1984 - 30 year olds laughing at it from the drivers seat of an Escort XR3. 40 years later. 2024 - 70 year olds riding to Tesco Express on their mobility scooters. Strange world.
That thing wouldn't even make a good mobility scooter, I doubt that anyone who needs a mobility scooter would be able to get out of that thing with out help.
The performance and range of a mobility scooter, the seating position of sports car, and not even the cargo and passenger capacity of a motorcycle. You can't even wear a backpack while riding it.
He marketed it wrongly! If he sold it for seaside towns so people could go up and down the promenade then it would have been great. Imagine places like Brighton with C5s for hire. Everyone would be on them. They would also want one to get for their home, so they would be like those silly scooters we have today. The global market in places like holiday resorts in the Med would have got him the sales needed and the capital to create a proper road going version.
I had a C5 when I was a kid. 16inch chopper tyre on the front, 2bmx tyres on the back, 3 really flimsy plastic uninspiring wheels... A weak badly designed pressed steel spot welded frame... 2 lead acid 12v car batteries..... Unless your sir Chris Hoy, peddling them was a massive chore. Good times
Battery technology wasn't up to scratch at the time, the batteries were bulky, heavy and didn't store much electricity. So comparing them to modern electric scooters or even a segway doesn't take into account that a C5 had to be *constantly* recharged.
You are right my one I put a cable reel holder on the back with an automatic unwinder. And spring retensioner to Wind it back again I had 1000 m of Flex, so I could go to the shop and back and it remained charging and plugged in at home. I couldn’t go further though or the plug would pull out from the house. I tried with longer cords but there was too much electrical loss once I got much above 1 km of length, also the spring on the rewinder was not strong enough, and the cable drum ended up, needing to be put on a trailer which then meant the vehicle would not pull it so easily
@@malcolmwhite6588 surely this suggests that you miscalculated the strength of spring required in the cable retensioner? This should have chosen to be sufficiently strong that, once out of charge, rewinding the cable would have pulled you and the C5 back home. And don't forget that since the Sinclair ZX80 was once advertised by Sinclar as being 'cabable of running a power station' that you could have replaced that cable drum on the trailer with a portable ZX80 controlled power station which would have given you near unlimited range. Maybe next time.
heh. I live in a US state where golf-carts, ATVs, and side-by-sides can be legally road-licensed once equipped with mirrors and turn signals. Even these larger platforms with their added capabilities for transporting cargo and passengers and with greater visibility, are still not popular on the road. Basically the only vehicle that sits in the market between two-wheeled e-bikes and small electric cars like the Chevrolet Bolt are a small handful of electric motorcycles, and even then they are not particularly popular. I'm not saying that it's impossible for something to exist in this gap in the market, but it would have to be pretty extraordinary in order to do so. Just guessing, it would need to appeal as a sports car with the handling and performance to back it up.
Great video! I had no idea they had bigger Evs planned. Clive Sinclair was an underrated innovator. My first computer was a ZX81 and he helped me get started in tech and I’ll always be grateful to him. He made computers accessible to everyone and he tried to do the same with EVs. I think he’s a legend.
To be fair, this was way, way ahead of it's time and no-one was really ready for it back then. If someone came out with a similar vehicle today it would probably have much more success due to the improvements in battery technology, electronics and materials science since the 1980's. The only vehicle I have ever seen which is similar are the recumbent bicycles and tricycles which are around the same size. I still wouldn't feel safe riding one of them though.
As cars will be banned more and more from cities these types of vehicles will gain popularity over time. The tech was just not ready in the 80s, now with a decent motor and a powerful battery the pedals can be ditched, storage can be added for some groceries and stuff. Things like these will make a return for sure.
@@MirzaAhmed89BS? Do shut up! The Segway is in no way similar to a C5 or a recumbent bicycle/tricycle for that matter. At least use a cogent argument when trolling.🤣
"If someone came out with a similar vehicle today it would probably have much more success" Actually I only just realized that this is just a worse version of the electric bicycle, so we already have what this was supposed to be.
It was certainly ahead of its time. A vehicle that small can't safely share the road with conventionally sized vehicles but the overall concept has great potential for niche markets.
