Editing Sinclair C5 (section)

===Early development: the C1===
It was not until late 1979 that Sinclair returned to electric vehicle development. Around Christmas that year, he approached Tony Wood Rogers, an ex-Radionics employee, to carry out consultancy work on "a preliminary investigation into a personal electric vehicle".<ref name="Dale152" /> The brief was to assess the options for producing a one-person vehicle which would be a replacement for a moped and would have a maximum speed of {{convert|30|mph}}. Although Wood Rogers was initially reluctant, he was intrigued by the idea of an electric vehicle and agreed to help Sinclair.<ref name="Burton100">{{cite book|title=A History of Electric Cars|last=Burton|first=Nigel|publisher=Crowood|year=2013|page=100|isbn=978-1-84797-571-3}}</ref> The vehicle was dubbed the C1 (the C standing for Clive). He built a number of prototypes to demonstrate various design principles and clarify the final specifications.<ref name="Dale152">Dale, p. 152</ref>

A specification of the C1 emerged by the end of the year. It would address short-distance transportation needs, with a minimum range of {{convert|30|miles}} on a fully charged battery. This reflected official figures showing that the average daily car journey was only {{convert|13|mi}}, while the average [[moped]] or pedal cycle journey was just {{convert|6|mi}}. The users were envisaged as being housewives, urban commuters, and young people, who might otherwise use cycles or mopeds to travel. The electric vehicle would be safer, more weather-proof, and would offer space to carry items. It would be easy to drive and park and for the driver to enter or exit, and it would require minimum maintenance. The vehicle would be engineered for simplicity using [[Injection moulding|injection-moulded]] plastic components and a polypropylene body. It would also be much cheaper than a car, costing £500 ({{Inflation|UK|500|1985|fmt=eq|cursign=£|r=-2}}) at the most.<ref name="Dale152-3">Dale, p. 152–3</ref>

One area of development that Sinclair purposely avoided was battery technology. Electric vehicles powered by lead–acid batteries had once actually outnumbered internal combustion engine vehicles; in 1912 nearly 34,000 electric cars were registered in the U.S.<ref>{{cite book|title=Advanced Components for Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Workshop Proceedings|publisher=DIANE Publishing|year=1995|page=26|isbn=978-0-7881-1621-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M-WSfM38jccC&q=1912+34000+electric+vehicle&pg=PA26}}</ref> However, the efficiency of internal combustion engines greatly improved while battery technology advanced much more slowly, leading to petrol and diesel-driven vehicles dominating the market.<ref name="AK184">Adamson & Kennedy, p. 184</ref> By 1978, out of 17.6 million registered vehicles on Britain's roads, only 45,000 were electric vehicles in day-to-day use and of those, 90% were [[milkfloat]]s.<ref name="Burton101">Burton, p. 101</ref> Sinclair chose to rely on existing lead–acid battery technology, avoiding the great expense of developing a more efficient type. His rationale was that if the electric vehicle market took off, battery manufacturers would step up to develop better batteries.<ref name="Dale154">Dale, p. 154</ref> Wood Rogers recalls:

{{blockquote|We were stuck with the standard technology of the time. A car battery was out of the question because it couldn't stand constant charge/discharge cycles, a [[traction battery]], similar to the kind used in milk floats, could be recharged from flat and a semi-traction battery, often used by caravanners, offered a good compromise. Sadly, though, we had very little freedom of choice.<ref name="Burton101" />}}

