Restart for solar car maker Lightyear after bankruptcy

Solar car maker Lightyear from Helmond is making a restart in a slimmed-down form. The bankruptcy administrator will be selling some of the stocks of the previously bankrupt company in the near future. That includes some (demo) vehicles of the first Lightyear 0 model. This month, there is a special online auction to raise money for paying the company’s creditors. On a viewing day on Wednesday, April 19, interested parties can come and see the cars in person, bankruptcy administrator Reinoud van Oeijen said.

Lightyear’s potential restart was announced in February after raising 8 million euros within a day with loyal investors. But the bankruptcy administrator still had to approve the relaunch plan.

Van Oeijen has now given his approval. “It was an extremely complex process,” he said in a statement. “However, we were able to do this in a relatively short time. With many different interests and a complicated structure, it was not easy.”

The restart will happen in a completely new company that will build a mass-model Lightyear 2. In that new company, there is room for just under 100 of the originally over 600 employees.

“We have tried to represent the interests of employees from the Netherlands and abroad as well as possible,” said Van Oeijen. “At the same time, we also tried to limit the damage to the creditors as much as possible. This way, there was a chance of a restart.” All of the patents belonging to Lightyear and solar cell subsidiary Lightyear Layer from Venray will be transferred to the new company, which will be called Lightyear Technologies.

Lightyear CEO and co-founder Lex Hoefsloot is pleased with the news from the bankruptcy administrator. “We are very pleased to have completed the restructuring. We believe it was necessary for the future of Lightyear,” he said. “The team has worked hard to make this happen.”

Lightyear’s first car, the Lightyear 0, only went into production with a partner in Finland in November. In the end, only a handful rolled off the band because the company suddenly stopped the production of this expensive model earlier this year. A short time later, Lightyear went bankrupt.

There was still a lot of interest in the Lightyear 2. Van Oeijen previously pointed out that this interest primarily concerned intention. It did not immediately generate money. When the fast-growing Lightyear ran into payment difficulties, that interest did not help, and bankruptcy became inevitable.