I did try one once - a hire one when on holiday. Weird but fascinating at the same time. Very comparable to a recumbent bicycle in terms of the low slung appearance and visibility on the busy roads, and woefully inadequate range and excess weight. Bringing it up to date with Lithium batteries would improve the last two points, but would it catch on in today's crowded EV market? Probably not to be honest - apart from the tourist thing mentioned several times already. As a daily commute - well you would get just as wet on a bicycle - so wear the right gear and it wouldn't be so bad. More luggage space would certainly help - that rear 'box' was tiny!!! Someone somewhere is going to do a DIY 2020's version I'm sure - LED lighting / the aforementioned Lithium Battery etc. Sir Clive Sinclair was certainly an early influence - I bought a ZX80 new , followed by a Spectrum! Learning computers in the 1980's was far more difficult than it is now!!!
Id love to be able to buy an updated version for say, 800 euros. They are very popular here in the Netherlands where people are far more accepting of weird vehicles and you wont get beaten up for driving one.
@@AlbertDongler Instead we have wind that makes an afternoon trip to the shops feel like climbing Alp d'Huez. No wonder the streamlined C5 was a hit here.
Then you should look up the CityEl - it’s a 1 person tricycle with a closed cabin and a proper steering wheel. Developed in Denmark and launched in 1987, these days manufactured and sold in Germany. Probably what the Sinclair C5 should have been. There’s a an article of the CityEl on wikipedia.
It's peculiar that although living in the UK, and being old enough to remember the launch, the only C5 I've ever seen in person was at Lane Motor Museum in Tennessee!
I’m truly surprised that 17,000 were sold, I suspect to rental companies mostly as that’s where I had an hour (or it might have been half an hour, it was a very long time ago) on one along the seafront next to puckpool park along the coastal road to Seaview on the Isle of Wight. Let’s just say it wasn’t comfortable nor easy to handle having the steering underneath you… I was surprised it got to market in the first place… 🏴 The one I rented had a mast with a red burgee on top to make it ‘visible’.
With modern batteries and motors... this thing would really go. It would allow power to upgrade the chassis and suspension too. Ah... too much/too little too soon. Thanks as always and regards.
Anyone remember the subsequent Sinclair Zike folding electric bike, the very strange and impractical A bike and the iterations of battery driven rollers bolted to the back wheels of ordinary pushbikes - all rather sad products launched with insufficient budget?
One of my regrets....My local Comets had 4 left to be sold by 5pm @ £25 each! That was the last day they were on sale and me with a spare £60 in my pocket, thought of getting 2, but didn't even buy 1 after 10 mins of using a few brain cells! They were commanding around £2,500 10 years later!
I test drove one in a lunch hour. No suspension and a hard plastic seat made the ride horrible, but breathing in the leaders petrol fumes was worse, and wondering when I was going to get hit by a car.
I wanted one of these.. but when I saw one in curry's I noted that the boot was a cardboard slot requiring a load of sliced bread to be loaded a few slices at a time..
That was not a boot. That was a carbohydrate fuel supply which would burn to run a small gas turbine hooked to a 50 W generator. That would keep the batteries charged. You obviously didn’t read the handbook Well Enough
The guy had the right idea fundamentally, it was just the execution that was wrong. Same with the Segway. The C5 and Segway are both just pre-cursors to e-bikes and e-scooters really.
I remember Sinclair being lauded in the UK at the time as a kind of Elon Musk character; intelligent, innovative and eccentric. We had a zx spectrum and I found the C5 fascinating though I was a bit too young for one. It’d be nice to see a video on the early 80s PC wars between Atari, Sinclair and commodore. It was an odd time in tech when we all bought PCs for ‘education’ but mainly used them for gaming until the console market caught up. Some of us even learnt to code from it.
Yes, but that's a different market from the one he was aiming at, and today's mobility scooters are well-tuned for that market - easy to get into, upright seating, with raincovers available for most. And also, nearly all 4 wheels as too many people fell off 3-wheel ones. While driving a bus I witnessed someone on the ground unable to get up themselves as they'd gone down a sloped kerb in a 3-wheel mobility scooter at the wrong angle (They were being helped up at the time, otherwise I would have stopped).
Too bad the unsold ones were hoarded up to be resold later and not given away as mobility aids to amputees. Because it looks like the perfect conveyance for that.
It was then, and would be now completely inappropriate for using on UK roads, an e-bike makes much more sense for multiple reasons. It was and still is a novelty expensive toy, and as others have said much better suited to closed off semi pedestrianised areas.
