Coachlines - June 2026

30.06.26 Tamara Ivancova

An unreasonably ambitious engineer and a four-wheeled e-bike take on the world

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I’m not a Coachmaker yet, so who am I, and why am I writing this?

Like many of you, I’m an engineer, and I have an obsession – hopefully one many of you share, or at least understand.

What started as an obsession with cars became an obsession with all vehicles. If it moves, I must design it, and if I’ve designed it, I get no satisfaction until I’ve built it, got it working, and pushed it further than it was supposed to go. That obsession over the years – writing this at the ripe old age of 25 – has turned into a mission.

When I say ‘taking on the world’, I mean it quite literally: A two-time Guinness World Record circumnavigation, cycling more than 30,000km, across 23 countries, and four continents on the Elecy – a four-wheeled electric bike I developed to become your new daily commute. In the next two weeks I’m setting off to test, launch and hopefully inspire global change by cycling her around the world, which is exciting and mildly terrifying, I’ll admit.

Here’s an insight into how I approach things which gives context to my thinking. I set my goals as high as possible, with no limitations – if it doesn’t scare you, it’s not high enough. My logic: even if you don’t hit them exactly, just by aiming high you’ll get so much further than you ever would with sensible ones. Deliberate delusion, if you like, but it’s working – and I’m yet to tell you the best part.

So here’s how I got here. I’m from a tiny village in Slovakia that most people never leave, but my family moved to the UK when I was nine. True to form, at 14, I set myself an unreasonable goal: to be a Team Principal in Formula One. So I put together a CV and portfolio – at the time I was designing the body of a Toyota MR2 Mk3 chassis my father and I were building together. I sent hand-written letters to every single F1 team, and got my first placement at Toro Rosso at 15.

During the summers before university, I worked at Toro Rosso, McLaren F1, Aston Martin, Bentley Motorsport and Prodrive. People joke about who I must have known, what connections I had, whose son or daughter I was. The truth is I was just persistent, relentless, and got myself through every single door. I went on to study Aerospace Engineering at Southampton – mostly because that’s where Adrian Newey studied and it had the best wind tunnel – I’m quite fond of wind tunnels.

Then came COVID. I packed my bed away, turned my bedroom into a workshop, built parts in the garden when it wasn’t raining, and finished a single-seater race car I designed from scratch while working full-time in F1 and commuting from Bicester to Southampton every day, building overnight, and so on. My former boss, who gave me that first placement at 15, gave me a space in his workshop to save me the commute. Thanks, Mark, you’re a legend!

I’ve since realised this isn’t a standard way of working. I don’t fully know what’s driving me, and I’ve stopped trying to figure it out, as long as I’m enjoying it. Why not push the norm?

Somewhere along the way, I started asking: why am I making a car go a thousandth of a second faster around a track when there are much more pressing problems to solve? Especially since the performance delta I was achieving could be wiped out entirely by a piece of tyre debris. I needed to do something more purposeful.

One morning, sitting in traffic on the way to work, I had a realisation I began obsessing over. Why has it become completely normal to waste hours of our lives every week going nowhere? Most car journeys are less than five miles, with one person – perfectly cyclable. So why don’t we cycle? Because cycling, in its current form, asks too much. For it to become your new daily, it has to be an upgrade over driving – not a sacrifice.
So I left Formula One, founded Amara Automotive, and built the solution.

Why am I writing this? David Pitchforth is responsible. In case you’re wondering how a four-wheeled electric bike ended up in the Royal Automobile Club, the story takes place at the Coachmakers’ dinner.
David read my Top Gear article and kindly invited me to the Automotive Dinner as his guest. After hearing guest speaker Chairman of the RAC Liveryman Duncan Wiltshire that evening, David turned to me and said:
“I didn’t get to where I got to by being polite, I got there by taking shots. Run and introduce yourself.”

Roger that David, I nodded and was off. I caught Duncan before anyone else had left the room, introduced myself, telling him: “You said you support young engineers, well I’m a young engineer and I think you’ll enjoy what I’m working on.”

I told him how I developed a four-wheeled electric bike to replace cars for those daily journeys where we simply don’t need to be driving. “My background is in F1, I love cars so the Elecy is as car-like as possible, designed by a petrolhead, for petrolheads. Effectively, I just don’t like where the automotive industry is heading so, I’m taking some bold steps to change it. To get the Elecy into the mainstream market, I need to inspire that change. So I thought: what better way to launch it, test it and inspire people to cycle by setting two Guinness World Records by circumnavigating the world? I’d love your support.”

Duncan invited me to the RAC, and offered to host my World Tour launch party. A massive thank you to Duncan and his brilliant team for making this happen. It was one of the best days of my life – my first ever event and one I’ll never forget.

Taking on the world – Elecy’s World Tour 2026

The ultimate engineering test that snowballed into a global campaign

The World Tour does three things:
1. Tests the Elecy to the absolute limit. Across every terrain and climate; allowing me to rapidly develop it from a prototype to a production protype.
2. Inspires change. It provides the global platform to inspire you to drive less and cycle more. The premise is, if I can cycle a lap around the world, surely you can cycle to the office in the morning!
3. Funds the path to production. I’ve bootstrapped to get here as a solo founder – winning competitions, claiming grants, and consulting work. My closest competitors spent several million pounds to reach a working prototype, while I spent less than £100,000. Just think what I could achieve with proper support.

My personal success metric is getting Jeremy Clarkson to endorse it, because if petrolheads like you, me and Jeremy want to cycle thanks to the Elecy, then we can reach the mainstream market. I know some of you have worked with Jeremy. If anyone can get the Elecy in front of him, I would be eternally grateful (I’m serious – I’ll reserve you an Elecy once in production!).

As for the start of the World Tour – the UK leg – I’m thinking big – and not all of this is set in stone, but if you don’t ask you don’t get. I’m working on featuring at Silverstone, before another feature at the Royal Automobile Club, and ending the UK chapter at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. A hillclimb in the Elecy would be phenomenal. If anyone has connections that can make any of that happen and kick the World Tour off with a bang – please do get in touch. That’s exactly the kind of thing that would mean the world right now. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Shooting my shot

A massive thank you to all the support I’ve received so far, to all the wonderful connections and conversations, especially the Coachmakers who made it to my launch reception.

What’s getting the World Tour to the start line is generous support from individuals – people who believe the mission, open doors, make introductions, and support it directly. What gets Elecy into production are corporate partnerships – both matter enormously.

I’m still just one unreasonably ambitious person pushing this forward – not a very British thing to admit, but I could do with some help.
If something in this article sparked something in you – a connection, an idea, a conversation, I’d love to hear from you – everything great starts with a conversation.

With enormous thanks to Assistant Lyn Litchfield for giving me the platform to write this, to Liveryman David Pitchforth for introducing me to the Coachmakers, and to every Coachmaker who made that evening so special. I hope to make you proud – and I look forward to becoming a Coachmaker when I get back.

To follow the journey, visit: www.amaraautomotive.com

Tamara Ivancova
Founder, Amara Automotive
Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow & ERA Foundation Enterprise Fellow

+44 (0) 7533597737
tamara@amaraautomotive.com