# The False Dawn of the Electric Car

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 8 Apr 2022, 37 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/0cd5f028-710c-4420-9dc8-ae71005623d4/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Sir Clive Sinclair was a computer whizz and business mogul to rival Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He was a visionary who could do no wrong... until he tried to launch an electric vehicle. The C5 “electrically assisted pedal cycle" doesn't seem so outlandish to us now... but 1985 just wasn't ready for the "aerodynamic bathtub" on wheels. Sir Clive was ridiculed and his business ruined. How did it all go so wrong? For a full list of sources go to timharford.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. The tenth of January nineteen eighty five is a
[0:30] Speaker 1: typical winter's day in London. The temperature is edging above freezing,
[0:36] Speaker 1: but only just a thin covering of snow is starting
[0:41] Speaker 1: to melt. A mix of salt and slush covers the roads.
[0:47] Speaker 1: Members of the media are making their way to the
[0:50] Speaker 1: grand surrounds of Alexandra Palace, a landmark Victorian concert and
[0:55] Speaker 1: exhibition hall, for the launch of a new product. They're
[1:00] Speaker 1: not sure what the product is that they're intrigued because
[1:03] Speaker 1: it's the brainchild of Sir Clive Sinclair, one of Britain's
[1:07] Speaker 1: most innovative entrepreneurs. Sir Clive made his money in technology.
[1:13] Speaker 1: His ZEDX eighty one and ZX Spectrum computers have been
[1:17] Speaker 1: wildly successful. Everyone wants to know what he'll do next,
[1:22] Speaker 1: and the rumor is that is making a car. The
[1:28] Speaker 1: journalists take their seats in an auditorium. Sir Clive's staff
[1:33] Speaker 1: buzz nervously around young women in stylish gray jumpsuits and
[1:38] Speaker 1: out press releases. The anticipation is palpable.
[1:44] Speaker 2: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for
[1:48] Speaker 2: coming to this press conference today.
[1:51] Speaker 1: Sir Clive Sinclair is forty four years old, bald, bespectacled
[1:56] Speaker 1: with a ginger beard, he looks like an archetypal geek.
[2:01] Speaker 1: Appearances can deceive. Sir Clive loves poetry and wild parties,
[2:07] Speaker 1: but he's certainly smart, at least by some measures. He's
[2:10] Speaker 1: the chairman of MENSA, the British society for people with
[2:14] Speaker 1: a high IQ. Sinclair's IQ is one one hundred and
[2:19] Speaker 1: fifty nine, which puts him roughly on a par with Einstein.
[2:24] Speaker 2: I'm going to start in a rather unusual fashion by
[2:26] Speaker 2: telling you what we're not announcing today, because there have
[2:29] Speaker 2: been some fairly confusing leaks. We're not announcing a conventional car.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Sinclair Vehicles Limited is dedicated to the development and production
[2:39] Speaker 2: of a full range of electric cars. But today we
[2:42] Speaker 2: have an electric vehicle, the first stage on the road
[2:46] Speaker 2: to the electric car.
[2:48] Speaker 1: Okay, so he's not launching a car right now, but
[2:52] Speaker 1: he is planning them. He's announcing an electric vehicle. What
[2:58] Speaker 1: could that mean? The journalists are getting even more intrigued
[3:03] Speaker 1: because there have indeed been some confusing leaks. They've heard
[3:07] Speaker 1: that Sinclair engaged the sports car maker Lotus to help
[3:11] Speaker 1: with the design of this mysterious vehicle that's exciting. James
[3:16] Speaker 1: Bond drives a lotus.
[3:17] Speaker 3: What cures for us.
[3:20] Speaker 1: And apparently the vehicle is being manufactured by Hoover at
[3:24] Speaker 1: a factory that also makes washing machines.
[3:30] Speaker 2: There have been several reports that the vehicle is made
[3:32] Speaker 2: of fiberglass. In fact, it's not. The body is the
[3:36] Speaker 2: world's largest mass produced injection molding. It's astonishingly light and
[3:41] Speaker 2: astonishingly strong, molded in the ICI wonder plastic polypropylea, which
[3:45] Speaker 2: has absolutely marvelous properties for a vehicle. Another fallacy is
[3:50] Speaker 2: that the vehicle is powered by a washing machine motor. True,
[3:54] Speaker 2: the Italian company that makes these motors does make washing
[3:57] Speaker 2: machine motors, but they also make torpedo motors.
[4:01] Speaker 1: A torpedo sleek and powerful. As Sir Clive built up
[4:08] Speaker 1: to the big review of the Mysterious Sinclair C five,
[4:13] Speaker 1: that is the mental connotation he wanted people to have,
[4:17] Speaker 1: not washing machine torpedo alas it was all too appropriate.
[4:26] Speaker 1: The CEE five was about the torpedo Sir Clive's career.
[4:33] Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. Clive
[5:03] Speaker 1: Sinclair was a teenager when he first began to dream
[5:07] Speaker 1: about cheap, pollution free electric transportation. He got a summer
[5:12] Speaker 1: internship at a local electronics company and pitched some ideas there.
