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Comment by 3ple_alpha | Hacker News Reader

Execution could have been a bit better but ultimately it's really hard to make electric vehicles with 1980s battery technology. Just about the only successful EV of the era was the golf cart and that's very niche.

Electric moped was right idea but some 30 years ahead of its time.

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There was one much more successful EV, although it too was niche: The UK had "perhaps 40,000 milk floats" in the 1970s and 1980s before supermarkets took over as primary milk distributors. ( https://zavanak.com/transport-topics/british-electric-cv-his... )

When I was a kid in Edinburgh no milk was delivered by ICE vehicle. It was either electric or horse. Also Sean Connery's first job..

> Just about the only successful EV of the era was the golf cart and that's very niche.

Electric milk floats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float) were common even in the 1960s, and, I think, decades earlier.

Electric forklifts have been common since a long time, too. Not having an exhaust is a big advantage when operating one indoors.

(Both also fairly nice, but milk floats where used on public roads and fork lifts require much more power than golf carts)

Probably also the wrong country. I can imagine something like C5 taking off in the SF Bay Area. In the UK, you have something like 160 rainy days a year. People bike over there, but this somehow feels worse.

The Sinclair C5 battery charger and battery was ahead of its time. I remember my Dad (who was something of a lead acid battery nerd) being very excited about it.

The battery in the C5 was designed to be run to 0% charge which would kill most lead acid batteries in no time, but if I remember rightly the charger would recover them by putting quite high voltages across them to de-sulphate them. Or something like that (not a lead acid battery nerd :-).

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