DeLorean Wants You To Reserve Its Totally Real New Car With The Most Realest Form Of Currency: Crypto

For several years now, DeLorean Motor Cars has been promising to bring its Alpha5 EV to market under the banner of a brand that was disgraced by a long-ago founder but that gained forever fame in a beloved movie about time travel and the invention of rock-n-roll. (For the record, there have been several DeLorean reboots, one by John DeLorean’s daughter, and this post doesn’t concern the latter.)

The latest twist in this saga involves, I kid you not, crypto. And not just crypto, but NFTs. And the former Captain of the Starship Enterprise. Texas-based DeLorean has opened reservations for 4,000 Alpha5s, according to CarBuzz, pricing them at $2,500 apiece — and requiring that prospective customers obtain a “digital reservation token.” The “Build Slot” NFTs are random, so buying one doesn’t get you a priority place in line to close the deal when DeLorean finally starts to sell the Alpha5, reportedly for around $125,000.

Read more: Everrati’s Electric Porsche 911 RSR Has Me Driving Into The Future With Open Arms

A Brave New World Of EV Reservations

To promote this reservation scheme, DeLorean has enlisted actor Patrick Stewart to invite us all to boldly go into the future of EVs. Or at least a complicated way to put down a deposit on one. Because you see, DeLorean is also creating a marketplace to trade reservations, so that buyers of the NFTs can sell them. But first, you have to create a “Slush Wallet” on the DeLorean marketplace and convert cash to one of two cryptocurrencies that exist on the Sui platform. This means the $2,500 is non-refundable (it can be applied to the eventual purchase of an Alpha5).

But why? DeLorean could, in an ideal world, sell 4,000 reservations and take in $10 million. This is not a new thing for EV startups. The deposits could be fully or partially refundable or not. If not, DeLorean could use the proceeds to bring the car to market. This NFT maneuver seems to add a lot of needless steps to the process.

DeLorean Has Been There, Done That

DeLorean has been here before. In 2022, prior to the Alpha5 reveal, the company partnered with an outfit called NFT IQ, Inc. to create an “EV Digital Twin.”

“Each holder of DeLorean’s new Digital Twin technology secures a unique production slot from the Alpha5 EVs slated to be produced over the next several years in limited quantity,” the companies said in a statement. “Six months prior to production, the holder of the digital twin will be able to customize their Alpha5.”

Something seemed to go wrong with that in 2023, as the San Antonio Current reported at the time. The new crypto play seems similar, focusing on the concept of trading an NFT and not necessarily thinking of it as a claim on as-yet-unbuilt EV but as a sort of speculative asset whose value is based on brand buzz.

Blockchain as a way of storing and validating vehicle reservations has some advantages (and some major disadvantages, such as not forgetting your crypto passwords). But this latest effort from DeLorean looks like a way to stoke enthusiasm for a vehicle that doesn’t seem like it’s going to show up anytime soon.

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