[5:17] Speaker 1: But this was a company that made spectrometers and oscilloscopes.
[5:22] Speaker 1: They weren't about to start a transport revolution. Besides, nobody
[5:27] Speaker 1: then thought electric vehicles were practical outside of one very
[5:31] Speaker 1: particular niche the milk float around the country. These boxy
[5:36] Speaker 1: vehicles would glide along the pre dawned streets, bringing milk
[5:40] Speaker 1: to people's doorsteps. They were almost silent, so they wouldn't
[5:45] Speaker 1: wake you up. They were slow, which was fine when
[5:49] Speaker 1: you wanted to stop at every house, but it was
[5:51] Speaker 1: hard to imagine using an electric vehicle for anything else.
[5:57] Speaker 1: Sinclair left school at eighteen. He didn't bother with university.
[6:01] Speaker 1: He had already taught himself everything there was to know
[6:05] Speaker 1: about electronics. He got a job writing for Hobbyist Master magazines,
[6:09] Speaker 1: but what he really wanted to do was invent and
[6:13] Speaker 1: for that he'd need money. His break in business came
[6:18] Speaker 1: when he heard that a high end electronics firm called
[6:21] Speaker 1: Plessy had rejected a big batch of metal alloy transistors,
[6:25] Speaker 1: an essential building block of electronic circuits. Sinclair realized that
[6:30] Speaker 1: although the transistors had failed Plessy's quality control, many might
[6:35] Speaker 1: still work well enough for hobbyists to tinker with. He
[6:39] Speaker 1: bought them wholesale at a knockdown price and handed them
[6:42] Speaker 1: on to his wife.
[6:44] Speaker 4: The transistors used to arrive in sacks about the size
[6:47] Speaker 4: of a sack of potatoes. I had test equipment consisting
[6:50] Speaker 4: of a box that gave a different pitched buzz according
[6:53] Speaker 4: to the transistor, and I must have tested.
[6:55] Speaker 1: A million of them altogether.
[6:57] Speaker 4: It really became monotonous because I'd no sooner finished one
[7:01] Speaker 4: sack than another would turn up.
[7:05] Speaker 1: Sinclair Radionics went from strength to strength in the nineteen
[7:08] Speaker 1: shis sixties, selling diy kits for enthusiasts to build ingenious
[7:13] Speaker 1: little devices that Sinclair designed, such as pocket radios. With
[7:18] Speaker 1: money coming in, Sinclair invented He tried putting a motor
[7:23] Speaker 1: on a scooter and rode it around his office, But
[7:26] Speaker 1: soon another brainchild took all his attention, the pocket calculator.
[7:33] Speaker 1: Like his radios, they were tiny, the size of a
[7:36] Speaker 1: packet of cigarettes, and they were cheap. Sinclair's calculators were
[7:41] Speaker 1: a huge success. True some of his inventions failed. Pocket
[7:46] Speaker 1: televisions never really took off as it hoped digital watches did,
[7:51] Speaker 1: but Sinclair's watches had production problems. Sinclair had to sit
[7:55] Speaker 1: on the sidelines as other watchmakers prospered. But it was
[7:59] Speaker 1: micro computers that made Clive Sinclair's name. They were genuinely revolutionary,
[8:05] Speaker 1: smaller and cheaper than anything the market could see. His
[8:10] Speaker 1: fantastically popular ZX spectrum launched at a sixth of the
[8:14] Speaker 1: price of an Apple two. In the first half of
[8:18] Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, Sinclair sold about five million computers around
[8:23] Speaker 1: the world, more than Apple, more than IBM. Only the
[8:28] Speaker 1: American firm Commodore sold more. Fortune magazine sent a reporter
[8:33] Speaker 1: to investigate the world's top producer of tiny computers is
[8:38] Speaker 1: a slightly astonished English company headquartered in a jumble of
[8:42] Speaker 1: tiny rooms and retiginous staircases across from Gothic King's College, Cambridge.
[8:49] Speaker 1: Astonished or not, Clive Sinclair was now right up there
[8:52] Speaker 1: with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He seemed to be
[8:56] Speaker 1: demonstrating that geeky britz could rule the high tech world.
[9:00] Speaker 1: He was a regular guest of the Prime Minister Margaret
[9:03] Speaker 1: Thatcher at ten Downing Street Coute at the Queen awarded
[9:09] Speaker 1: him a knighthood. One British government official explained to The
[9:13] Speaker 1: New York Times that Sir Clive seemed to have a
[9:16] Speaker 1: gift for thinking of new things that seem obvious after
[9:20] Speaker 1: he's done them. The average entrepreneur may have one such idea.
[9:25] Speaker 1: Clive has had a string of them. And there was
[9:28] Speaker 1: something Sinclair had dreamed of making since he was a teenager.
