Sinclair C5

The Sinclair C5 is a small one-person battery electric vehicle, technically an "electrically assisted pedal cycle". (Although widely described as an "electric car", Sinclair characterised it as a "vehicle, not a car".) It was the culmination of Sir Clive Sinclair's long-running interest in electric vehicles. Sinclair had become one of the UK's best-known millionaires and earned a knighthood on the back of the highly successful Sinclair Research range of home computers in the early 1980s. He now hoped to repeat his success in the electric vehicle market, which he saw as ripe for a new approach. The C5 emerged from an earlier project to produce a Renault Twizy-style electric car called the C1. After a change in the law prompted by lobbying from bicycle manufacturers, Sinclair developed the C5 as an electrically powered tricycle with a polypropylene body and a chassis designed by Lotus Cars. It was intended to be the first in a series of increasingly ambitious electric vehicles, but in the event the planned development of the followup C10 and C15 electric cars never got further than the drawing board.