Pitching it to go on main, 1980s roads doesnt seem like a smart move. Uni campuses, however, would make more sense. Large cycle routes maybe. Holiday parks too. Some place where car use is heavily restricted or at a very low speed. I do think he started too small, though. A larger two-seater would have made more sense
I saw something recently either in an advert or youtube algo suggestion that as far as I could tell was basically a 2024 knock off the C5. Though oddly the C5 looks more futuristic than the thing I saw.
It was very similar to the Ariel 3 in terms of the market's response- something that was technically innovative whilst not really understanding that people need to find change for themselves and to find it in something that's a development of things they already understand. The c5 was too "out there" and didn't fit in with the way people understood transport at the time. Contemporary electric bicycles and scooters look much more like "proper" bicycles and have been much more quickly accepted. I do wonder how a C5 would perform with a modern battery and motor, both of which were very inefficient by modern standards.
Was the C5 genuinely "technically innovative", though? Arguably it was essentially a cross between a go-kart, a trike, a moped and, for its primary propulsion method, a milk-float. :-)
To an extent, Sinclair was a victim of his own hype - expectations were somehow fueled that he was going to produce an electric 'car', and when the C5 was actually announced it was a complete disappointment! Even now, its hard to see what actual use it would be to anyone - slow, no weather protection, tiny storag, presumably not allowed in cycle lanes or on cycleways, - no advantage over an electric pushbike, though those weren't available then.
There's no doubt that Sir Clive's products up to and including the the ZX Spectrum were perfect for the market. Unfortunately Sir Clive believed his own hype and never realised that building bare bones poor quality products only works while high quality products are expensive. As the price of chips fell he had no idea how to build quality products to take advantage of the fall in computer products. His head up his own arse carried onto the C5, how anyone could look at it and not think this is a fucking stupid product and instead carry on with it is be beyond belief.
At the time of the C5's launch....there was an Italian folding Bicycle with an Electric Motor...it was available in the UK. similar price to the C5...I had one it could be stowed indoors and the Lead Acid Battery could be easily removed. they sold out Quickly.
The Sinclair C5 has the right idea but came out way too early. Had it come out nowadays with the rise of e-bikes and better battery technology, this thing could sell thousands of units per year if priced competitively.
The biggest problem was, "what was it even supposed to be?", the only thing I can compare it to is a mobility scooter, but it's to badly designed anyone with mobility issues to use. I don't think my Grandpa would be able to get out of that thing by himself. So if it's not a mobility scooter, then what is it? It it was always going to fail, because no one knew what it was supposed to be. Wait I think I just realized what it was supposed to be for, it was supposed to be the electric bicycle, I only just figured out what it was for. Instead of making a worse version of something we didn't want yet, he should have just gone straight for the electric car, people would have at least known how it was supposed to be used.
I can see why they thought it was a joke even back then. I could never buy one because I’d look to embarrassing, and I could never see someone with one in the street because I’d just laugh.
Nothing wrong with quirky or odd vehicles… as long as they’re not death traps. Which this 100% is! Unless you’re on the roads with nothing else but these, you’re a sitting duck 🦆
Today something like this could work. Ditch the pedals, proper motor and lithium ion batteries. Perfecf little city runabout. It was ahead of it's time and the tech was just not ready.
@@jailbird1133 it is the same size as a child on a bike. And they are zipping around here everywhere without issue. And with cars being increasingly banned from cities i am sure we will see things like these again.
It’s a shame, he was certainly a genius in the consumer electronics market. But after the success of the ZX home computers, his QL (Quantum Leap) business computer, supposedly his answer to the IBM PC, failed miserably. And then the C5 was regarded as a joke. Sad.
Tim of the Way Out West channel here on UA-cam already has. He's selling plans for a DIY tri-wheel elelectric cycle car kit that he has designed, developed and demonstrated on his channel.
Yeah there are definite similarities, specifically with the initial Segway marketing. Segways (to their credit?) at least found their niche and weren't an absolute failure.
Whatever happened to the founder of Segway? For some reason, I thought he may have passed away? Just don't recall hearing much about him after the roasting he got from the launch of his scooter.
