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Transportation Power Sci-Fi

DeLorean Is Being Revived (Again), This Time As Electric Vehicle (bloomberg.com) 82

Posted by BeauHD from the Great-Scott! dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The newest entrant in the fight for EV market share is going back to the future with an all-electric DeLorean. The infamous gull-winged car is being resurrected in Texas by a group of executives who most recently spent time at China-backed EV startup Karma Automotive. They're working with Stephen Wynne, who acquired the DeLorean branding rights in the 1990s and supplies parts for the 6,000 or so remaining vehicles. [...] The new company is called DeLorean Motors Reimagined LLC and its chief executive officer is Joost de Vries, Texas business records and LinkedIn postings show. The firm will set up a headquarters and an engineering outfit in San Antonio, with potential to bring 450 jobs, the city's development arm said in a statement.

It's not the first time the idea of a DeLorean redux has surfaced -- web searches turn up stories every few years about how Wynne has tried to revive the brand or produce low-volume models -- but using an electric powertrain is a new twist on the idea. The original car gained notoriety in the early 1980s both for its quality problems and for the legal woes of its creator, the late John DeLorean, before the "Back to the Future" film franchise turned it into a pop-culture icon.
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DeLorean Is Being Revived (Again), This Time As Electric Vehicle More

DeLorean Is Being Revived (Again), This Time As Electric Vehicle

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  • Are you telling me that this sucker is NUCLEAR? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:06PM (#62270747) Journal
    No, no, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical, but I need 1.21 gigawatts of electricity for each trip to the office.
    • Um, yeah, because it's 2022 and the last time you went to the office was around two years ago, so you *will* have to put the car in 4xflux mode. Just make sure you buy a few extra flux capacitors in case one wears out in the short-term. Shouldn't be a problem once the coronavirus dies down, so you may want to buy your electricity in bulk right now for the next year or so [time.com].

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 )

      * jigawatts

      • 'giga' can be pronounced with a soft g [wikipedia.org] as in 'gigantic'.

        • curious.
          is the factory rebate under the back seat

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          'giga' can be pronounced with a soft g as in 'gigantic'.

          Sure, you can link to Wikipedia, who in turn reference the US Metric Association, but that hardly makes it authoritative. Other than this one pop culture instance in Back to the Future, does anyone use the soft-g? In particular, does anyone in the sci/tech field, who use SI prefixes as a matter of course, use the soft-g? (As opposed to the hoi polloi that don't know the difference between a WiFi router and a car radio.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      It's okay, comes with a Mr. Fusion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Honestly, The Delorean as an EV makes more sense than trying to revive the original crappy drivetrain and engine it had.

      Like everyone (out side of back to the future fans) knows the car was nothing special, and it's really only known for it's unpainted metal exterior and gull-wing doors, which, is the reason why it was used in BTTF. It looks like a "space ship" not a car.

      Hell, I'd even buy one if it was an EV at the right price. I think Tesla's are rather cool, but also I'm not the target market (I'd never

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Great Scott. This is heavy. So, finally it can time travel.

  • I want one with an lightning rod mod so I can chan (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:07PM (#62270749)

    I want one with an lightning rod mod so I can change for free in an storm

  • Accessory kits. (Score:3)

    by Kotukunui ( 410332 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:10PM (#62270761)
    If it isn't offered with an optional BttF accessory dress kit then they are admitting that nerd-core isn't their key market.

  • Did they retrieve the body dies that were sunk in the ocean many decades ago?

  • There's probably room for a low-end muscle car with gull wings. Gull wings are cool.

  • Hold up! (Score:2, Troll)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

    I like that it's electric but I'm very concerned about the funding. You see, things have changed since the 80s and I just don't think there are any companies out there to get this operation properly financed by trafficking uncut cocaine.

