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The electric DMC-12: Time travel optional

DeLorean Motor Cars and Epic Electric Vehicles are working together to produce an electric version of the DMC-12, the car made famous in the Back to the Future movies.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
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DeLorean

DeLorean Motor Company showed off a prototype of an electrically driven DMC-12, which it promises to put into production in 2013.

You won't need a bolt of lightning to charge it up, and you won't be able to run it on eggshells and coffee grounds. Unlike the "Back to the Future" time machine, this DMC-12 electric conversion gets its electricity from the grid.

The DeLorean Motor Company (yes, it still exists), showed off the prototype at an owners' event last week.

 
DeLorean DMC-12 EV
DeLorean updated the cabin of the DMC-12 EV with modern electronics. DeLorean

DeLorean currently maintains a parts warehouse and offers services to repair and restore existing DMC-12s. The company can even build a new DMC-12 using 80 percent original parts.

Partnering with Epic Electric Vehicles, the company developed the prototype DMC-12 that, according to an article at Reuters, has a range of 70 to 100 miles. A 125-horsepower electric motor drives the wheels to a top speed of 125 mph, well above the 88 mph needed to travel through time.

Epic currently makes a single on-road vehicle, an open-wheel two-seater with a 24-kwh lithium ion phosphate battery pack and an electric motor with peak output of 200 horsepower. It is likely that Epic uses a similar drivetrain in the DMC-12 conversion.