Daymak revealed the first “production-look” prototype of its 85 mph, light-electric three-wheeler, the Daymak Spiritus, back in October. At the time, it was thought to be a static display piece – but now? It’s a runner, and we’ve got video.
The video was posted with the description “The Spiritus 3-Wheel All Electric Car first drive test,” by Mike Chow, Vice President of R&D at Daymak, Inc., on what appears to be his personal YouTube channel (the only other videos on there feature Chow swinging a Bo staff, Donatello-style, in the park – dude is pretty legit, too).
In that video, the Daymak Spiritus does a whole bunch of regular car stuff. It drives around a parking lot. It goes down a road. Nothing Earth-shattering, in and of itself … but it’s moving under its own power, and its message is clear: the Spiritus is real.
Daymak Spiritus first test drive
The Spiritus is far from the only three-wheeler out there, of course, but it gained some notoriety when it was revealed, at an invitation-only event held at York University, Toronto last month, that it would the world’s first electric vehicle to mine cryptocurrency in its downtime as a matter of course when it enters production.
Looked at in a certain light, the Spiritus is, quite literally, a car that can pay for itself. “(We are) excited to showcase and explain our exciting new IPs, such as the Ondata wireless charging system and the Nebula cryptocurrency suite,” explained Aldo Baiocchi, President of Daymak. “The blockchain revolution is reshaping the financial sphere across all industries, and Daymak is proud to push the boundaries of the transportation industry … with a car that was financed partially through crypto mining and crypto payments.”
Daymak has a stated goal of building as many as 50,000 of the electric Spiritus three-wheelers per year in Ontario, Canada, where it hopes to create hundreds of manufacturing and technology jobs along with its partners, EV Battery Tech and IONiX Pro. The company is currently said to be finalizing its blueprints for a 425,000 square foot facility where all of its premium “Avvenire” branded products will eventually be built.
Electrek’s Take
As far as we know know, Daymak has built one (1) running prototype and has plans to build four more in the coming months. If the $250 million in pre-orders it claimed to have last May is real (with, presumably, many more having been ordered in the months since), that is precious little to show for it – especially from a CEO that said, in that May 2021 announcement, “We’ve been building electric vehicles since 2002, have a world-class global distribution network, and are the right people to make this vision come to life.”
Daymak has shown excellent design chops, clever thinking, and (like Sony) seems to have enough sense to take things slow. The real question now is, when it comes time to deliver at scale, will Daymak be able to overcome that inertia, or will it be too distracted by its crypto projects to deliver?
Source | Images: Daymak, via Mike Chow.
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