He made one big mistake. The driver is lying back. It's the wrong position in every way. If you were over the pedals and it wasn't made of plastic, it could have been revolutionary :/
It didn't take "market research", or an automotive engineering degree for that matter, to recognize this obviously horribly designed vehicle would be a failure. Sitting on the steering mechanism is/was/forever will be, bad design. Yes, even on those silly lay down bicycles.
1984 - 30 year olds laughing at it from the drivers seat of an Escort XR3.
40 years later.
2024 - 70 year olds riding to Tesco Express on their mobility scooters.
Strange world.
That thing wouldn't even make a good mobility scooter, I doubt that anyone who needs a mobility scooter would be able to get out of that thing with out help.
@@t1m3f0xyou didn't get the point did you?
@@DBGE001 What point did you get from the original post?
Do you think that 70 year olds generally *want* to have to use a mobility scooter?
@@DBGE001tbf it was a shit point though.
70 year olds round here have classic 911s and integrales 👍
It seems to combine the worst drawbacks of a mobility scooter, a car and a motorcycle with none of the advantages of any of those things.
The performance and range of a mobility scooter, the seating position of sports car, and not even the cargo and passenger capacity of a motorcycle. You can't even wear a backpack while riding it.
@@TWX1138 Uncomfortable peddling and steering position.
He marketed it wrongly! If he sold it for seaside towns so people could go up and down the promenade then it would have been great. Imagine places like Brighton with C5s for hire. Everyone would be on them. They would also want one to get for their home, so they would be like those silly scooters we have today.
The global market in places like holiday resorts in the Med would have got him the sales needed and the capital to create a proper road going version.
I remember them being available for hire in Paignton in 1985, a hotel on the front. They were doing just that, going up and down the prom.
Rather like the seaside 'social cycles' two aside on a bench with a pedal each, four wheels and a linked handlebar.
I remember them also for hire on the Bournemouth promenade back in the 80's.
You hit the nail right on the head here!
I always liked the design. Sort of Star Wars meets Giugiaro.
I had a C5 when I was a kid. 16inch chopper tyre on the front, 2bmx tyres on the back, 3 really flimsy plastic uninspiring wheels...
A weak badly designed pressed steel spot welded frame...
2 lead acid 12v car batteries.....
Unless your sir Chris Hoy, peddling them was a massive chore. Good times
Si Cosis - Psychosis the pathological liar
Battery technology wasn't up to scratch at the time, the batteries were bulky, heavy and didn't store much electricity. So comparing them to modern electric scooters or even a segway doesn't take into account that a C5 had to be *constantly* recharged.
My neighbour has an early ebike that ran on acid battery. It worked because bicycles work.
You are right my one I put a cable reel holder on the back with an automatic unwinder. And spring retensioner to Wind it back again I had 1000 m of Flex, so I could go to the shop and back and it remained charging and plugged in at home. I couldn’t go further though or the plug would pull out from the house. I tried with longer cords but there was too much electrical loss once I got much above 1 km of length, also the spring on the rewinder was not strong enough, and the cable drum ended up, needing to be put on a trailer which then meant the vehicle would not pull it so easily
It should have been stopped in its tracks by firmly using every aspect of the law at the time to do so
@@julianshepherd2038for 5 miles then.
@@malcolmwhite6588 surely this suggests that you miscalculated the strength of spring required in the cable retensioner? This should have chosen to be sufficiently strong that, once out of charge, rewinding the cable would have pulled you and the C5 back home. And don't forget that since the Sinclair ZX80 was once advertised by Sinclar as being 'cabable of running a power station' that you could have replaced that cable drum on the trailer with a portable ZX80 controlled power station which would have given you near unlimited range. Maybe next time.
heh. I live in a US state where golf-carts, ATVs, and side-by-sides can be legally road-licensed once equipped with mirrors and turn signals. Even these larger platforms with their added capabilities for transporting cargo and passengers and with greater visibility, are still not popular on the road. Basically the only vehicle that sits in the market between two-wheeled e-bikes and small electric cars like the Chevrolet Bolt are a small handful of electric motorcycles, and even then they are not particularly popular.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for something to exist in this gap in the market, but it would have to be pretty extraordinary in order to do so. Just guessing, it would need to appeal as a sports car with the handling and performance to back it up.
This is the sort of vehicle needed in this modern age of city and town driving. Give it some lifted indicators and a modern batery.
