Great Scott! DeLorean sets a date for its electric resurrection (again)

DeLorean Motor Company

The most famous movie car of all time, the DeLorean, is an icon of sorts. It is a brand name that many people have tried to resurrect over the years, with varying degrees of success.

If you saw a headline that said the DeLorean was about to be reborn as an electric vehicle, you didn't read it.

The company that owns the branding rights and supplies parts to several thousand vintage DeLorean sports cars will be showing an electric concept car in August. The image showed off the rear taillights.

The Texas-based DeLorean Motor Company began teasing the reveal early this year, launching a social media campaign in February with the slogan "The Future was never promised", which is for a car that is mostly associated with a movie.

We have been down this road before. The company released a video in 2016 that promised a reborn DeLorean, but nothing came of it. A group of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, made a DeLorean do donuts, which was fun, but also reminded us of what we have been missing. If we are not careful, this latest version could disappear in a cloud of smoke.

The DMC-12 will be a concept car, which is a polite way of saying "vaporware."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave the green light to low-volume production of vintage replica cars last year, meaning there's a better chance we'll get a brand new replica DMC-12 before the electric car hits the road.

The DeLorean Motor Company appears to be willing to milk this sucker for everything it is worth. The company is planning on parking its bomb-looking EV on the lawn at Pebble Beach, as well as having three days of activations and events to generate hype leading up to the reveal. August 18th is when the official reveal will take place.

Italdesign is owned by Volkswagen and is a prestigious design shop that is working with DeLorean.

The DeLorean company is headed by a former executive of the Chinese-owned Karma, which has produced gas-powered and hybrid vehicles based on the intellectual property of Fisker.

What happens when you combine the parent company of the two brands, which is working on its own lineup of EV based on the MEB architecture, with a company that owns the branding rights to an icon? We might need to speed up to 88mph so we can find out.