    • Yes but there'd be so much more space available in the cars to put the cocaine into. I'm sure Russ Hanneman has a pre-order in already. After all, it's got doors that open like this! NOT like this! Like this!
  • One of the biggest complaints about the original was that it was underpowered. Being electric might help unless they decide to build it on a golf cart platform.

    • Will it go 88mph

    • There is a show on British television, called: Vintage Voltage. In that show they take old cars and make it like new and usually with one or more custom battery packs for the commonly used Tesla engine.

      Guess what?

      They did have an original DeLorean in their shop. Engine was taken out, electrified, new interior, fixed up the outside as well and custom battery packs for (much) better weight distribution, of course.

      160 miles per charge, I believe, it could do. But it was mainly meant as a commute car for the ow

  • See here
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    for the documentary of the project.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      Yeah, but this time it's "being resurrected in Texas by a group of executives who most recently spent time at China-backed EV startup Karma Automotive." So, definitely newsworthy!

  • This solves one of the major problems with the Delorean. Namely, even when equipped with a mister fusion, you still must provide hydrocarbons to power the engine in order to get it up to 88 MPH. Now, that problem is no more! The whole thing can run off the electrical system. I'm sure the power train's needs are nowhere near 1.21 jigowatts, so there is probably no need to even add excess generating capacity.

  • Will it come with a compartment for stashing 55 pounds of cocaine?

    • You do know that cocaine is traded in kilos, don't you? That'd be just under 25kg, of cocaine just in case you have difficulty making yourself understood to the Colombians.

      • You do know that cocaine is traded in kilos, don't you? That'd be just under 25kg, of cocaine just in case you have difficulty making yourself understood to the Colombians.

        It was a joke about this:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        In October 1982, DeLorean was charged with cocaine trafficking after FBI informant James Hoffman solicited him as financier in a scheme to sell 55 lb (25 kg) of cocaine worth approximately $24 million.

  • I swear I've either read this before or someone has done this in their garage

  • Here come the EV grift companies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:41PM (#62270871)

    On the one hand the simplified powertrain of EVs means more companies can get into the car business (You don't need the miles deep supply chain to produce modern ICE engines) but the question I have for any startup like this is "Where are your batteries coming from"?

    If the answer is anything but "We're making them ourselves" or "we own a stake in a manufactuer" then you are a glorified kit-car manufacturer, just making pretty shells and leaning on the existing supply chain of parts to assemble everything else. Issue is every other EV company like this without those partnerships with battery makers or existing auto companies is competing for the same pool of batteries and parts. Is DeLorean going to design their own airbag systems? No, they're going to buy them.

    These companies are going to pop up everywhere soon and I expect 3/4 of them to collect some fat VC checks, produce a couple protoypes and quietly fold under.

    While Tesla kick started this EV boom everyone looks at the easy sales numbers they have and forget about all the issues they had (and still have) setting up an actual factory that procudes cars. The Model 3 is like 5 years old now and people are still seeing body panel fitmet issues to this day and they are just recently having to do a recall on practically their entire fleet.

    • I mean, sure. But they made an EV, out of a Delorian?!

    • Re:Here come the EV grift companies (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @06:19PM (#62271009) Journal
      You had me till the dig about recalls.

      An OTA to disable a software feature is not the same as fuel tanks leaking and causing explosions.

      The pedestrian warning issue is quite trivial, and rolling stop at stop signs is something every human driver does. Only NTHSA could not recall every damned human driver. When traffic fine cameras tried to fine people for rolling through stop signs, there was a hue and cry and the cities quickly rolled back. Fair is fair, let us install traffic fine cameras at all stop signs and fine human drivers too.

    • Where are your batteries coming from?

      I was thinking about this too- what if the makers of this Electric Delorian did two things:

      1) Get various electric car parts (including batteries) from Tesla.

      2) Got the stainless steel outer body from the same stock SpaceX uses.