Great video! I had no idea they had bigger Evs planned. Clive Sinclair was an underrated innovator. My first computer was a ZX81 and he helped me get started in tech and I’ll always be grateful to him. He made computers accessible to everyone and he tried to do the same with EVs. I think he’s a legend.
To be fair, this was way, way ahead of it's time and no-one was really ready for it back then. If someone came out with a similar vehicle today it would probably have much more success due to the improvements in battery technology, electronics and materials science since the 1980's.
The only vehicle I have ever seen which is similar are the recumbent bicycles and tricycles which are around the same size. I still wouldn't feel safe riding one of them though.
BS. The Segway came out 20 years after this and still didn't sell.
As cars will be banned more and more from cities these types of vehicles will gain popularity over time. The tech was just not ready in the 80s, now with a decent motor and a powerful battery the pedals can be ditched, storage can be added for some groceries and stuff.
Things like these will make a return for sure.
An electric bicycle is much more practical, as were the electric scooters
@@MirzaAhmed89BS? Do shut up! The Segway is in no way similar to a C5 or a recumbent bicycle/tricycle for that matter. At least use a cogent argument when trolling.🤣
"If someone came out with a similar vehicle today it would probably have much more success"
Actually I only just realized that this is just a worse version of the electric bicycle, so we already have what this was supposed to be.
I recall driving behind one just outside Mere, Wilts in the early 1980s. It appeared so dangerous owing to its low freeboard.
It was certainly ahead of its time. A vehicle that small can't safely share the road with conventionally sized vehicles but the overall concept has great potential for niche markets.
I did try one once - a hire one when on holiday. Weird but fascinating at the same time. Very comparable to a recumbent bicycle in terms of the low slung appearance and visibility on the busy roads, and woefully inadequate range and excess weight. Bringing it up to date with Lithium batteries would improve the last two points, but would it catch on in today's crowded EV market? Probably not to be honest - apart from the tourist thing mentioned several times already. As a daily commute - well you would get just as wet on a bicycle - so wear the right gear and it wouldn't be so bad. More luggage space would certainly help - that rear 'box' was tiny!!!
Someone somewhere is going to do a DIY 2020's version I'm sure - LED lighting / the aforementioned Lithium Battery etc.
Sir Clive Sinclair was certainly an early influence - I bought a ZX80 new , followed by a Spectrum! Learning computers in the 1980's was far more difficult than it is now!!!
Never owned a C5 ..but I did own a Bond Bug in glorious Orange ..until my Mum told me to return it ...good times..
BB’s are cool, that would be really interesting to convert to e-, surely someone’s done it already…
Nice to see your own work, especially shots of the chassis, included in the video.
Id love to be able to buy an updated version for say, 800 euros. They are very popular here in the Netherlands where people are far more accepting of weird vehicles and you wont get beaten up for driving one.
Ja een soort van Witkar. Of een Carver.
I guess they're popular partly because you don't have many hills! :-)
@@AlbertDongler Instead we have wind that makes an afternoon trip to the shops feel like climbing Alp d'Huez. No wonder the streamlined C5 was a hit here.
@@StartledPancake Ah! Good point!
Then you should look up the CityEl - it’s a 1 person tricycle with a closed cabin and a proper steering wheel. Developed in Denmark and launched in 1987, these days manufactured and sold in Germany. Probably what the Sinclair C5 should have been. There’s a an article of the CityEl on wikipedia.
Didn't it have a foldable plastic shovel to scrap the driver off the road?
Surprised no mention of Sinclair’s equally failed follow-up the Zike electric bike.
Wasn't it called a "dustbuster" at one time, the irony of it being built in an old vacuum cleaner factory....?
Old Hoover factory at Merthyr Tydfill iirc. it's still in use but only for warehousing and offices mainly now.
I vaguely recall that the early ones didn't have drain holes in the seat, and it would fill up with water if you left it out in the rain.
I saw the title and had no idea it would be THAT Sinclair. Wow! (US native by the way) This thing looks really cool. I would love to have one.
It's peculiar that although living in the UK, and being old enough to remember the launch, the only C5 I've ever seen in person was at Lane Motor Museum in Tennessee!
"Nobody wants to buy this thing I made without even asking anyone if they would buy it, so I'm going to sue a public safety organization."
a friend of mine has one of these things and is fixing it up with e-bike parts, hope I get to ride it when it’s done
Corbin Sparrow..."everything old is new again " .
