The Internet needs to stop getting excited by vaporware EVs

Enlarge / The DeLorean Alpha 5 is inspired by the mediocre mid-engined coupe from Northern Ireland. (credit: DeLorean)

Back in the earlier days of the Internet, when web fora still mattered and there was no such thing as Twitter, Sniff Petrol's Richard Porter published a now-infamous "Press Release Help For New Supercar Makers." No stranger to cutting satire, Porter's checklist was a reaction to a seemingly never-ending string of new British supercars announced to middling fanfare and then often never heard of again.

Sixteen years later, I can't help but feel that we need a new version, this time not the UK's cottage industry of vaporware supercars, but the ever-expanding field of electric vehicle startups. Specifically, I'm writing this in reaction to the "new" DeLorean, renders of which went public yesterday, causing some particularly excitable corners of the Internet to begin smoldering dangerously.

Now, this isn't John DeLorean's company—that went bankrupt in 1982 after producing about 8,500 examples of a single model that wasn't really ever as good as it should have been, called the DMC-12. However, the DMC-12 acquired cult status after starring in Back to the Future, and the DeLorean name now belongs to a company in Texas that supplies spares for the stainless steel-bodied classics.