[9:34] Speaker 1: Electric cars. The time now seemed ripe. After the oil
[9:40] Speaker 1: price shocks of the nineteen seventies, government planners were starting
[9:44] Speaker 1: to wander about alternatives to gasoline. Sinclair sketched out plans
[9:50] Speaker 1: for a compact two seater car for urban travel and
[9:53] Speaker 1: proper full sized electric cars for doing long journeys at
[9:57] Speaker 1: motorway speeds. But he decided to build up to this
[10:01] Speaker 1: grand vision by starting small. Sinclair had spotted a gap
[10:05] Speaker 1: in the market. A lot of journeys were short and solitary,
[10:09] Speaker 1: getting to the railway station for the morning commute going
[10:12] Speaker 1: to the shops. Research showed that the average car traveled
[10:16] Speaker 1: just thirteen miles a day gasoline powered mopeds even less.
[10:21] Speaker 1: There was clearly an opportunity to offer a smaller, cheaper,
[10:26] Speaker 1: battery powered alternative way to make those journeys. Sinclair started
[10:32] Speaker 1: to develop ideas for a small electric vehicle, the first
[10:36] Speaker 1: stage on the road to the electric car, as did
[10:39] Speaker 1: later put it at the launch. Then came an unexpected opportunity.
[10:45] Speaker 1: The British government published new regulations that created a new
[10:50] Speaker 1: category of vehicle, the electrically assisted pedal cycle. To drive
[10:56] Speaker 1: a car on British roads, he had to pay an
[10:59] Speaker 1: annual tax and insurance and have a license. Electrically assisted
[11:05] Speaker 1: pedal cycles would be exempt from all that. He wouldn't
[11:08] Speaker 1: even have to wear a crash helmet, and you could
[11:11] Speaker 1: drive them aged just fourteen. Sinclair was excited. He realized
[11:17] Speaker 1: that the vehicle he had been developing could easily be
[11:20] Speaker 1: tweaked to fit with these new regulations. It just need
[11:23] Speaker 1: to add pedals, so it would technically be a pedal cycle,
[11:27] Speaker 1: and it'd had to reduce the maximum speed from thirty
[11:30] Speaker 1: miles an hour to fifteen. He could do that. Sir
[11:36] Speaker 1: Clive was determined to keep the details of his new
[11:39] Speaker 1: vehicle a secret from the public until he was ready
[11:43] Speaker 1: to surprise them with a big launch event. When he
[11:46] Speaker 1: needed partners such as Lotus or Hoover, he approached them
[11:51] Speaker 1: in strictest confidence. The reaction was always the same. They
[11:57] Speaker 1: were skeptical, but he expected that if.
[12:00] Speaker 2: An idea is good enough, it's going to appear pretty
[12:02] Speaker 2: crazy at almost everybody.
[12:04] Speaker 1: Then the skeptics tried out the prototype and they loved it.
[12:09] Speaker 1: The Sea five was terrific fun to drive. Everyone who
[12:12] Speaker 1: tried it agreed. Sinclair invited regulators from the Department for
[12:17] Speaker 1: Transport to look at his new vehicle and make sure
[12:20] Speaker 1: they were satisfied that it met their regulations. They were startled.
[12:25] Speaker 1: What was this thing? It didn't look like a pedal cycle. Still,
[12:29] Speaker 1: they had to admit it met the regulations to the letter.
[12:34] Speaker 1: It was becoming harder and harder to keep his design
[12:38] Speaker 1: under wraps. More and more confusing rumors were starting to
[12:42] Speaker 1: circulate about Sinclair's plans for electric cars. He decided he
[12:47] Speaker 1: couldn't delay the reveal of the Sinclair Sea five any longer.
[12:51] Speaker 1: He booked Alexandra Palace and invited the press.
[12:56] Speaker 2: It's a very nerve wracking time. I could lose all
[12:59] Speaker 2: my money. I don't mind not having any money, but
[13:02] Speaker 2: it would be annoying in the sense that I couldn't
[13:04] Speaker 2: do what I want to do.
[13:06] Speaker 1: Everyone was on tenter hooks to see what Sir Clive
[13:09] Speaker 1: had been working on. Imagine if Bill Gates or Steve
[13:13] Speaker 1: Jobs had suddenly decided, at the height of their success,
[13:17] Speaker 1: to disrupt the auto industry by making a totally new
[13:21] Speaker 1: kind of vehicle. It was bound to be something good,
[13:26] Speaker 1: wasn't it. In a dapper blue suit on a cold
[13:42] Speaker 1: January morning, Sir Clive Sinclair is building up the mysterious
[13:47] Speaker 1: Sinclair C five to the assembled British media.
[13:52] Speaker 2: Almost everything has been designed and tooled from scratch for us.
[13:57] Speaker 2: The lights, batteries, motors, electronic control system. We have a
[14:01] Speaker 2: custom chip that monitors everything and controls everything. Get into
[14:06] Speaker 2: the vehicle and you don't have to think about it.
[14:09] Speaker 2: It's all done for you.
