Update: I literally was seconds away from posting this, and only looking for the final piece of this article, which was the website address of their company webpage for a link … That’s when I discovered that just a few hours earlier, the company had gone into bankruptcy. Will they survive? That’s the harsh issue with any startup …
Seen at CES2023, there are now companies that will evaluate your startup idea/proposal and give you at least some thoughts that you may not have considered that are unique for today’s entrepreneur. If Lightyear had used them, very probably they wouldn’t be in the trouble they’re in now. Someone should have stepped in and told them that their very first production car, that will get the company rolling, shouldn’t cost almost $300,000. Musk gave them the warning for free in 2018 and 2021 interviews: “prototypes are easy, and production is hard” … and “production along with generating positive cash flow (when more money flows into your business than out of it) is extremely hard.” And my fav comment: “Musk compared car manufacturing to eating “a lot of glass”—painful and difficult.” So why make an essentially unaffordable car, excepting a handful cutting-edge billionaires while the bulk of the planet, who can actually make the company profitable, is ignored until it’s too late? While they’re obviously in hot water currently, the article still stands, as do my observations and desire to own one … continues.
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Despite a couple of new Teslas in the driveway, I still couldn’t resist ordering (as my 1000+hp Cybertruck still has no expected delivery date) the new Lightyear 2. The pics below are the Lightyear Zero as I wasn’t permitted to take a picture (design is in flux) of the new “2”, but it seems reasonably similar. While it’s certainly not the rocket like my current performance models, it has such a unique persona that I knew it belonged in our driveway. The entire top of the car is covered with solar cells that add (under a reasonable amount of light) about 50 miles to its range each day. Most people don’t drive that much in a day, so essentially it’s a day without costing me literally as much as a penny to drive on my errands.
Should you need to charge it on the road, there is more good news! It will NOT come with the absurd CCS plug that other manufacturers cripple their cars with. Instead, it’ll use the far more advanced North American Charging Standard (NACS) developed by Tesla that is ‘half the size, twice as powerful’ as the outdated CCS system. That means unabated access to the largest and most reliable EV charging system on the planet. With that and the panels, range is better than any gas-powered car on the planet with no reliance on the alternate charging companies that can have a 95+% chance that it doesn’t function.
With over 500 miles of range and an amazing amount room inside it looks very much the part of a long-distance cruiser. Bear in mind, if you don’t take long road trips and basically stay close to your home, your annual electricity bill will be zero. Compare a gas car getting 25mpg for 40 mile trips for year at $3.00 a gallon … that’s almost $1800! In a Lightyear, it’s nothing … additionally, consider all the usual maintenance that gas-powered cars have and your savings alone may be equal to three or four months of car payments. Gas-powered cars just don’t make sense any longer, just like steam-powered cars at the turn of the last century were displaced by the superior tech of petroleum. Chunks of coal or wood losing out to an easy to transport, high-energy liquid in the last century, is the modern equivalence today of a highly-flammable liquid being replaced by electricity.
This isn’t like the usual “EV” from the largest car companies that are in reality just hacked-up formerly gas-powered vehicles. This, like Teslas, are purpose-built EVs from the ground up … so there are no compromises. Any other “EV” on the market (excepting, of course Teslas) look shockingly crude once you open the hood. Having a bunch of colored LEDs lighting the interior and/or the front grill, combined with an absurd and useless giant LCD screen in front of you, isn’t indicative of what the car really is underneath. If what Ford, VW, GM, BMW and other major car makers are doing isn’t “putting lipstick on a pig”, I don’t know what is …
