DeLorean returns with 300-mile Taycan rival for 2024 | Hacker News Reader

DeLorean returns with 300-mile Taycan rival for 2024

autocar.co.uk

63 pointsrmason65 comments

The design feels like a massive lost opportunity. There's a lot of legacy to pay homage to, but if you showed me the images with the logos removed, I couldn't even remotely guess what company came up with it. If anything, it looks like a fancy version of Polestar [0], never in a million years would I connect this to DeLorean.

[0] https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/official-polestar-...

I’d say they not only missed opportunity but somehow also the overall ongoing trend of going back to the orthogonal aesthetics, which were precisely what defined the original DeLorean so distinctively. I mean just look at the Tesla Pickup or Hyuandai Ioniq 5! The smooth curves ain’t that sexy anymore. IMHO they’d literally would be way better off if they kept the original design as reasonably possible.

The original was junk. It only has cachet because of the association with the movie. Maybe the idea was nice, but the execution on the original was wanting.

right, but the reason it was in the movie in the first place is because the car looked neat (and John DeLorean was also uh on trial for drug charges[0])

if Bob Zemeckis scrolled by this car writing the screenplay it would probably still call for a refrigerator

[0] https://www.narfa.com/how-the-delorean-became-the-iconic-bac...

Mechanically, it was junk. Aesthetically it was amazing. It was eye catching even before the movie.

So a company who's only operational history is repairing and rebuilding ICE DeLoreans from old stock parts now wants us to believe they're capable of building a modern EV? I'd put good money on this one being yet more EV vaporware that will never actually see a production model roll of the line.

>“The car is being built in Italy – we’ve outsourced that – and we have some partners on the UK on the powertrain side.”

They’re using existing platforms from other companies and customizing them.

Similar to how the original Tesla Roadster was based in the Lotus Elise, they took the basic design and modified it to be an EV keeping as many parts as possible to simplify the design and safety process.

It’s easier to modify an existing design than to start from scratch and you get to outsource much of the process.

Note that this is not true in Tesla's case. Elon and team thought it would be easier to modify an existing design, but have since admitted that it was a mistake to do so.

Eh, that's still their estimation of how things would have went if they made different choices. They had the experience of building a car from the ground up after building a car from an existing base. Who knows how it would have gone had they tried to build their first car from nothing.

Would also note that EVs are massively easier to build than ICE vehicles.

Then why are so many legacy ICE manufacturers struggling so badly with manufacturing and production at scale?

Because scaling any car manufacturing business is hard and developing an EV is still a hell of a lot harder than releasing the next model of whatever ICE car you've been iterating on for a century.

> why are so many legacy ICE manufacturers struggling so badly with manufacturing and production at scale?

Because it’s still hard. Just not permanent incumbency hard like it was for IC engines.

We will probably see EVs continue to see successful new entrants with a diverse set of players pushing down prices and increasing the number of options for consumers while keeping any single manufacturer from achieving dominance.

VW isn't struggling, it is the biggest EV manufacturer in Europe.

But still not easy. Look at the dicey early examples of any Tesla for example..

> CEO Joost de Vries, previously a high-ranking official at Tesla and Karma [...] has taken the helm from Brit Stephen Wynne, who had run DeLorean as an aftermarket support service since 1995, when he acquired the brand rights following the high-profile demise of the original company.

...to me that sounds like de Vries has taken over the company just so he can use the name, so what the previous owner did with it is not relevant. As to when something will actually roll off the line, that remains to be seen. Personally, I think they should have resurrected the original DeLorean (or something more closely resembling it) as an electric car, rather than this pretty interchangeable sportscar design...

I wonder as global battery availability becomes more commodotized, if this brings down the level of development needed for EV autos. There might be an explosion of boutique fashion autos built. It's sort of happening already, except that right now, many don't quite make it to even low rate production.

What’s the point in a Delorean without the Delorean design language.

I would love an identical looking but updated DeLorean…

A local guy has a DeLorian and folks in town LOVE seeing that car around town. Young, old, everyone.

I saw one just the other day, in the small, rural Scottish town I live in - pretty sure the first I've ever seen in the UK!

I had my young son with me, and I was gesticulating excitedly... then I remembered he hasn't even heard of the film :)

Weird. I thought there were a fair number of rural Scottish towns in the UK

I read a while ago that they had the rights and could potentially get a limited reproduction permit for the old model. I was really hoping they'd make it the same as the iconic one but with electric. This design is good though. Nice to see cool style come back to cars somewhat with the likes of this and Tesla, as opposed to the soulless blobs of 1990 onwards.

This disappointing car seems like it is just waiting for hollywood to ruin another childhood franchise.

