the world’s leading Western electric motorcycle manufacturers, announced that it is relocating its global headquarters from California to the Netherlands. The move marks a major strategic shift for the company as it doubles down on Europe, which has long been its largest market for electric two-wheelers, despite the American company’s US base of operations.
According to Zero, the transition will bring key global functions together in a new European hub while maintaining its California location as the company’s long-term “Innovation Center” for R&D and engineering. The move allows the company to keep a toehold in the states while transferring its main operations to Europe.
The electric motorcycle maker says its US location will still support a team working on Zero’s powertrains and next-generation models, maintaining the company’s technological roots in the US as leadership and global operations move overseas.
“Zero has led the electric motorcycle category for nearly two decades,” said CEO Sam Paschel. “With Europe setting the pace for EV adoption, moving key headquarters functions into the Netherlands allows us to respond faster to customer needs and strengthen our global operations. This is about focus, discipline, and ensuring we lead the transformation of the powersports industry.”
The decision follows a period of what Zero says is rapid expansion for the company in Europe, where the electric motorcycle maker has reported strong growth in both retail and fleet segments. With the Netherlands serving as a central hub, Zero aims to increase agility, streamline operations, and enhance collaboration with suppliers and distributors across the continent.
The move follows a pattern for Zero, which has seen an increasing reliance on overseas operations, from production to marketing and sales. While Zero originally touted its US-based manufacturing, its components and production have increasingly relied on Asian manufacturing, and recent partnerships have seen its most affordable models being produced nearly entirely by its Asian partners for marketing and sale by Zero.
But despite the global shift, Paschel emphasized that Zero remains committed to the US market. The company plans to continue working closely with its American dealers and investing in local sales and service infrastructure.
To support the transition, Zero’s primary shareholder has committed $50 million in new funding, which the company says will accelerate its transformation and reinforce its leadership in the electric motorcycle sector.
“Our brand, our technology, and our global reach give us unmatched credibility and capabilities,” Paschel added. “Tightly coordinating our global headquarters functions in Europe ensures we remain the clear leader in electric motorcycles and sets the stage for the most exciting chapter in the company’s history.”
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