Lightyear halts production of high-end model to develop more affordable Lightyear 2
Dutch high-tech company Lightyear announced on Monday that it will stop production of the Lightyear 0 solar electric car.
The company has decided to redirect its attention to the development and release of the more affordable Lightyear 2 solar EV, set to release in 2025 with a price tag below €40,000.
Lightyear started production of its first vehicle, Lightyear 0, at Valmet Automotive’s facility in Finland in late 2022 and was assembling one vehicle per week, with plans to increase production in the future. However, due to a “strategic restructuring,” production of the Lightyear 0 will be halted, and it has filed a request with the court to begin suspension of payment proceedings for Atlas Technologies B.V, the company’s operating subsidiary responsible for producing the Lightyear 0.
CEO and Co-Founder Lex Hoefsloot: “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. Recently, we launched a waitlist for Lightyear 2 resulting in more than 40,000 subscriptions of individual customers and we already had approximately 20,000 pre-orders from fleet owners. We hope to conclude some key investments in the coming weeks in order to scale up to Lightyear 2, an affordable solar electric vehicle available for a wider audience.”
The €250,000 Lightyear 0 is powered by a 60 kWh battery pack and is able to travel up to 625 kilometers on one charge.
Blagojce Krivevski
