I’ve Met the EV of the Future | Sinclair C5 Renovation 

This was great fun to make, great to spend the day with you meeting Dave and his C5

Just finished refurbishing mine. Fabulous fun to drive. Pure smiles on my face and anyone else you see too!

He was a cleaver fella, old Clive definitely ahead of its time!

Great video mate. Love a bit of nostalgia. Keep up the good work.

Back in the late 80's i went on a family holiday to the isle of wight. Here on one of the beach fronts somebody had converted a fleet of C5's to coin-op i think it was 50p ago around an old gocart track you paid your 50p and go so far round this track, It was awesome. At this time C5's had already failed but i loved them and couldn't really understand why they failed. So in my early teens i had my first go in an EV and hope to move from PHEV to pure EV later this year a long time coming but Sir Clive was a visionary even though i (i should say my dad) went with his dreaded competitor at the time the BBC Micro. Watch the documentary Micro Men from 2009 to see what i am talking about well worth a watch. Also a side note ARM CPU in most our phones is also first made here in this documentary.

The C5 was before its time. Isn't it really just an e-bike or like a Renault Twizy?

As a Sinclair ZX Spectrum owner back in the 1980's I remember Sinclair sent me a Sinclair C5 brochure through the post. I remember really wanting one back then but as I was only 13 years old I couldn't afford the £399 they were asking for them. I really must look to see if I still have the brochure somewhere. I seem to remember Lotus Cars had a hand in it's development too.

Great insight into the Sinclair. Follow up test ride of a 2019 Specialized Levo will demonstrate the viability of modern high torque motors and batteries. We have viable alternative transport options.

0:45 I honestly thought the guy was a mannequin until he turned his head 😂

Great video. I remember going to a theme park when I was a kid (early 80s) and they had several you could pay to go on a short track. Sadly I was too young (or it was too expensive a ride for my parents to fork out) so I didn't get a go. But 35 years later I remember it well.

I was working in the centre of London when the C5 was launched. While waiting to cross the road near Moorgate tube station a chap went by in/on a C5 much to the amusement of all the people around me. That sums up the problem. Ideal for somewhere like Milton Keynes but not the centre of London. In all the years working in and around the City I only ever saw one recumbent bike and that was much larger and quicker than the the Sinclair. For those older techies out there. The first record player I made incorporated a Sinclair IC12 (hedgehog) amplifier.

Great episode and very interesting. Thanks for that.

What's wrong with a push bike, lighter, faster, more environmentally friendly, safer and keeps you fit and healthy ? Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the pedal cycle in 1839, an invention that is the most important and numerous vehicle, worldwide, today.

Definitely ahead of its time, such a beautiful form factor - just launched badly and in the wrong decade. I genuinely think if this were launched today, packed in with a good whack of lithium-ion (and maybe an easy motor swap done by a naughty person wanting above 250w!), that it would be a success. Maybe not a mainstream success, but certainly a cool indie one that would be profitable. Just look at products like the Pebl, and you'll see Clive's vision eventually found its place - that place being now, and in the last few years. Indeed, Sir Clive has actually been flying the flag for these hybrid pedal-assist vehicles for a while now, give it a google.

Grew up like you with this as the ‘future’ great to see one restored and interesting video.

The Buick Century Cruiser concept car was also a failure and there’s no reason why either. We need to bring the Buick Century Cruiser back into production. They’ll be electric. Let’s also bring the Hexacube homes back into production. They’ll be electric too and be given to the poor.

That smile when you actually got a go... 😁

Oh blimey, I remember my friend having one of these as it was great fun till the battery went and died, range was a pain though but remember this was the 80's....Ahh, those were the days..

My grandparents own a Sinclair c5

The marketing certainly was handled poorly. After all, nobody bats an eyelid at mobility scooters, which also have a claimed ten mile range, and a low top speed. I'm inclined to believe, from admittedly limited experience, that the range really is at least ten miles on a new battery, on an old scooter. And yes; it's quite intimidating to take one along even a fairly quiet public road. Thanks Ryan.

A 2018 updated version would be cool

Hi I enjoyed your video/programme and wondered if you know where I can purchase a two seater cabin trike in the U.K. at a decent price much like the type you get on websites like Alibaba.?

I would of went too far and added a fast powerful modern motor, full li-ion battery conversion, led headlight, wide wheels, carbon fibre replacement body if possible, etc etc

Hey

Has it got more range than your 24 kWh leaf ?

Another eccentric British inventor whose efforts still moves us forward, even if it is just in terms of what not to do and what can be done. Who will be the next British inventor to come up with something that will wow us? Will Dyson bring something to market that will put another British inventor on the map again? It will be great to see what will emerge.

An upgrade from the C5 : twike.com/en/home.html

The 'Like Tesla' video show of 13th December 2018 features a 1903 Waverly Electric Road Wagon that would leave the C5 for dead, it carries 2 people in comfort on 4 wheels and has a range of 60 miles. Tell me again how the C5 was ahead of its time, it was not.

Sorry, it looks like a fancy mobile toilet :))))

+EV Opinion You are far too kind to this awful machine. It was rubbish when it first appeared in the eighties and it still is garbage. Anything from a bicycle to a Fiat 500 or a motor bike would have been preferable to this incredibly dangerous three wheeler. No reverse, how hard would that have been to put in a switch to reverse the polarity of the power to the motor (I'm assuming it had a DC motor, even if it was AC reverse should not have been hard to provide). They spent twelve million pounds sterling on pushing this, incredible. I followed your link to RetroWorkshop and got a good butchers hook at the construction via videos 2 and 3, not impressed by Sir Clive Sinclair's efforts I'm afraid. Thank's for the video though, I now know more than enough about this death machine.

why not ask over at c5alive.co.uk That 'E' Trike has been in development since 2009. Don't hold your breath. Why was the cave dweller there - he hardly got a word in.

The C5 wasn't ahead of its time. The idea of a mass transport electric vehicle may have been, but the reality is that it didn't progress a single technology. It was very badly conceived and executed. I remember anticipating it and being hugely disappointed by its obvious limitations. It may well have set electric vehicles back rather than progressing them. In the years since there had been little progress simply because the vision and will to make progress has not been there. And it largely hinged on battery technology progression, in any case, of which there had been fairly little until vehicles needed them. Then the progress ramped up. We know who is largely responsible for the electric vehicle being at the position it occupies these days. That is largely where all the real progress has been made simply because the ideas have been brilliantly conceived, excellently executed, and the various integrated technologies have been pushed hard. Through Tesla's innovation and hard work since the 2000s, developing new tech and integrating others, we've probably gained an extra decade or more of progress. We're catching up to where we should be. I'm by no means a fanboy, but you have to give credit where it is due.

it,s a bicikyle

There is a long list bad ideas for products that failed miserably and this one example, and sometimes people like to say that it was ahead of its time. But clearly it wasn't, it was just a bad idea, the technology was terrible, and if had been ahead of its time people would have brought it. Batteries are only just getting the kind of research investment that is advancing the technology. This is little more than a dangerous electric go kart, and folks who needed to transit could just get a scooter instead of this joke.

A terrible product very dangerous poorly made and engineered

"Per se" misuse again.

The Nissan doesn't have a battery heater that's why the range suffers in the winter. Bad engineering