[14:10] Speaker 1: At last, it's time for the big reveal. Around the
[14:15] Speaker 1: arena are six boxes covered with sheets of paper. At
[14:19] Speaker 1: the front. Simultaneously, six Sinclair Sea fives burst through the paper,
[14:25] Speaker 1: driven by more young women in gray jumpsuits. Music booms,
[14:30] Speaker 1: cameras flash. Six Sea fives complete a circuit of the
[14:34] Speaker 1: room and come to halt in a line. Sinclair Sea five.
[14:43] Speaker 1: If you've never seen one, how do I describe it?
[14:46] Speaker 1: You can start by picturing a white plastic bathtub. That's
[14:51] Speaker 1: how it struck one reporter at the launch, and frankly,
[14:54] Speaker 1: it's a little unfair. The Sea five does have some
[14:57] Speaker 1: touches of sportscar styling, So take away the two sides
[15:01] Speaker 1: of the plastic bathtub and curve the front aerodynamically inwards,
[15:06] Speaker 1: like in a bath. You sit reclined and load to
[15:09] Speaker 1: the ground, your legs stretched out in front of you.
[15:13] Speaker 1: It's like a streamlined, low slung mobility scooter or a
[15:18] Speaker 1: sleek motorized lawn mower, or maybe it's like riding around
[15:23] Speaker 1: in a giant white slip on shoe, or I don't know.
[15:28] Speaker 1: It's not really like anything. Actually, the C five is unique.
[15:34] Speaker 1: There are two wheels at the back and one at
[15:36] Speaker 1: the front, and you can pedal should you need to.
[15:39] Speaker 1: But the twelve vault electric battery claims a range of
[15:42] Speaker 1: twenty miles. The controls are unorthodox. You don't have your
[15:47] Speaker 1: hands out in front of you, as you would on
[15:49] Speaker 1: a steering wheel or the handlebars of a bike. Instead,
[15:53] Speaker 1: both steering and speed are controlled by levers positioned by
[15:57] Speaker 1: your thighs, where your arms will naturally come to rest
[16:01] Speaker 1: as you sit Sinclair explains that the first vehicles have
[16:06] Speaker 1: already rolled off the production lines and you can buy
[16:09] Speaker 1: them right now. He announces a multi million pound advertising
[16:15] Speaker 1: campaign and plays the first television spot to the watching press.
[16:19] Speaker 3: Imagine a vehicle that can drive you five miles for
[16:23] Speaker 3: a penny. A vehicle that needs no petrol, just a battery,
[16:28] Speaker 3: and that takes the press of a button to start,
[16:30] Speaker 3: the squeeze of a lever to stop, that needs no license,
[16:35] Speaker 3: no road chacks, and you can drive whether you're fourteen
[16:38] Speaker 3: or forteen. A vehicle that costs just three hundred and
[16:43] Speaker 3: ninety nine pounds, the Sinclair Sea five. It's a new
[16:50] Speaker 3: part in personal transport.
[16:54] Speaker 1: Everyone heads outside into the grounds of Alexandra Palace. There's
[16:58] Speaker 1: snow on the lawns, but the footpaths are clear. Sir
[17:02] Speaker 1: Clive wraps a gray scarf around his neck and poses
[17:05] Speaker 1: for photos in a C five. Now the journals are
[17:09] Speaker 1: invited to have a go, and this is where things
[17:12] Speaker 1: start to unravel. Remember all those skeptics who had been
[17:17] Speaker 1: won over by discovering how much fun the Sea five
[17:20] Speaker 1: was to drive if they'd driven it around test tracks
[17:24] Speaker 1: in controlled conditions, they hadn't driven it on an actual
[17:27] Speaker 1: public road in real world traffic in January, nobody had
[17:34] Speaker 1: until now.
[17:35] Speaker 2: There are obvious disadvantages. The tiny Sea five is dwarfed
[17:39] Speaker 2: by other traffic. Its critics predict chaos on the roads.
[17:43] Speaker 1: That's the reporter from ITV News. The footage shows a
[17:48] Speaker 1: C five driver nervously hand signaling their intention to turn
[17:53] Speaker 1: and traversing across a lane of traffic as an eighteen
[17:56] Speaker 1: ton truck bears down on them. Then we see the
[18:00] Speaker 1: reporter waiting in his CE five at stop lights behind
[18:04] Speaker 1: a car. As the lights turn green and the car
[18:06] Speaker 1: moves off, it belches a cloud of exhaust fumes right
[18:11] Speaker 1: into the reporter's face. Nothing could compensate for the sheer
[18:16] Speaker 1: feeling of vulnerability. My head was on a level with
[18:18] Speaker 1: the top of a juggernaut's tires. I could not feel
[18:21] Speaker 1: confident as a lorry driver so high above the ground
[18:24] Speaker 1: would see me. That was the Daily Telegraphs Review. Sinclair
[18:31] Speaker 1: had thought about safety, of course, He'd even made sure
[18:34] Speaker 1: to get a supportive quote from the regulators at the
[18:37] Speaker 1: UK's Department for Transport. As an alternative to pedal cycles,
[18:42] Speaker 1: it is not thought likely to have a worse safety record. Actually,
[18:48] Speaker 1: That doesn't really inspire confidence, does it. Sinclair had also
[18:53] Speaker 1: produced a whole range of safety features, but because he'd
[18:57] Speaker 1: wanted to keep the headline price below four hundred pounds
[19:01] Speaker 1: roughly two thousand dollars in today's money, he'd decided to
[19:05] Speaker 1: make them all optional extras. If you wanted drivers to
[19:09] Speaker 1: see you, you could buy a high visibility mast, that's
[19:13] Speaker 1: a pole with a flagon. That would cost seven pounds
[19:16] Speaker 1: ninety five. How about a horn to alert the truck
[19:19] Speaker 1: driver that you're right in front of them. That'll be
[19:22] Speaker 1: another seven pounds ninety five. Wing mirrors so you can
[19:25] Speaker 1: see that there's a truck behind you fourteen pounds ninety five.