I’m truly surprised that 17,000 were sold, I suspect to rental companies mostly as that’s where I had an hour (or it might have been half an hour, it was a very long time ago) on one along the seafront next to puckpool park along the coastal road to Seaview on the Isle of Wight.
Let’s just say it wasn’t comfortable nor easy to handle having the steering underneath you… I was surprised it got to market in the first place… 🏴
The one I rented had a mast with a red burgee on top to make it ‘visible’.
Yet today every kid wants an electric scooter so they can become an instant hazard to everyone else!
With modern batteries and motors... this thing would really go. It would allow power to upgrade the chassis and suspension too.
Ah... too much/too little too soon.
Thanks as always and regards.
Made massive massive news in UK upon lunch. Maybe it was the pre internet days. We had nothing else to discuss
I live in a place famous for its cycling infrastructure, and I'd love to get my hands on one of these with a modernised battery pack.
Anyone remember the subsequent Sinclair Zike folding electric bike, the very strange and impractical A bike and the iterations of battery driven rollers bolted to the back wheels of ordinary pushbikes - all rather sad products launched with insufficient budget?
The original tesla cybertruck
I might have been tempted to buy one of these, but back in the mid 1980s I was brassic lint. 🙁
I forgot about it having pedals, partly to get it moving and partly as a backup to the battery…
One of my regrets....My local Comets had 4 left to be sold by 5pm @ £25 each! That was the last day they were on sale and me with a spare £60 in my pocket, thought of getting 2, but didn't even buy 1 after 10 mins of using a few brain cells!
They were commanding around £2,500 10 years later!
I test drove one in a lunch hour. No suspension and a hard plastic seat made the ride horrible, but breathing in the leaders petrol fumes was worse, and wondering when I was going to get hit by a car.
My first thought when seeing it was "I like staying dry. And carrying things."
exactly, he didn't think it through.
Could we have one on the Dennis Dart please?
I wanted one of these.. but when I saw one in curry's I noted that the boot was a cardboard slot requiring a load of sliced bread to be loaded a few slices at a time..
That was not a boot. That was a carbohydrate fuel supply which would burn to run a small gas turbine hooked to a 50 W generator. That would keep the batteries charged. You obviously didn’t read the handbook Well Enough
The guy had the right idea fundamentally, it was just the execution that was wrong. Same with the Segway. The C5 and Segway are both just pre-cursors to e-bikes and e-scooters really.
My recollection was that he entered in a partnership with Hoover to manufacture them, and didn't buy the manufacturing facility.
They did, you're right. They used the motor off a hoover logic/electron automatic. Which were produced in the same factory
People don't like being so low to the ground - they feel vulnerable. Look how popular e-scooters have become.
Fantastic video as always and informative
Have to admire all the wild designs from the 70’s and 80’s. Maybe all those drugs did have an affect….
The fact that it rains so much in the UK probably contributed the open design.
I remember Sinclair being lauded in the UK at the time as a kind of Elon Musk character; intelligent, innovative and eccentric. We had a zx spectrum and I found the C5 fascinating though I was a bit too young for one.
It’d be nice to see a video on the early 80s PC wars between Atari, Sinclair and commodore. It was an odd time in tech when we all bought PCs for ‘education’ but mainly used them for gaming until the console market caught up. Some of us even learnt to code from it.
Except Sinclair was an actual engineer and scientist who actually invented all the things himself.
@@papalaz4444244 Totally agree.
I saw this in an episode of "Mysteries @ The Museum" by Don Wildman. These'd work very well in rural towns or out in the country.
Not anywhere with hills though.
@@herseem Yeah. They'd need modification.
I live in the country. That would get you run over, especially at night.
@@jailbird1133 No, it wouldn't - it would be busy charging it's batteries. That's deliberately as a safety feature of course.
All I hear in my head is
" EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE "
A modern , aerodynamic Dalek.
I saw these at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea on 13/3/2024, what a weird coincidence.
What a pleasant ride following a diesel or petrol car inhaling all them lovely fumes
If everyone drove the Sinclair, maybe. A 60s Mini Cooper can flatten you like a pancake.
I'm now surprised i haven't seen one of these featured on @agingwheels ' channel!
just remembered, Monty Mole had one :)
Hope you can do a video on the 757 and 767 Ruairidh!