      Two tie-ins to make a really cool retro vehicle with Tesla and SpaceX links, that they would seek branding permission to exploit... I think it would sell like hotcakes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      I don't see the market for "EV skins" as necessarily a bad thing. Why shouldn't people be able to get exactly the car they want, built on a (somewhat) standardized internal platform?

      That's pretty much how PCs are sold these days, and nobody considers e.g. Dell to be grift because it doesn't produce its own CPUs and hard drives.

    • Are you saying there's anything wrong with kit cars?

      I'm pretty sure DeLorean said a while ago that they are basically building electric versions of the old cars, using leftover parts, and they are not selling them as new models. They won't even be making multiple thousands of cars. Anyone interested in buying into a low-volume run probably knows what they are getting into.

      These companies are going to pop up everywhere soon and I expect 3/4 of them to collect some fat VC checks, produce a couple protoypes and quietly fold under.

      That's the retro market in a nutshell. However, DeLorean has already been around and servicing cars for decades using new-old-stock par

    • Keep in mind that Tesla got their start by taking a Lotus Elise [wikipedia.org] and turning it into an electric roadster. Don't get me wrong--they did a lot of R&D to get things working well. They didn't just throw in some batteries and an electric motor and say "Done." But they didn't start by designing their own cars and building their own batteries.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Most manufacturers rely on third parties for key components of the car. Bosch makes a variety of parts of ICE vehicles, including the ones that VW screwed with to cheat on emissions tests. One of the reasons why many Japanese manufacturers have been slow to adopt EV tech is because their suppliers are all heavily invested in hybrid drivetrains and are having trouble pivoting to a technology that makes most of their components superfluous.

      New car companies would be slightly mad to start making their own batt

    • DeLorean was never more than a glorified kit-car manufacturer, and what's worse, they were never a good one. They never had their own motor, and what's worse, the motor they wound up with was a total shitpile compared to the motor they designed with, so the performance of the car was garbage. The suspension is shit, the body design is shit, the stainless is just screwed onto the outside of the vehicle which means it's unnecessary shit that just makes the car heavier (and since it's fiberglass underneath, it

  • EV is old hat (Score:3)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:47PM (#62270897) Homepage Journal

    We've been able to buy production EVs for years. I feel like something as iconic as a DeLorean should reach for something more exotic. Spring wind-up clockwork, rubber band powered and of course the perennial favorite, fusion [imgur.com]. Really, anything that can make a stainless-steel gull-wing monstrosity stand out in the crowd of bizarre EVs. [tesla.com]

    • I think I'd want to go with the 1.21 GW theme. Since they didn't say gigawatt-hours, I guess we have the storage capacity - even for the total energy in a bolt of lightning which only lasts around 200 ms. Supplying 1.21 GW takes about 336 Wh per millisecond. The capacitors to do this even for 200 ms could fit in a typical frunk and be fully charged one time by a 75 KWh battery pack.

      So, we need to find some feature that could utilize 336 Wh in a millisecond and incorporate it. There's got to be something use

  • Google have one in one of their offices in Silicon Valley. You can book it as a meeting room. While it was an EV conversion I think the batteries had been taken out. Good for photo ops.
  • Always a good sign when dead brands are resurrected like a moldering corpse to give recognition to a questionable business idea. That ALWAYS works out.

  • Great Scott!

  • This would be a great company for Tesla to acquire. The Delorian would be a perfect car to build using the same techniques as the Cybertruck. Of course, Tesla is probably two or three years away from being ready to add something like that to their lineup. Maybe they'll buy them if they look promising in a year or two.

    • This would be a great company for Tesla to acquire.

      Right; nevermind why.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by schwit1 ( 797399 )

        Stainless steel, just like starship.

