One unnamed reason for Sinclair Radionics' falling apart was their digital watch, Black Watch, which was the ultimate example of Sinclair's infamous cost cutting and lack of quality control. http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/other/blackwatch.htm
At the time of the C5 I worked for one of the then government owned utility companies which had shops selling the C5. Was able to get a staff discount but was told of of the 2 seater version with a roof that was planned for release and saw pictures and spec etc, so I waited.
Great idea, ahead of it's time engineering and attitude wise as well. Did not even have rare earth magnets, seen C5's with rare earth magnet motors instead of the stock motor and they are dangerously fast. Today we are slowly getting there, though cars still designed for everybody with a 4-5 member family with a boot of shopping all the time and the other end is a motorbike. Still a car/bike electric combinations do appear, albeit not mainstream and most put of from the safety of getting hit by others as you are smaller on the road effect. Which makes you think about the limitations of a vehicle that is surrounded by taller and larger ones, why we now start to believe in bike lanes.
Which was a factor back then and why the C5 never kicked off enough to make the C10 and C15 go into production beyond the prototypes sadly and C5's started coming with a flag pole akin to a football/soccer corner post style pole and flag.
30 years later, and the electric car market is still miniscule.
There might start to be a market demand for them when petrol is at least twice as expensive as it is now. But there's some wiggle room to reduce the tax on it a lot.
Fair point given the whole model RC market users end up going for petro based models over the electric ones bases upon usage per charge and charge time and conveniance of charging factors. Maybe when that area changes things will progress, but that need a nice leap in battery technology.
I still feel though the whole electric vechile area needs more personal cheaper options and sadly even the electric bycicles options out there are not exactly cheap and flooding the markets.
When gas/petrol goes to 2x what it is now it'll be on a journey that is very fast and shoots to 3x, 4x and beyond. This will cause huge economic shocks and there won't be the time then to start building electric cars.
You could be right. For most European cities this wouldn't have a terrible effect, as everything is close together and we have things in walking distance.
