It seems like these days, startups promising all-electric supercars are a dime a dozen. So forgive us for seeming cool toward the Dendrobium, which its maker claims will be yet another electric hypercar. At least this one will be the only one to hail from Singapore—talk about cachet! That is, if it progresses beyond the digital rendering stage of the development process.
You’ll have to forgive our skepticism. Even the somewhat better-established players—such as Faraday Future and Lucid Motors—seem like long shots next to Tesla, which actually has sold significant volumes of electric cars to actual paying customers. So it is against this context that we’ll place the not-yet-real Dendrobium, which is the intended product of Vanda Electrics. Haven’t heard of it? The company is also the maker of the admittedly neat-looking (and apparently real) Motochimp small electric scooter and claims to be working on an electric van, the Ant. This thin résumé doesn’t bode well for the Dendrobium’s hypercar bona fides, but the not yet automaker claims to be working with Williams Advanced Engineering on its radical-looking concept car.
It is but a short leap from the mighty Motochimp to an all-electric hypercar.
So far details on that car, which Vanda Electrics plans to introduce in concept form at the 2017 Geneva auto show this March, are few. We do know that the name Dendrobium is derived from a genus of orchid flowers, many of which are native to Singapore. The name is said to have been chosen because of the way the car’s doors and roof open to accept passenger(s); when unfurled, the apertures resemble a blossoming dendrobium flower.
The rest of the car looks like a semi-open-wheel Formula 1 car, not too far from the bizarre concept Faraday Future revealed at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Curiously, the only other information released about the Dendrobium is that the EV will use Scottish Bridge of Weir leather inside its cabin—the same Bridge of Weir that supplies Lincoln with its automotive hides. So far, none of this sounds like the building blocks of a hypercar, but maybe this would-be EV will turn out to be a Singapore surprise.
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