Lightyear One

unkel

I posted this early this year:

unkel wrote: »

We should probably have a separate thread for the lightyear one.

Linky



The amazing looking prototype car had a press launch today and it featured in today's episode of Fully Charged. It somehow reminds me of the Citroen CX, lauched almost half a century ago

The solar panel is 1.25kwp so should be enough in a very efficient car to power the car for 10k km per year as claimed in countries like the Netherlands or Ireland

The team behind this car is from Technical University Eindhoven (Netherlands), the same team that won the most prestigious solar car race in the world several times (competing against teams with far higher budgets)

You can reserve the Pioneer Edition right now. It will cost €149k, and you will have to come up with €119k up front right now if you want to be one of the first 100 owners collecting the car in early 2021. €19k if you want to be in the first 1000 and still €4k if you want to be behind those people again. Astonishingly it seems about a hundred people have taken that €119k up front deal

Linky

We need to keep an eye on this one...

krissovo

They will only sell a handful, Greenpeace CEO and his upper echelon plus a few wealthy hippies and oddballs. However .......... The light year 3 will be the next ford escort and far outstrip any Tesla or Leaf in EV progress. I would fear long before the lightyear 3 ever reaches a drawing board one of the big car conglomerates (or oil) buys out the CEO and takes the IP for it to buried for a decade.

I watched the fully-charged clip last night and I thought it was the most awkward interview with a CEO for a long time, a 5 to 10 mph test around a Dutch country estate was like watching the Lego Bugatti test drive....Yawn.

I loved the materials in the interior, the rear passenger area with the wall of velour was shoite.

NIMAN

A car of 2 halves, in style anyway.

Front half is nice.
Rear half, awful looking.

Twenty Grand

NIMAN wrote: »

A car of 2 halves, in style anyway.

Front half is nice.
Rear half, awful looking.

All about the aero.

NIMAN

Yeah appreciate that.

After all, the Leaf is no looker either!

Del2005

Twenty Grand wrote: »

All about the aero.

The original Beatle had great aero and looked good, you can have both.

krissovo

Del2005 wrote: »

The original Beatle had great aero and looked good, you can have both.

The Beetle had useless aero, almost as bad as the vans.

SlowBlowin

I wonder how much to insure when a simple front or rear ender will destroy $20K of solar panel ?

I didn't hear any ground breaking technology, just a philosophy to build a very efficient car. If there is demand then I think established manufacturers will do the same cheaper and better.

I looks so old, just reminds me of the GM EV1.

unkel

Del2005 wrote: »

The original Beatle had great aero and looked good, you can have both.

The original Beetle had a coefficient of drag (Cd) of 0.48, which is brutal. Worse than the brick on wheels that is the orginal Range Rover

Modern aerodynamic cars like the Teslas, Hyundai Ioniq, some of the latest Mercedes and BMW etc. have a Cd of around 0.23

The Lightyear One is supposed to have a Cd of 0.20, better than any production car ever made (afaik). It will make a huge difference on efficiency at motorway speeds.

Those rear wheel covers were widely seen in 1930's-> airstreamed American cars (and the VW XL1) but Lightyear definitely wanted them to stand out. I bet you would get a useful reduction of drag in Ioniq and Model 3 with them. The back is Audi A7 Sportsback but uglier. Great to see something distinctive in the sea of grey.

Would love a remake of the Tatra T87 as a luxury car for 2020's. Nobody would buy it so it would be the electric car equivalent of Citroen C6.

unkel

I was wondering who'd be the first to mention Tatra in this thread

Mupchease

I never looked into any information on the lightyear before. Very interesting.

Eggs For Dinner

Bumping an old thread. The Lightyear One has gone in to production.

https://lightyear.one/

I'm just back from a visit to my son, who works for Lightyear in Eindhoven and had a tour of their HQ. Very impressive setup and production has now begun in earnest. Had a sit in the car and it's different from anything I would be used to. The "popular" version is still 2 /3 years away

unkel

Super cool but I struggle to see a target market for it except for a few wealthy, very environmentally aware individuals. Can that tiny slice of the market keep this company viable? Why would anyone pay €300k for a car that is probably inferior in almost every way to a €150k Lucid Air, apart from efficiency?

AMKC

It futures on the BBC on there "The secret Genius of modern life" series on Thursday just gone. The presenter ended up crashing it lol barely a scratch just a slightly pushed in front bumper but the boss was not too happy lol.

If you can find the episode its not bad. It's kind of aimed at kids I think.

It was episode 4 of 6.

Eggs For Dinner

We were told that there is a very healthy order book, but it's likely that these people are collectors, vehicle investors or very wealthy individuals. The version that is coming in a few years is a slimmed down saloon at circa €40k. The main 'side hustle ' to the organisation is the number of patents secured during development, which have various applications outside of vehicle manufacture

Eggs For Dinner

Lightyear have opened the waiting list for Lightyear 2. This is to be the more affordable version and the primary vehicle on the production line

https://lightyear.one/lightyear-2

unkel

Target starting price of < €40k

Even presuming that's an international price excluding any local taxes or shipping charges, that seems unrealistically cheap. But hey!

Less than 40k without VAT/VRT or with a typical European VAT is the question?

Redfox25

Have popped my wife down on the list for one should be fun to see how this shapes up, more choice is never a bad thing.

unkel

Without any taxes. And even at that it's optimistic.

kris_2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120072670#Comment_120072670

done too! if price end up below 50k it will be still good.

Killer K

Signed up as well, even if only to get regular updates on how this progresses.

Mr Q

When people joined the waitlist did they get very low numbers on the list? Mine is in the teens, XX0001X

I assume that's not actually in order or where you are on the waiting list.

Redfox25

33 here

Red Silurian

38 here

kris_2021

36 here

Killer K

41

Mythago

51

ted1

32 here, maybe the xx refers to Ireland

Killer K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120087044#Comment_120087044

I was thinking this too. It would make sense to compile it by market.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119951189#Comment_119951189

When the zombie apocalypse comes they won't have to worry about the petrol and diesel going stale

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120087074#Comment_120087074

Neither will I but my system cost me thousands, not hundreds of thousands 😂

embraer170

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/110533089#Comment_110533089

The aero cover option is estimated to give 12km of extra range on a Lightyear 0. It would be very interesting to see what one would get on a Model 3.

eagerv

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120087794#Comment_120087794

The aero covers on the 18" Tesla Model 3 RWD are supposed to give an extra 19km of range..

(Edit, presume you mean the rear wheel fairings/covers, Ignore my post..😊)

Eggs For Dinner

The marketing team in Lightyear haven't given a country code to Ireland yet, hence the XX. In the Netherlands, the sequence is NL00123 etc. My one here is in single digits, as staff were given advance access an d my son put my name down