Sinclair C5 computers like the hugely successful ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, an affordable electric vehicle could unleash pent-up demand for a market that did not previously exist. However, Sinclair performed no market research to ascertain whether there was actually a market for his electric vehicle; as the director of the Primary Contact advertising agency commented in January 1985, the project continued all the way to the prototype stage "purely on the convictions of Sir Clive". With Sinclair's new specifications in hand, Ogle worked on a three-wheeled design dubbed the C5, which bore similarities with the earlier three-wheeled Bond Bug – another Ogle
Sinclair C5 a snow- and ice-covered hill – later prompted criticism even from Sinclair executives, who admitted off the record that spring conditions might have been better for a vehicle with so little protection from the British climate. The "Financial Times" called it "the worst possible timing to launch what was proclaimed to be a serious, road-going vehicle". Sinclair's biographer Rodney Dale describes it as "a calculated (or miscalculated) risk", pointing out that production was already underway, details were beginning to leak out to the press and "the launch could hardly have been held up until the possibility of a bright spring