Author: Niche Vehicle RSS Feeds

Lightyear Investor Cafe: this is only the beginning

Martijn Lammers — Co-Founder

We have held our first Investor Cafe.

During this evening we presented our plans to a select group of people from our network. We informed them on what we are doing and what our plans are for the near future. We would like to thank all attendants, especially our ambassadors Camilla van den Boom, Maarten Steinbuch and Ton Backx.

Goals
The goal for this evening was to slowly start putting our mission out in the world and get valuable feedback on our plans & story. Mobilising our network to help us has proved a good strategy to test our plans against a larger group of interested people of various backgrounds. It is extremely motivating to see a growing group of people interested. Their feedback gives us a clear overview of what parts of our plans to focus on. We do this to continuously keep learning and improving.

First investors
Attendants of the investor cafe got the first, exclusive, opportunity to be among the first investors in Lightyear. To..

When cars and solar energy meet

Lex Hoefsloot — Co-Founder

Energy is the ability to do work. It is the reason why we have progressed into a highly prosperous society within 200 years. Energy veteran Gregg Maryniak showed me this graph that puts the whole story into perspective. Looking at this timescale, it suddenly becomes clear that fossil fuels are just a blip in history. In a very short time, fossil fuels gave us prosperity and the ability to accelerate all aspects of human development. Sadly, we all know that these energy sources came with a dark-side. We will inevitably switch to a new energy source.

Fossil fuels are just a blip in history. source

Despite the fact that this ‘blip’ is associated with massive amounts of energy, scientists are in fact quite certain that we can produce the same amount of energy using solar and wind power. Isn’t it fascinating how we are heading towards a future in which we can produce many times more energy using solar and wind power than mother nature has been ca..

We are Lightyear, we’re on a mission

Martijn Lammers — Co-Founder

We love electric cars…

But they’re only the first step, what if they could generate their own energy?

That’s a business opportunity!

Lightyear was founded by 5 Solar Team Eindhoven alumni. With Solar Team Eindhoven, we built the revolutionary solar cars Stella & Stella Lux. Both cars are 4 seaters, road legal, solar powered and built to win the World Solar Challenge cruiser class. After two world championships, we decided that it is time for the next step.

Our story started back in 2012. All we had was a blank canvas, no experience, no network and no money. We took our enthusiasm, a healthy dose of naivety and common sense to start an endeavour that still continues today. Looking back, it is easy to forget the times we worked until the sun came up or the problems that kept us from working at all. Like the time our cars’ transport to the competition in Australia was cancelled a week before we left. Or the desperate attempts removing a crucial ..