The young Dutch car company Lightyear is planning the production of its first car and has announced its strategy to scale up. Lightyear will outsource the production and focus on further developing technologies. Lightyear plans to produce an exclusive range of 946 vehicles in 2021, and will also introduce a cheaper model.
By scaling up its core technology, Lightyear expects to be ready to start production of more than 100,000 cars per year around 2023. The expected sales price could then be about € 50,000 for these future models. “We are convinced that this is the way to accelerate our development, make our intended impact and assume our responsibility: clean mobility for everyone, everywhere”, says Lex Hoefsloot, CEO of Lightyear
This year, Lightyear will focus on developing its technologies that will make the Lightyear One an ultra-efficient solar car. The company says this focus is needed to ensure that these technologies are properly developed and ready to be applied to Lightyear One’s first moving series.
“Such a leap in efficiency is only possible by going back to a blank sheet of paper and working on our core technologies. We are developing a revolutionary product and aim to validate our concept by 2020. By then our core technologies will have been developed and integrated into a new prototype of Lightyear One, which we want to present as a ‘demonstrator’ of our innovation”, says Arjo van der Ham, CTO of Lightyear
Lightyear is currently in the middle of a new round of investments to prepare for exclusive series production. The technology platform and exclusive series will then serve as a basis to facilitate the investment needed for the upscaling in 2023.
