Lightyear

Lightyear is a Dutch solar electric car startup. The company develops long-range electric cars that are grid-independent and are equipped with built-in solar panels, permitting longer charge cycles. 

The company’s flagship electric car Lightyear 0 (formerly Lightyear One) has a battery range of 625 km (versus Tesla Model S’ ~400 km) and has an energy use of 10.5 kWh per 100 kms. Lightyear 0 has a built-in five-square-meter solar panel and was available for pre-order at EUR 250,000 (~USD 272,278) excluding taxes (versus Tesla Model S’ USD 90,000) as of June 2022. 

The company reported that Lightyear 0 had begun production in November 2022 . However, subsequently in January 2023 , it announced that the production of Lightyear 0 has been suspended to instead direct resources towards Lightyear 2. 

Key customers and partnerships

The Lightyear 2 model has received over 40,000 subscriptions from individual customers, as well as 21,000 pre-orders from fleet owners such as Arval , Athlon, LeasePlan, and MyWheels.

In July 2022, Lightyear partnered with Valmet Automotive to produce Lightyear 0 at Valmet’s manufacturing facility in Uusikaupunki, Finland. A maximum of 946 Lightyear 0’s will be produced. Additionally, in August 2022, Lightyear partnered with Koenigsegg, a Swedish high-performance sports car manufacturer, to jointly develop innovative EV technologies and optimize Koenigsegg’s proprietary technologies to improve the energy efficiencies of Lightyear’s second model, Lightyear 2. Additionally, in October 2022, the company acquired the technological design for drivetrain inverters from Next Level Electronics .

In December 2021, Lightyear announced a 3 year partnership with LeasePlan where it promised 5,000 Lightyear 2 vehicles for its fleet. The company is also partnering with The Sharing Company (Netherlands) to supply 5,000 Lightyear 2 vehicles for its MyWheels car-sharing platform by 2025.  

Funding and financials

In September 2022 , Lightyear raised EUR 81 million (~USD 80.4 million) in funding for the production of Lightyear 0 in late 2022 and to also ensure the continued achievement of development milestones for Lightyear 2. In May 2021, Lightyear received a strategic investment of EUR 20 million (~USD 23 million) from the Dutch trading company SHV. In March 2021, the company raised EUR 40.2 million (~USD 48 million) in a venture round led by Zero Point Holding. The funds were expected to support commercialization and growth.