Lightyear makes a new start after the curator’s approval
Lightyear is making a new start. The curator will announce this on Monday. The production branch of the Helmond solar car manufacturer went bankrupt at the end of January. The company will auction some of its inventories to compensate creditors.
The restart takes place in a completely new company, reports curator Reinoud van Oeijen. That new company will include Lightyear’s intellectual property, in addition to “some of the inventory and some of the employees.” According to previous reports, this concerns approximately 100 employees, while the original Lightyear had more than 600 employees. Lightyear Layer, the subsidiary that houses the company’s solar cell technology, will also fall under the new company.
The new company is called Lightyear Technologies and is going by its own name fully focus on developing and making the Lightyear 2. The company will be holding an auction later this month, running until Monday, April 24 at 10 a.m. At that auction, Lightyear sells some of its stocks. This also includes demo models of the Lightyear 0, the company’s first solar car. With the auction, Lightyear wants to raise money to compensate its creditors. The company is holding a viewing day on April 19, where interested parties can view the cars.
Lightyear announced in February that it wanted to make a new start, after subsidiary Atlas Technologies BV was declared bankrupt at the end of January. That subsidiary was responsible for the production of the Lightyear 0, the company’s first solar car. The company received eight million euros in investments from more than 300 private individuals for the restart.
The new company wants to bring the Lightyear 2 to the market ‘within a few years’. This should be the company’s first relatively affordable solar car, intended for the mass market. According to previous plans, production of the solar car should start in 2025 and the car should cost less than 40,000 euros upon release. The Lightyear 0 cost 150,000 euros upon release, but that was later increased to 250,000 euros.
The Lightyear 0 in the factory