[19:29] Speaker 1: It wasn't just safety features that Sinclair had relegated to accessories,
[19:34] Speaker 1: so was protection from the weather, and launching in the
[19:37] Speaker 1: middle of the British winter made weather hard to ignore.
[19:41] Speaker 1: People soon discovered that if they took their Sea five
[19:44] Speaker 1: out on wet roads, the spray from the wheels would
[19:47] Speaker 1: leave the inside of the vehicle dirtier than the outside.
[19:51] Speaker 1: You could get mudflaps for six pound ninety five a pair,
[19:55] Speaker 1: and side panels for nineteen pounds ninety five. They attached
[20:00] Speaker 1: with velcrow. For thirty four pounds ninety five, you could
[20:04] Speaker 1: get a coat that attached with velcro to the side panels,
[20:08] Speaker 1: like driving around with your head sticking out of a
[20:10] Speaker 1: tent on wheels. More than just protection against the weather,
[20:15] Speaker 1: the Sea five weather cheetah is a fashionable piece of
[20:18] Speaker 1: leisure wear in its own right. Its designer styling means
[20:22] Speaker 1: that you'll often find that you wear it even when
[20:25] Speaker 1: you're not using your Sea five, or so said the
[20:29] Speaker 1: optimistic Sinclair brochure. The velcrow clad raincoat did not strike
[20:34] Speaker 1: most people as a fashionable piece of leisure were but
[20:37] Speaker 1: the rain wasn't the biggest problem with the January launch.
[20:41] Speaker 1: Sinclair later explained.
[20:44] Speaker 2: We hadn't realized that the batteries virtually packed up in
[20:47] Speaker 2: freezing conditions.
[20:49] Speaker 1: The reporter from the Daily Telegraph soon found that out
[20:54] Speaker 1: The instructions were quite simple. Sit in, switch on, and
[20:57] Speaker 1: go and go. The Sinclair Sea five certainly did for
[21:01] Speaker 1: seven minutes. Then the first battery ran flat. I peddled
[21:05] Speaker 1: the Sea five back to the service point. My legs
[21:08] Speaker 1: are still a king, even though the slopes were gentle.
[21:11] Speaker 1: The Sea five's motor was attached to its rear left wheel,
[21:15] Speaker 1: the brake to the wheel on the right. It turned
[21:19] Speaker 1: out that when the roads were icy, either accelerating or
[21:22] Speaker 1: braking was liable to send you into a spin. This
[21:26] Speaker 1: must have been fun on a test track. Not so
[21:30] Speaker 1: much if you're in front of a juggernaut.
[21:36] Speaker 5: The idea of fourteen year old kids taking these things
[21:39] Speaker 5: on the roads like today, no license, no insurance, no training,
[21:45] Speaker 5: no seatbell prankically horrifies me.
[21:48] Speaker 1: Tweaking the Sea five's design to meet the electrically assisted
[21:52] Speaker 1: pedal cycle regulations had seemed like a master stroke, but
[21:57] Speaker 1: it had distracted Sinclair from his original vision of progress
[22:01] Speaker 1: towards a fully functioning electric car, and now it looked
[22:06] Speaker 1: like a public relations disaster. Despite the terrible early reviews,
[22:13] Speaker 1: Sir Clive still had some customers. In February, the month
[22:17] Speaker 1: after the launch, the London Times went out to meet
[22:20] Speaker 1: some early adopters, such as this retiree. I was very
[22:25] Speaker 1: excited when it first arrived, but the first time I
[22:28] Speaker 1: tried it out, it just would not go up a
[22:30] Speaker 1: hill and I had to come home. Sinclair tried desperately
[22:35] Speaker 1: to reboot public interest. He hired unemployed teenagers to drive
[22:40] Speaker 1: Sea fives around major British cities, but the more that
[22:44] Speaker 1: people bought Sea fives, the more complaints piled up. Sinclair
[22:49] Speaker 1: had claimed the battery would last for twenty miles, for
[22:52] Speaker 1: many it was more like ten. To meet the regulations,
[22:56] Speaker 1: the Sea five was limited to fifteen miles per hour.