The development programme moved to the [[University of Exeter]] in 1982, where the C1 chassis was fitted with fibreglass shells and tested in a wind tunnel. It was recognised at an early stage that the vehicle would have to be aerodynamic; although it was only ever intended to be small and relatively slow, reducing wind resistance was seen as essential for the vehicle's efficiency.<ref name="Dale154" /> By March 1982, the basic design of the C1 had been established.<ref name="Marks1989" /> Sinclair then turned to an established motor design company, Ogle Design of [[Letchworth]], to provide professional styling assistance and production engineering. However, Ogle's approach was not to Sinclair's liking; they tackled the project as one of car design and focused more (and expensively) on the aerodynamics rather than the cycle technology around which the C1 was based. The weight of the vehicle increased to over {{convert|150|kg}}, far more than Sinclair's desired specification. By March 1983, Sinclair and Wood Rogers had decided to stop the C1 programme.<ref name="Dale155">Dale, p. 155</ref> Wood Rogers comments that Ogle were convinced that the C1 would be a flop, telling Sinclair that it would not be fast enough, that its drivers would get wet when it rained and that the battery was not good enough.<ref name="Burton101" />

To meet the steadily escalating development costs of the vehicle, Sinclair decided to raise capital by selling some of his own shares in Sinclair Research to fund a separate company that would focus on electric vehicles. A £12 million deal was reached in March 1983, of which £8.3 million was used to fund the establishment of the new [[Sinclair Vehicles]] company.<ref>Adamson & Kennedy, p. 187</ref> Sinclair recruited Barrie Wills, a veteran former employee of the [[DeLorean Motor Company]], to lead Sinclair Vehicles as its managing director. Although Wills initially expressed scepticism about the viability of an electric vehicle – his twenty-five years in the motor industry had convinced him that an electric car was never going to happen – Sinclair managed to convince him that the project would work.<ref name="Dale155"/> In 1984, Sinclair Vehicles' new head office was established in [[Coventry]] in the [[West Midlands (region)|West Midlands]], an area with a long-established link with the motor industry.<ref name="Dale160">Dale, p. 160</ref>

The project's prospects were boosted by changes in the British government's approach to electric vehicles. In March 1980, it had abolished [[Vehicle Excise Duty]] for electric vehicles and by the start of 1983, the [[Department for Transport|Department of Transport]] was working on legislation that would introduce a new category of vehicle – the "electrically assisted pedal cycle". This had a number of significant advantages from Sinclair's point of view. Such a vehicle would be exempt from insurance and vehicle tax, and the user would not need a driving licence or a helmet, all of which were required for mopeds.<ref name="Dale155"/> The legislation, which was passed in August 1983,<ref name="Marks1989">{{cite journal | title=The Sinclair C5 – An Investigation into its Development, Launch, and Subsequent Failure | journal=European Journal of Marketing | last=Marks | first=Andrew P. | year=1989 | volume=23 | issue=1 | pages=61–71 | doi=10.1108/eum0000000000542}}</ref> was prompted by a lobbying campaign by manufacturers such as [[Raleigh Bicycle Company|Raleigh]] who wanted to sell electric bicycles.<ref name="Times-7-Jan-2005" />

Sinclair realised that his electric vehicle design could easily be adapted to meet the new legislation. As the "electrically assisted pedal cycle" category was so new, there were no existing vehicles on the market that would meet the standards prescribed by the new legislation. However, it imposed a number of restrictions that limited the performance of any vehicle that would qualify under the new standards. The maximum legal speed of the vehicle would be limited to only {{convert|15|mph}}; it could not weigh any more than {{convert|60|kg}}, including the battery; and its motor could not be rated at any more than 250 watts.<ref name="Dale156">Dale, p. 156</ref>

Despite these limitations, the vehicle was seen as only the first step in a series of increasingly ambitious electrical cars. Sinclair intended it to prove the viability of electric personal transport; the hope was that, just as Sinclair had found with home computers like the hugely successful [[ZX81]] and [[ZX Spectrum]], an affordable electric vehicle could unleash pent-up demand for a market that did not previously exist.<ref name="Dale156" /> However, Sinclair performed no [[market research]] to ascertain whether there was actually a market for his electric vehicle; as the director of the Primary Contact advertising agency commented in January 1985, the project continued all the way to the prototype stage "purely on the convictions of Sir Clive".<ref name="Marks1989" />