The man with the FAECAL touch ..... ( ? ) ................. DAVE™🛑
My neighbour has an early ebike that ran on acid battery. It worked because bicycles work.
Maybe it was a neighbour that ran on acid which gave her a superhuman strength to pedal the bicycle!😂
It was answering a question no one asked.
Today's mobility scooters seem quite impressive and now a common sight as the population aged.
Yes, but that's a different market from the one he was aiming at, and today's mobility scooters are well-tuned for that market - easy to get into, upright seating, with raincovers available for most. And also, nearly all 4 wheels as too many people fell off 3-wheel ones. While driving a bus I witnessed someone on the ground unable to get up themselves as they'd gone down a sloped kerb in a 3-wheel mobility scooter at the wrong angle (They were being helped up at the time, otherwise I would have stopped).
problem is it really wasn't an improvement over a bicycle with pannier bags, and much more expensive.
It wasn’t the future then.
It’s not the future now.
Too bad the unsold ones were hoarded up to be resold later and not given away as mobility aids to amputees. Because it looks like the perfect conveyance for that.
It seems decades later Lotus embraced the idea of electric cars.
Sinclair C5 motors actually powered a few robots in the early series of Robot Wars.
It was then, and would be now completely inappropriate for using on UK roads, an e-bike makes much more sense for multiple reasons. It was and still is a novelty expensive toy, and as others have said much better suited to closed off semi pedestrianised areas.
made millions on computers to waste it all on a childrens go kart
Pitching it to go on main, 1980s roads doesnt seem like a smart move. Uni campuses, however, would make more sense. Large cycle routes maybe. Holiday parks too.
Some place where car use is heavily restricted or at a very low speed.
I do think he started too small, though. A larger two-seater would have made more sense
Happy St Patricks Day Sir. 🇮🇪☘️🥂
Perhaps you should wait until November 30th and wish him a Happy St. Andrew's Day.
they need to build a pulse jet powered one in 2024
I saw something recently either in an advert or youtube algo suggestion that as far as I could tell was basically a 2024 knock off the C5. Though oddly the C5 looks more futuristic than the thing I saw.
Are there not curbs (kerbs), steep hills, cobblestones, speed bumps (humps), road work, muddy unpaved roads, etc. in Britannia?
You missed out potholes, quite a big issue as well.
@@herseem Ha Ha Ha! Many thanks. I can’t believe I forgot such an obvious one.
It was very similar to the Ariel 3 in terms of the market's response- something that was technically innovative whilst not really understanding that people need to find change for themselves and to find it in something that's a development of things they already understand. The c5 was too "out there" and didn't fit in with the way people understood transport at the time. Contemporary electric bicycles and scooters look much more like "proper" bicycles and have been much more quickly accepted.
I do wonder how a C5 would perform with a modern battery and motor, both of which were very inefficient by modern standards.
A fine observation abiut the Ariel 3. You are entirely correct about the publics acceptance of such innovations.
Was the C5 genuinely "technically innovative", though? Arguably it was essentially a cross between a go-kart, a trike, a moped and, for its primary propulsion method, a milk-float. :-)
The drivers are all smiling!
They were getting paid to smile...
I'd love to have one💞😊🙂
Neat vehicle. But that blonde girl in the green jacket really had my attention. I miss '80's women'.
i would have paid good money to hear Jeremy Clarkson assessing the Sinclair C5.
Very clever idea. But just too low slung to be mixing it up with traffic. If it had been in the form of a scooter…
It would fit in very well on the Netherlands' high-quality bike lanes.
To an extent, Sinclair was a victim of his own hype - expectations were somehow fueled that he was going to produce an electric 'car', and when the C5 was actually announced it was a complete disappointment! Even now, its hard to see what actual use it would be to anyone - slow, no weather protection, tiny storag, presumably not allowed in cycle lanes or on cycleways, - no advantage over an electric pushbike, though those weren't available then.
There's no doubt that Sir Clive's products up to and including the the ZX Spectrum were perfect for the market. Unfortunately Sir Clive believed his own hype and never realised that building bare bones poor quality products only works while high quality products are expensive. As the price of chips fell he had no idea how to build quality products to take advantage of the fall in computer products. His head up his own arse carried onto the C5, how anyone could look at it and not think this is a fucking stupid product and instead carry on with it is be beyond belief.
