As the value of Tesla skyrockets along with Elon Musk's personal wealth, it might be easy to assume that the South African billionaire was the first to pioneer electric vehicles.
However, the UK could have almost led the world in electric vehicles, if it hadn't been for a botched product launch by Britain's answer to Elon Musk: Sir Clive Sinclair.
Sinclair was one of the world's foremost home computing pioneers who invented everything from miniature TVs and pocket calculators to home computers.
After landing a knighthood and cashing in on his computer empire, Sinclair embarked on a pet project of his own: an electric car that would irreparably damage his reputation for years.
Before that, though, Sinclair was known as a genius inventor. He launched the UK's first home computer for under £100, the ZX80. This brought PCs to the masses across the country for the first time ever.
It paved the way for his biggest product, the ZX Spectrum. This was an even bigger hit, and contained many of the world's first home computer games.
36 years ago today, he sold the rights to the Spectrum and his other inventions to Alan Sugar's computer company, Amstrad, for £5 million. In the meantime, he landed himself a knighthood.
-
You can get an Uber straight to Australia this year thanks to major new features
Just like Bill Gates, Sinclair had his own tech nemesis – but instead of Steve Jobs, he went up against the creator of the BBC Micro, Chris Curry.
The 2009 drama 'Micro Men', starring Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong, explores their rivalry as they sought to dominate Britain's early home computing market.
Sinclair wasn't very happy with the drama, telling the Independent: "It was a travesty of the truth. It just had no bearing on the truth. It was terrible."
However, their rivalry had its roots in a collaboration that saw the pair of them team up on research into electric vehicles in the early 1970s.
-
World's smallest phone with gunshot ringtone is huge prison hit thanks to easy smuggling
The project never went anywhere, but lay the groundwork for a career-destroying invention that Sinclair would later become notorious for: the Sinclair C5.
This three-wheeled electric vehicle was intended to replace bicycles and scooters for short-distance, local journeys. Resembling a Reliant Robin with no roof, it only fit one person and had no rear view mirrors, no storage, and very little visibility for busy roads.
The C5 was produced in top-secret conditions at the Dyson Hoover factory and only trialled once. It was then launched at a glitzy ceremony at Ally Pally in London, where six women in grey and yellow exploded out of six cardboard boxes, drove around the arena in C5s, before parking in formation.
A brochure for the C5 said: "With the C5, Sinclair Vehicles puts personal, private transport back where it belongs – in the hands of the individual."
-
iPhone '5 click trick' saved my life says Brit snowboarder who fell 15ft down ice hole
However, when it came to the press testing out the vehicle at an event in the middle of winter, things slid rapidly downhill.
A number of the cars didn't work, with many of them not even able to go up small slopes. A reporter for The Guardian said his battery ran flat in seven minutes, while racing driver Stirling Moss was treated to a mouthful of exhaust fumes and a dead battery in the rain. The Sunday Times even called it a "Formula One bath chair".
As the vehicle was targeted at young people, reviewers were terrified of the prospect of "packs of 14-year-olds terrorising the neighbourhood in their customised C5s" after Sinclair hired gangs of teenagers to drive around London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds in the buggies.
Perhaps worst of all, the C5 had very bad security features and was in fact so light that a thief could pick it up and run away with it.
-
Anonymous hacker collective leaks one million Kremlin emails in massive attack on Putin
By the end of 1985, Sinclair Vehicles went bust. Sinclair later said: "Clearly I should have handled it differently. If I had it could have succeeded.
"I rushed at it too much and invested too much in the tooling and I should have gone a bit more gently into it."
The reputation of electric vehicles—and that of Sinclair—was in tatters, and it wasn't until years later when the Toyota Prius and, more recently, the Tesla series hit our roads that emission-free cars became popular.
Despite all this, the C5 still has a cult following in the UK today, with modified versions of the C5 reaching top speeds of 150mph. The trike is particularly popular among drivers who have been banned from the road, as they don't need a licence to drive it.
- Elon Musk
Source: Read Full Article