TOP 10: Whatever happened to…C5 - Brief Article

Electronics Times, June 26, 2000

Sir Clive Sinclair, one of this country's earliest and best known electronics inventors, including the first self-assembly home computer, launched the C5 `electronic vehicle' in late 1985. It was meant to herald a new era of ecological transport. But following its first tentative journey in central London, it was soon described as a dangerous plastic egg box with a motorised tricycle inside.

The C5 was an odd hybrid of a small car and bicycle, which needed pedal power for starting or going uphill at speed, but which Sinclair said anyone could drive or ride. It was priced at #399. But the C5 proved to be heavy, with unreliable batteries and was invisible to lorry drivers. It was condemned by the AA as a "hazard to both the rider and other road users".

Within months of the launch, and after an initial sales flurry of a few thousand, production ceased and the company set up to market the C5 went into receivership.

Ironically, the C5 is now back in fashion as a collector's item, rapidly gaining cult status, notably in bicycle-obsessed Holland, where good examples can fetch #1000.

A decade later Sir Clive tried again with another kind of battery- powered form of transport, the Zike, but history repeated itself. Sir Clive still maintains that the C5, or something like it, is the future of environmentally friendly motorised transport.