Whither Clive?

This is a somewhat roundabout story, but bear with us. Lotus, that outstanding manufacturer of winning race cars as well as the Lotus Elite and Elan, has been in serious financial difficulties lately. These troubles have been magnified by the death of Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, and by the DeLorean affair. The only reason that DeLorean enters into the picture is that Lotus had agreed to use the DeLorean plant for the development and manufacture of some very sophisticated lightweight cars.

The latest reports we get indicate that things are improving rapidly. First, Lotus has entered into a cooperative sports car project using engine and drivetrain components from Toyota. This sparked some spirited negotiations on the part of David Wickins of British Car Auctions to take over Lotus before it fell to the control of (horrors!) a Japanese firm. The Lotus board accepted Wickin’s offer.

However, some weeks later Toyota made an offer to buy 2.9 million shares of Lotus stock (16% of the total) for £1.16 million. This offer was accepted at the Lotus stockholders meeting. So where does Sir Clive Sinclair enter in?

Sir Clive, that electronics wizard who invented the “black watch,” cheap scientific calculator, ZX80 (and its derivatives), and flat screen TV, had a new invention on the drawing boards—an electric car (shades of Tom Swift).

So he took a small dollop of his vast wealth (£9 million) and formed a new company called the Sinclair Vehicle Project and bought the DeLorean plant in Ireland. Why? Because Lotus had already modified it to build sophisticated lightweight vehicles.

Sinclair has stated his theory that, if you can’t lighten the batteries (apparently you can’t), you should 1) make the batteries fit the vehicle and/or 2) make the vehicle more efficient. His method for doing the latter is to use a chip (he calls it a “chopper”) to chop the vehicle power demand on the battery into time slices of milli- or nanoseconds. In other words, deliver one millisecond of power then rest for two. Apparently this extends the discharge time enormously. Also, with the chip, the system can be programmed for various types and weights of vehicles.

Sounds good to us. Now when do we get one for evaluation?