[23:00] Speaker 1: In practice, people said they topped out at twelve and
[23:03] Speaker 1: a half. Worse still, by the time you factored in
[23:07] Speaker 1: the need to replace the battle, it arguably wasn't much
[23:11] Speaker 1: cheaper to run than a moped powered by gasoline. The
[23:15] Speaker 1: UK's Consumer Association took their time to gather the evidence,
[23:20] Speaker 1: and in summer they delivered a succinct and damning verdict.
[23:25] Speaker 1: How far a lot less than claimed, How fast, hard
[23:28] Speaker 1: to keep up with traffic, handling and braking adequate? How safe?
[23:33] Speaker 1: Not very good? How maneuverable? Disappointing? How secure? Too easy
[23:38] Speaker 1: to steal? How reliable? Not promising? Our verdict of limited
[23:43] Speaker 1: use in its present form, poor value for money. By August,
[23:49] Speaker 1: retailers were desperate to offload their C five stock. They
[23:54] Speaker 1: cut the price by more than half, and with all
[23:57] Speaker 1: the accessories thrown in two in September, Sinclair stopped production
[24:03] Speaker 1: and on the eleventh of October, just nine months after
[24:07] Speaker 1: the launch, Sir Clive publicly announced that Sinclair Vehicles Limited
[24:13] Speaker 1: was closing down. It originally planned to manufacture eight thousand
[24:19] Speaker 1: Sea fives every week. He'd sold fourteen thousand in total,
[24:25] Speaker 1: not even a fortnight's worth. Why was the Sea five
[24:30] Speaker 1: such a disaster? The answer isn't quite what you might think.
[24:35] Speaker 1: But more on that in a moment. Why did the
[24:49] Speaker 1: Sinclair Sea five fail? That might seem like a silly question,
[24:54] Speaker 1: haven't we heard more than enough reasons already? But it's
[24:57] Speaker 1: not a silly question because look around you. Electric cars
[25:02] Speaker 1: are fast becoming the norm, just as Sinclair envisaged they would.
[25:07] Speaker 1: Electric bikes are popular with and if you live in
[25:10] Speaker 1: a major city, it's probably got shared electric scooters that
[25:14] Speaker 1: you pick up, unlock with an app, ride to your destination,
[25:19] Speaker 1: and leave there. Sir Clive Sinclair invented the C five
[25:23] Speaker 1: because he thought short urban journeys needed small electric vehicles.
[25:29] Speaker 1: Now we have them.
[25:32] Speaker 2: It was a good idea then.
[25:33] Speaker 1: And now, he said in twenty ten, I should have.
[25:37] Speaker 2: Handled it differently. It could have succeeded. I rushed at
[25:41] Speaker 2: it too much.
[25:45] Speaker 1: A few years after the C five debacle, the European
[25:49] Speaker 1: Journal of Marketing published an article looking for the lessons.
[25:54] Speaker 1: The C five was a classic example of what marketers
[25:57] Speaker 1: call a technology push innovation, where you invent something and
[26:02] Speaker 1: hope that people will want it. The opposite is a
[26:05] Speaker 1: demand pull innovation, where you figure out what people want
[26:09] Speaker 1: and try to invent it. There's nothing wrong with technology
[26:13] Speaker 1: push innovations. They can succeed brilliantly. Nobody knew they wanted
[26:18] Speaker 1: a pocket sized calculator until Sinclair came up with them
[26:23] Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty. Computers were seen as tools for business.
[26:27] Speaker 1: Would people really want cheaper portable computers as toys in
[26:31] Speaker 1: the home? Well, yes, with hindsight, but at the time
[26:36] Speaker 1: it was a gamble. But usually with a technology push innovation,
[26:42] Speaker 1: you'll want a bit of consumer feedback before you go
[26:44] Speaker 1: all in, for example, through market research. Sir Clive didn't
[26:49] Speaker 1: believe in any of that. He thought people didn't know
[26:52] Speaker 1: what they wanted yet, and he was happy to bed
[26:55] Speaker 1: on his own instincts about that. When he did a
[26:58] Speaker 1: focus group for the C five, it was only to
[27:01] Speaker 1: check if people thought the controls were in the right position.
[27:04] Speaker 1: He wasn't much interested in what they thought of the product. Itself.
[27:08] Speaker 1: If he had been Sinclair might have discovered the problems
[27:12] Speaker 1: that became apparent only on the launch day. And if
[27:16] Speaker 1: it had been sent back to the drawing board, perhaps
[27:19] Speaker 1: he'd have launched a different product first. He might have
[27:22] Speaker 1: gone straight to his two seater city car you see
[27:25] Speaker 1: those on the streets now. Perhaps he could have revived
[27:28] Speaker 1: the scooter he had played around within his office a
[27:31] Speaker 1: decade before, or maybe he could have pitched the C
[27:35] Speaker 1: five to a different market. Might it have taken hold
[27:38] Speaker 1: as a toy for rich people or in vacation resorts
[27:42] Speaker 1: or golf courses. Perhaps it might. But often there's a
[27:46] Speaker 1: deeper reason why good ideas fail, and to find out
[27:50] Speaker 1: what it is, let's rewind to a year before the
[27:53] Speaker 1: launch of the Sinclair C five in nineteen eighty four,
[27:57] Speaker 1: Sir Clive is giving a speech to the US Congressional
[28:01] Speaker 1: Clearinghouse on the future.