No Flux Capacitor, no nostalgia at all other then them limiting the production run to 88... This has nothing in common with a Delorean

Modern Hollywood takes a generic script and slaps a popular IP on it.... This is a taking a generic car and doing the same thing

Modern Hollywood should do a biopic about the original car executive of that name and call it "Back To The Future: You Da Man, Delorean!" and then tie it into the Star Wars universe with him as a bounty hunter of Empire drug enforcement agents so that they can plaster Taco Bell drink cups with it. Ya, that's the ticket!

Taco Bell: The only restaurant that survived the franchise wars.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read that Robert Zemeckis owns the rights to the Back To The Future ip and has to personally evaluate any new proposed media, and he has refused to allow any remakes.

No flux capacitor no buy.

Yeah, but there’s 55 pounds of cocaine in the trunk.

FCs are aftermarket.

I am less demanding, No MrFusion no buy.

What a missed opportunity on the styling. Very little resemblance to the original and just plain boring and ugly.

I like the car on its own, but I personally think its a joke to call it a delorean and make only passing references to the design of the original.

It looks like someone just up the resolution on a Jag or something.

The wheels are a weak ref, and the nose isnt even in the same species.

I think it looks pretty good, but a bit away from the spirit of the original (which is more squarish). The CyberTruck gets closer to that sharp edges delorean look than this one.

But, overrall looks good. It has some elements from the C4 Corvette in the front end.

These are the doors of a billionaire

Tres commas

Nice car. The door is a bit small in my opinion. It looks ( with the doors closed) like the unhappy child of Porsche ( the back) and Tesla ( the front).

The doors are huge!!

That's what i was trying to say :)

How is this a Tycan rival when it won't be road legal until a later point at which this whole company may be bankrupt again? Did they already run performance tests on track or are these just predictions?

If you send me one, I could have it road-legal in my US state easily enough.

Using "repair" plates doesn't count.

At least they didn't call it a Tesla killer.

I am more an more convinced that the modern world cannot create interesting art in the post modern age in pop culture. Mere rehash existing properties with no respect to the original.

Nostalgia is played out.

Feels like DeLorean has been "returning" for at least a decade now...

Looks like a Tesla with a couple delorean features thrown in. I hope this company fails

IONIQ 5 has more of the original DeLorean vibe than this.

Whatever. They're going to make 88 of them (hah hah). This isn't a Taycan rival, it's a novelty project.

> "Initially, de Vries explained, the car will be sold in a limited run of 88 – referencing the speed needed to time-travel in the 1985 sci-fi film Back To The Future, in which the DMC famously starred.

Each will serve as an avatar for an associated NFT, meaning they won’t be road-registered and suitable only for track use."

Why?!

NFT shouldn’t have anything to do with roadworthiness, it’s just an early production run for collectors that doesn’t go through the various hoops to get rated for public roads and perhaps breaks some rules in order to be more fun on tracks. NFT is just a gimmick on top of a limited edition they can charge extra for and use to test things for the real run.

> suitable only for track use

Ah, so NFT means Not For Transportation here, then.

What purpose does the NFT serve when there is a physical object to back it?

NFT to represent ownership or something like that, since they aren't road legal they probably won't have titles. As for actual purpose, it is of course marketing.

Side note: it looks like they tried to sell a DeLorean DMC-12 via NFT last year, but didn't actually sell it.

This is a brand licensing company, not a car production company, thus the vagueness of what the vehicles actually are.

https://brandsuntapped.com/licensing-haus-maria-alcaide-on-c...

Well, you see, the physical object can be funged, while the NFT cannot!

So after it disappears into the 1950s in two streaks of flames you can claim you still own it of course..

The ability for the manufacturer to get a cut from resales.

And whatever they bundle to force the above.

I could sell the car without ever caring about the "associated NFT".

What if the NFT gave you access to buy the next car, or some other perk with real value?

To get attention and maybe they can actually get enough investment based on attention to actually go into production.

It gets dumb people with lots of expendable money excited

€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€

Yes, but then they follow up with:

> "The rest of the production run, while still low-volume, will be built and marketed more conventionally and so will go through the necessary homologation processes for legal use on the road."

Why can't the fancy, expensive, showoff NFT cars go through the same process?

Seems like a lot of early builds go through recalls (e.g. Lucid’s new Airs have been recalled a couple of times already). If collectors are willing to spend big bucks and buy cars that don’t come with road-worthiness and legal compliance, why not take their money?

This comment is the only time I have EVER said, "yeah, I guess an NFT makes sense"

> Each will serve as an avatar for an associated NFT, meaning they won’t be road-registered and suitable only for track use. The rest of the production run, while still low-volume, will be built and marketed more conventionally and so will go through the necessary homologation processes for legal use on the road.

LOL. John DeLorean would have approved of the grift.

Sorry but it looks boringly generic, straight off the wind tunnel supercar, also-ran snooze-a-thon assembly line.

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