        • Or, closer to the point, cybertruck. I've been thinking for a while that the $25K variant ought to be stainless. Painting is one of their larger costs. If you go stainless steel and eliminate curves in the panels, I'd think it would cut a lot of manufacturing costs.
          • I'm not sure eliminating curves in the panels matters too much unless the panels themselves have a frame. The problem with stainless for panels is that it's soft and stretchy. Once it stretches, there's not much you can do but replace the panel (or panel section, if there's a frame). In theory, you could cut a bad section out, tig in a replacement, and buff the weld line out with a flap disc, but stainless that's thick enough to make this practical is going to be pretty heavy for car panels. Maybe if you la
            • A vandal with a key can cost you $7K in seconds on a Tesla paint job. That seems to be the biggest ticket item in most of the accident damage.

      • no one wants a cramped 1980s subcompact. 35 inches of headroom in Delorean vs. 40.3 in Tesla. Tall drivers in DeLorean had to recline seat to near lying-down levels. Front suspension was godawful and subject of a lot of complaints, buyers with money had it custom redone.

    • There is nothing to build. There is no way that body still can meet crash standards without making it unrecognizable. I think the play in the OP is to electrify the 6,000 unfinished bodies that can be registered as 80s cars.

      • They were already advertising factory EV converted DeLoreans literally years ago and statistically nobody took them up on it.

        So we already know this is a failing business plan

  • Then just do't touch that bare steel body!

  • Expedition Back to the Future had a good segment on the Delorean HQ while they were in search of a particular car used in the movie. Well worth watching.
  • With the old Intelivision and Colecovision brands. The Colecovision one burned out and never released a product. The Intelivision one actually did make it to market to some extent but it's less than perfect (I'm being very charitable here).

    In both cases these were off the shelf hardware with software to back it up, specifically games. There is no way in hell anything is going to come out of somebody resurrecting the DeLorean brand except a bunch of investors scammed.

    A lot of times the investor in q

    • Reusing the brand name of a defunct company to evoke nostalgia has been a thing for quite a while. Hell, your local Walmart is probably well stocked with Victrola record players (because if most people still driving around in gas-powered vehicles in 2022 wasn't enough to make you feel like we're living in some twisted steampunk-esq version of the future, there's also Walmart selling vinyl phonographs).

  • When it collapsed in 1982 DeLorean was not the first automotive startup to fail against The Big Three [wikipedia.org]. Tucker [wikipedia.org] had failed about 32 years earlier, around 1950. Circumstances were similar at both DeLorean and Tucker: Both were startup companies with innovative designs challenging the large manufactures and both collapsed as a result of unsuccessful lawsuits brought by the U.S. federal government. Both Tucker and DeLorean prevailed in court, but the legal fees, loss of reputation and diminished investor tr

  • This isn't the first time they've pitched this. I saw the same company in Texas that makes all the DeLorean parts show an electric model at a car show, I think it was NADA, many years ago. The engine compartment was packed full of batteries - they looked like lead-acid batteries, so perhaps it was more of a demo/concept car than a real product, but they were pitching for pre-orders. They wanted a lot for it - betting on the coolness of the concept (an electric "Back to the Future" car). It sure looked cool,

  • BTTF1 was all about trying to get the 1.21 GW necessary to go back to the future.

    BTTF2 was just fixing screwups they caused.

    BTTF3 was about trying to get back given there was no gasoline available at the time to power the engine. But given it had a fusion reactor, an EV would've been a perfect platform.

    Oh sure, more stuff blah blah blah happened in the movies, but that was unnecessary fluff when you wanted to see the time machine in action.

    Of course, gas would become somewhat available around the turn of th

  • DeLorian looked great, but absolutely SUX on the track.
    Hopefully, they get some ideas from Tesla or Rimac on how to make fast cars.

    • DeLorian looked great, but absolutely SUX on the track.

      What's the point of taking it to a track? It's a DeLorean, you want to cruise around town looking awesome.

  • According to E=(mv^2)/2, if you applied 1.21 GW to the engines of a 2-ton car (and nothing exploded) you'd go from zero to 11 km/s in one second.

  • When it's ready to fly. IF I can afford it and it seems like a reasonable purchase.

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