Lightyear, the solar electric vehicle startup, has announced that it is putting its plans to produce the Lightning 0 on hold. It will now shift its focus completely on bringing the much more affordable sub-$40,000 Lightyear 2 to market by 2025.
In late 2022, the company revealed that production of the Lightyear 0 had begun and that vehicles were being, and that it would ramp up over time. But now it is saying that a “strategic restructuring means suspension of production of Lightyear 0 model” and that it had “submitted the request to the court to open suspension of payment proceedings in relation to Atlas Technologies B.V., our operating company responsible for the production of Lightyear 0.
This sounds like Lightyear ran out of money to pay the company handles the production of its vehicles, which were being assembled by Valmet in Finland., Lex Hoefsloot, explained that “unfortunately we had to make this decision. The whole process of developing Lightyear 0 has provided our company many valuable learnings over the past years. We are now redirecting all our energy towards building Lightyear 2 in order to make it available to clients on schedule.
Lightyear doesn’t directly state that it is abandoning its first model with no future plans to make it, but the press release we got certainly makes it sound that it's dead. The Lightyear 0 is an expensive machine, with a starting price of €250,000 , but it’s also very technically capable, able to travel up to 625 kilometers WLTP with just a 60 kWh battery pack.
Its party trick was, of course, the huge solar array that covered most upward-facing parts of the body. It is able to add up to 70 km of free range every day in ideal conditions, while doing its part to keep the battery topped up even in less-than-ideal conditions.
Elon wasn't joking when he said ramping production is hard.
Focus… interesting choice of words.
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