[28:03] Speaker 2: I anticipate totally automatic personal vehicles, still with all the
[28:07] Speaker 2: freedom in space and time of to day cars, but
[28:10] Speaker 2: guided by machine intelligence. They will be powered by electricity
[28:14] Speaker 2: drawn from internal batteries and towns and on minor roads,
[28:17] Speaker 2: and from a main supply on the highways, possibly inductively
[28:21] Speaker 2: coupled into the vehicle. These latter day cars will be
[28:24] Speaker 2: well nigh silent and clean, but above all free from
[28:28] Speaker 2: human fallibility.
[28:31] Speaker 1: These are ideas that are only just now approaching feasibility
[28:35] Speaker 1: in the hands of companies such as Tesla. But Sinclair
[28:39] Speaker 1: remember is talking. In nineteen eighty four. In his book
[28:45] Speaker 1: Where Good Ideas Come From, the author Stephen Johnson talks
[28:49] Speaker 1: about the notion of the adjacent possible. It's a phrase
[28:53] Speaker 1: coined by a biologist, Stuart Kaufman, to describe how evolution works.
[28:58] Speaker 1: Nature can't take big leaps. It can get from primordial
[29:02] Speaker 1: soup to human beings, but not all in one go.
[29:06] Speaker 1: Evolution can happen only in small, incremental steps. Johnson makes
[29:12] Speaker 1: the case that this phrase applies just as well to
[29:15] Speaker 1: human innovations. He gives the metaphor of an ever expanding house.
[29:20] Speaker 1: You open a door to a new room, and it
[29:22] Speaker 1: reveals three more doors to rooms you didn't know existed.
[29:27] Speaker 1: This metaphor for the adjacent possible helps to explain why
[29:31] Speaker 1: many inventions, like the steam engine or the telegraph have
[29:34] Speaker 1: occurred to different people independently at around the same time.
[29:39] Speaker 1: They all spotted the same new door. The adjacent possible
[29:44] Speaker 1: expands with every new technology or new way of thinking,
[29:48] Speaker 1: but it also limits us. We can open doors only
[29:52] Speaker 1: from the rooms we've discovered now and then, says Johnson,
[29:56] Speaker 1: an idea occurs to someone that teleports us forward a
[30:00] Speaker 1: few rooms. Those ideas almost always end up failing in
[30:04] Speaker 1: the short term, precisely because they have skipped ahead. And
[30:11] Speaker 1: isn't that the perfect description of Sinclair's problem. He could
[30:15] Speaker 1: see into rooms that were far beyond the current house,
[30:19] Speaker 1: but then he could only guess at which doors we
[30:21] Speaker 1: needed to open to find them. The Sea five was
[30:25] Speaker 1: too far beyond the adjacent possible. New rooms have opened
[30:29] Speaker 1: up since then. Batteries are smaller, lighter, and more powerful.
[30:34] Speaker 1: We've started to worry not just about the price of oil,
[30:37] Speaker 1: but also the cost to the planet of carbon emissions.
[30:41] Speaker 1: That worry opened doors to electric cars. As for the
[30:45] Speaker 1: electric bikes and the scooters, they've been helped by more
[30:49] Speaker 1: cities building cycle paths. In nineteen eighty five, most streets
[30:54] Speaker 1: were starkly divided, one part for going at thirty miles
[30:58] Speaker 1: an hour on wheels and another for going at three
[31:00] Speaker 1: miles an hour on foot, doing twelve miles an hour
[31:04] Speaker 1: on battery powered wheels you don't really belong in either.
[31:09] Speaker 1: Ubiquitous smartphones opened up another new room, as did the
[31:13] Speaker 1: concept of the sharing economy. No wonder then, that many
[31:16] Speaker 1: companies spotted the door to the scooter and bike sharing
[31:20] Speaker 1: business model at much the same time. When conditions are right,
[31:24] Speaker 1: ideas pop up everywhere. Maybe I'm being too kind to
[31:31] Speaker 1: Clive Sinclair. Maybe his C five was just a ridiculous idea.
[31:36] Speaker 1: Maybe his eerily accurate vision of the future was just
[31:40] Speaker 1: a lucky guess. Maybe, but remember what else Sinclair was
[31:45] Speaker 1: inventing computers. This is what he told an interviewer in
[31:50] Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties, years before the World Wide Web.