At the time of the C5's launch....there was an Italian folding Bicycle with an Electric Motor...it was available in the UK.
similar price to the C5...I had one it could be stowed indoors and the Lead Acid Battery could be easily removed.
they sold out Quickly.
@@cerealtiller The C5 is the product of people who said, "how can we make a bicycle that is worse in every aspect."
@@axelBr1 A perfect summary of the C5 ,thank you .😁
Electric vehicles peaked with Milk floats and some Fork lifts.
The Sinclair C5 has the right idea but came out way too early. Had it come out nowadays with the rise of e-bikes and better battery technology, this thing could sell thousands of units per year if priced competitively.
A bit ahead of it's time this vehicle.
The Spectrum was a cheap piece of crap so this lived up to expectations brilliantly.
The biggest problem was, "what was it even supposed to be?", the only thing I can compare it to is a mobility scooter, but it's to badly designed anyone with mobility issues to use. I don't think my Grandpa would be able to get out of that thing by himself. So if it's not a mobility scooter, then what is it? It it was always going to fail, because no one knew what it was supposed to be. Wait I think I just realized what it was supposed to be for, it was supposed to be the electric bicycle, I only just figured out what it was for. Instead of making a worse version of something we didn't want yet, he should have just gone straight for the electric car, people would have at least known how it was supposed to be used.
I can see why they thought it was a joke even back then. I could never buy one because I’d look to embarrassing, and I could never see someone with one in the street because I’d just laugh.
The Segway before the Segway.
Nothing wrong with quirky or odd vehicles… as long as they’re not death traps. Which this 100% is! Unless you’re on the roads with nothing else but these, you’re a sitting duck 🦆
Allowed on the roads without plates back then but e-Scooters are banned today.
I think that’s because it has three wheels rather than two.
It was a mistake to make a vehicle that couldn't pass international safety standards (most notably, USA) and thus couldn't be sold in those markets.
Totally misunderstood. It was meant to be a last mile vehicle from the train or Metro station to home.
For that, we have Dutch cargo bikes, also known as Bakfietsen.
I wonder why he didn't go for a more conventional electric scooter.
Today something like this could work. Ditch the pedals, proper motor and lithium ion batteries.
Perfecf little city runabout.
It was ahead of it's time and the tech was just not ready.
It's too low. Makes it hard to be seen by cars. And it's open to the elements. There are much better designs out there, such as the Twike.
@@jailbird1133 it is the same size as a child on a bike. And they are zipping around here everywhere without issue. And with cars being increasingly banned from cities i am sure we will see things like these again.
It’s a shame, he was certainly a genius in the consumer electronics market. But after the success of the ZX home computers, his QL (Quantum Leap) business computer, supposedly his answer to the IBM PC, failed miserably. And then the C5 was regarded as a joke. Sad.
The real question is.....does it transform.lol🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Love the videos but please get a nicer mic, it’s like listening to a pirate radio broadcast
Senna drove one - briefly.
It can be reinvented for today’s age
why? there are already recumbent trycles e-bikes on the market
Tim of the Way Out West channel here on UA-cam already has. He's selling plans for a DIY tri-wheel elelectric cycle car kit that he has designed, developed and demonstrated on his channel.
talk about VINFAST and INEOS grenadier cars
£75 in my local Comet, by 1987.
It reminds me of the Segway - kind of makes sense but somehow also doesn’t
Yeah there are definite similarities, specifically with the initial Segway marketing. Segways (to their credit?) at least found their niche and weren't an absolute failure.
Whatever happened to the founder of Segway? For some reason, I thought he may have passed away? Just don't recall hearing much about him after the roasting he got from the launch of his scooter.
It’s no more unsafe than a Vespa scooter. Did Britain ban those?
He made one big mistake. The driver is lying back. It's the wrong position in every way. If you were over the pedals and it wasn't made of plastic, it could have been revolutionary :/
Envisaged market: teens. Product: Robin Reliant of electric wheelchairs. How could it have failed 😂
It didn't take "market research", or an automotive engineering degree for that matter, to recognize this obviously horribly designed vehicle would be a failure.
Sitting on the steering mechanism is/was/forever will be, bad design.
Yes, even on those silly lay down bicycles.