Together in electric dreams

The Sinclair C5 was set to revolutionise the urban landscape and provide emission-free, personal transport. On its 30th anniversary, we take a ride in Sir Clive Sinclair’s first electric vehicle

We live in a technology-packed world, where all manner of information is available at the click of a mouse, by a swipe of a smartphone, or by all-encompassing connectivity. Electric vehicles are starting to make small in‑roads and seem a logical step for the digital world we live in today. But imagine how illogical and futuristic they seemed 30 years ago. Last month, the Sinclair C5 celebrated its 30th birthday. Launched to great fanfare on 10 January 1985 at a high-profile glitzy event at London’s Alexandra Palace, the C5 was a three-wheeled electric vehicle aimed at revolutionising city centre transport.

20-mile range
Technically an electrically-powered tricycle, the Sinclair C5 was the brainchild of technology entrepreneur and inventor Clive Sinclair. More widely known for his early 1980s computer systems, Sinclair saw the C5 as an alternative and inexpensive form of transport for drivers who regularly travelled alone, either in their cars, on their bicycles or by bus. The launch price was £399 plus £29 delivery – at the time, the cheapest 998cc Austin Mini City E was £3,298. The C5 was mail order only, arriving in a cardboard box, and it was claimed that the C5 could be driven for five miles on one penny’s worth of electricity or 1,000 miles for the contemporary price of a gallon of fuel. Range on a single charge was said to be 20 miles. Appearing the same as a regular car battery, the C5’s battery was a ‘deep discharge’ unit, meaning it could be recharged hundreds of times with no noticeable loss of performance. It could be charged to full capacity from flat in eight hours.

While dabbling in electric vehicles since the early 1970s, Sinclair’s development of C5 didn’t commence properly until 1979. With regulations introduced in 1983 to enable an electric vehicle with a top speed of 15mph close to Sinclair’s already progressed specifications to be marketed and sold, the development process was stepped up. Sinclair himself raised £12 million to fund escalating costs, and in May 1983, Sinclair Vehicles Ltd was formed with Lotus Cars contracted to push the C5 through the final few hurdles. Hoover in Merthyr Tydfil was contracted to manufacture the C5 with Italian company Polymotor supplying the electric motors. It’s an urban myth that C5s are powered by washing machine motors, although Hoover engineers were trained to service the C5.

Futuristic yet retro
The C5 stands 2’ 7” high and in 2015 looks both futuristic yet fantastically retro at the same time. There’s no question as to which decade it hails from, thanks to its streamlined white injection-moulded polypropylene body and Tron-like wheel covers, grey and yellow graphics and faired-in, single headlamp. The biggest concern is that there is no roof, a ‘weather cheater’ poncho being available as an extra-cost option. But, it was practical to a point, having a 28-litre flip-out luggage ‘boot’ on the back of the driver’s seat. Contemporary accessories included a second battery, side screens for better bad weather protection, a reflector mounted on tall poles for better third party vision – the ‘High-Vis Mast’, a booster cushion for smaller drivers, wing mirrors, a turning indicator kit, C5-branded mudflaps and ‘designer-style’ clothing and tonneau cover.

Terrifying yet fun
Driving a C5 today must be as terrifying as it was fun back in 1985. Clamber aboard and make yourself comfortable in the thinly‑padded seat and you immediately feel exposed. After inserting the ignition key into the master security switch and turning on the power, it takes a while to get acclimatised to the under-seat handlebar position. Driving the first few metres in the C5 takes patience and a good deal of dexterity to avoid steering the opposite way to which you want to go. The left-hand handlebar-mounted starter/’accelerator’ button has to be gently modulated too – press it too hard and the C5 shoots off a little unsteadily. Power goes to the left-hand rear wheel only, and to slow down, just release the handlebar button or use the bike-like brake levers to come to a complete stop via the rear drum and front caliper brakes.

Get these processes right, however, and the C5 is fun to tootle along in. And tootle is all you’ll ever do with a 15mph top speed. Also, don’t get any grand ideas about shooting up hills. Many owners reported unit burn-outs as the 12v DC, 250W-rated permanent magnet motor struggled to cope with any gradient. Pedal assistance was often required. Motor load and battery condition are shown by two LED ‘graph’ displays situated under the aerodynamic, wind tunnel-tested front cowling.

But, even in the residential streets we tested the car in, you never feel completely safe. With little or no crash protection, the C5 feels tiny even among small car-sized traffic. Drivers would also find themselves at the same level of most vehicles’ exhaust fumes or bonnets. Don’t let the Sinclair publicity video of 1985 fool you – it’s not all smiles, ponchos and wind-in-the-hair motoring. More often than not, in a typical UK climate, ‘driving’ the C5 would be a cold and draughty experience. And this was just one reason why it failed. That and the dwarfed feeling drivers would experience if an HGV sidled up alongside them...

Sales disaster
Of course, one of the joys of the C5 was that it could be piloted with no driving licence and anyone could drive one as long as they were fourteen.
But sadly not many people did. Claims of production numbers vary wildly, with between 9,000-17,000 made according to ‘official’ figures. Sinclair the company had forecast annual sales of around 100,000 units. Wildly optimistic or a foolhardy belief in the product? Who knows. Although the C5 was a monumental sales disaster, it is now an icon of the 1980s, maybe because of its commercial disaster. C5 production stopped on 13 August 1985 just seven months after it was paraded to the world. Incidentally, Sir Clive Sinclair claimed that the diminutive C5 was the best‑selling electric car in the UK until the Nissan Leaf overtook it with sales of 20,000 units in 2011.

By the early 1990s Sinclair Vehicles claimed it would have a range of ‘fast, quiet and astonishingly economical’ family transport on the roads of Britain, but sadly the reality was somewhat different to the company’s vision of transport utopia.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, and while the C5 wasn’t the ‘new power in personal transport’ and ‘the world’s first practical personal transport powered by electricity’ Sinclair claimed it would become, the streamlined and odd‑looking EV did publicly display the idea of alternative‑fuelled transport and electric vehicles. And whether that be good or bad, thanks to the C5’s commercial failure, that’s unlikely to be forgotten.

Thanks to car and C5 enthusiast Alex Goodwill for allowing us to drive his Sinclair C5

Further information
c5owners.com
www.c5alive.co.uk

1985 Sinclair C5

ENGINE: 250W continuous rating motor, 4,100 rpm maximum speed
CO2: 0g/km
WEIGHT: 30kg
MAXIMUM SPEED: 15mph
RANGE: 20 miles
PRICE (1985): £399 + £29 delivery