[31:54] Speaker 2: I think the what I'm doing is making a machine
[31:56] Speaker 2: that will indue urse sit in the home and replace
[31:58] Speaker 2: or supplement the doctor, the solicitor, the teacher. The machine
[32:02] Speaker 2: will be there and it will advise people. They can
[32:05] Speaker 2: ask it questions and it'll give them answers, perhaps even
[32:09] Speaker 2: tell them what to do. They can say what's on
[32:11] Speaker 2: television tonight, and they won't have to worry about how
[32:14] Speaker 2: it will get the information. It'll decide that it'll ring
[32:17] Speaker 2: up somebody or look it up in its memory banks.
[32:20] Speaker 2: Or find it out by whatever means. Or they can
[32:22] Speaker 2: say to it, what's the first strain to London around
[32:25] Speaker 2: about midday tomorrow, or I've got a pain in my
[32:29] Speaker 2: right side and really haven't been feeling too well. And
[32:31] Speaker 2: it'll recognize them. It'll know who they are and when
[32:34] Speaker 2: they're talking to it.
[32:37] Speaker 1: Siri and Alexa and Google can do some of this already,
[32:41] Speaker 1: and the rest is coming. Sir Clive had yet again
[32:46] Speaker 1: shown us a vision of a far off room, but
[32:49] Speaker 1: with only a murky sense of what sequence of doors
[32:52] Speaker 1: might lead us there. Google doesn't ring somebody up. We
[32:56] Speaker 1: needed to find the door to the World Wide Web first.
[33:00] Speaker 1: Sinclair's interviewer seems puzzled. What is it that you find
[33:05] Speaker 1: so terribly exciting about this idea?
[33:08] Speaker 2: I suppose it's because it'll be the first time that
[33:11] Speaker 2: humans won't be the only known intelligence in the known universe.
[33:14] Speaker 2: We don't have to wait for them to arrive from
[33:16] Speaker 2: outer space. We can build them here.
[33:19] Speaker 1: Why do you want that to happen?
[33:21] Speaker 2: I don't particularly I think it's exciting.
[33:24] Speaker 3: Though.
[33:26] Speaker 1: In his old age, Sinclair no longer found computers exciting.
[33:30] Speaker 1: He didn't use one. He didn't even use a calculator.
[33:34] Speaker 1: After the C five debacle, Sinclair cut a diminished figure.
[33:40] Speaker 1: He hadn't quite lost all his money, as it feared,
[33:43] Speaker 1: but he'd lost plenty worse. He'd become a joke. He
[33:48] Speaker 1: sold off the computer side of his business. His marriage
[33:51] Speaker 1: broke down. He took up poker, He hung out in nightclubs.
[33:55] Speaker 1: He married a polled answer thirty four years his junior.
[33:58] Speaker 1: He made more attempts to invent forms of personal transport,
[34:02] Speaker 1: but none ever got very far. Sir Clive Sinclair died
[34:08] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. On Twitter, people posted their remembrances. One
[34:14] Speaker 1: of them replied to an obituary that pictured Sinclair with
[34:17] Speaker 1: the z X Spectrum rip. He tweeted to sixty five
[34:23] Speaker 1: million followers, I loved that computer. The author of that
[34:28] Speaker 1: tweet Elon Musk. When Clive Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum,
[34:35] Speaker 1: Elon Musk was a ten year old boy in South Africa,
[34:39] Speaker 1: just like Sinclair. As a boy, Musk loved playing around
[34:42] Speaker 1: with gadgets. Like Sinclair, Musk grew up to make his
[34:46] Speaker 1: fortune as a technology pioneer with one great idea after another,
[34:52] Speaker 1: And like Sinclair, Musk made a ballsy gambol on Electric Vehicles.
[34:57] Speaker 1: Tesla is now one of the world's most valuable companies,
[35:01] Speaker 1: Elon Musk one of its richest people. Elon Musk and
[35:06] Speaker 1: Clive Sinclair were both brilliant and visionary. Elon mask had
[35:12] Speaker 1: the adjacent possible on his side. Poor Clive Sinclair did not,
[35:20] Speaker 1: and that made all the difference. A great book about
[35:35] Speaker 1: Clive Sinclair is The Sinclair Story by Rodney Dale. For
[35:39] Speaker 1: a full list of sources, check out the show notes
[35:42] Speaker 1: at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me
[35:48] Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley
[35:53] Speaker 1: with support from Courtney Gerino and Emily Vaughan. The sound
[35:56] Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
[36:01] Speaker 1: Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
[36:05] Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gutteridge, Stella Harford and Rufer's Right.
[36:11] Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work
[36:13] Speaker 1: of Mea LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faine, John Schnaz, Carli Migliori,
[36:20] Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Royston Berserv, Maggie Taylor, Nicolmarano, Daniela Lakhan and
[36:26] Speaker 1: Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
[36:31] Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
[36:34] Speaker 1: and review, and if you want to hear the show,
[36:36] Speaker 1: add free and listen to four exclusive Cautionary Tale shorts.
[36:41] Speaker 1: Then sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page
[36:44] Speaker 1: in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash plus

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