DeLorean Returns With An Electric Car

The DeLorean Company is betting that the car of the future, their DMC-12, is electric. To fans of the Back To The Future movie franchise, it isn't all that shocking.

The DeLorean Motor Co. of Humble, TX, which still exists but in a diminished boutique form has announced a new version -- a DeLorean powered entirely by electricity. So much for the space reserved for the Flux Capacitor.

"The car of the future has really become the car of the future," said James Espey, a Vice President at DeLorean. According to Espey, the company has retrofitted one car with an electric motor. If all goes well, he said, the company would start selling built-to-order electric DeLoreans around 2013. The sticker price (if a custom-built car can have a sticker): about $90,000.

The original DeLorean, with its brushed stainless-steel body and gull-wing doors, still looks futuristic to those who are fond of it, and Espey said it has turned out to be a good base on which to build an electric vehicle. The aluminum engine in the rear is replaced with an electric motor, batteries fill the front, and the car balances well.

Espey said he expects the final car will have the equivalent of 260 hp, be able to hit 125 mph, and have a range of at least seventy miles on a single charge.

The batteries will be made by a California company called Flux Power, furthering the verisimilitude with the films.

The DeLorean was famous well before Michael J. Fox, as Marty McFly, drove it at 88 mph in the Back to the Future films, and it has endured since. John DeLorean's company made about 9,000 cars before it went bankrupt in 1982, and Espey says about 7,500 of them still exist. Stephen Wynne, a car-loving entrepreneur, revived the name in 1995. John DeLorean, a once high-flying General Motors executive before he started his own company, struggled in his later years and died in 2005.

The company has been making eight to ten made-to-order DeLoreans per year with gasoline engines and a price of $57,500. Espey said it is not yet taking orders for the electric version -- the single prototype is playfully called Version 0.9 -- until it is confident it has all the details worked out.

"But we're getting a lot of good feedback," Espey said. "People are offering to make deposits."

"They only made it for three years," said Espey. "They didn't have time to make a lot of changes. So there's nothing to make you say, 'Oh, that's an old DeLorean,' or, 'This is a new one.' It still has a timeless design."

Which brings us back to 1985, and the moment in Back to the Future when Doc (Christopher Lloyd) unveils the car for Marty.

"Wait a minute, Doc," says Marty. "Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?"

Doc answers, "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"

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