Man from Chicago tries to fix $2 million concept van but disaster strikes during test drive

This is the Bright Idea, also nicknamed ‘space van’, a hybrid concept vehicle that cost $2 million to build.

This YouTuber bought it for peanuts and is now trying to fix it.

But things aren’t going well.

And then it got worse when the van broke down just as things were beginning to look up.

DISCOVER SBX CARS – Bid now on supercar auctions powered by Supercar Blondie

The reason why this concept is known as the ‘$2 million van’

Would you buy a used car that once cost $2 million?

Alex Palmeri, aka LegitStreetCars on YouTube, did exactly that by buying a ‘$2 million space van’ for just $1,500. He calls it the $2 million space van because that’s how much it cost to build.

Fun fact: This concept vehicle is actually called the ‘Bright Idea’, where Bright was the name of the company and Idea is the name of the vehicle.

Clearly, this Bright Idea wasn’t a bright idea.

The company went bust over a decade ago, which is how Alex was able to buy the van so cheap.

After buying the concept van for such a low amount of cash, Alex knew he was going to have to invest a lot more to get it running again.

And he wasn’t wrong.

There were issues with both the electric unit and the gas engine.

Specifically, the gas engine failed to start, chiefly due to corrosion on the ignition wiring.

Alex fixed the issue and finally set off, but his enthusiasm was short-lived, considering the car broke down after a few miles.

When EV startups fail

Most EV startups fail, sometimes quite spectacularly.

Whenever there’s a new EV company, everyone loves using the expression ‘Tesla killer’.

It was a title given to Rivian, which to be fair is doing well with trucks that are faster than some supercars.

Lucid was also branded with the same name, and although it isn’t outselling Tesla, it does occasionally snatch speed records from Elon Musk’s company.

Everyone said it about Fisker, a company that went bankrupt not once, but twice.

They also said the same about Nikola, an EV startup with an absurd story.

It was founded in 2014 and went public with a lot of fanfare and some nicely designed prototypes a few years later.

Then it all fell apart in 2021, when authorities discovered the prototypes were nothing but empty shells. It turns out the former CEO had lied about everything to inflate the company’s stock value.

The CEO obviously went to jail but, somehow, that didn’t kill the company. It survived another four years after reinventing itself as a hydrogen truck company.

But it really is over now: It filed for bankruptcy just a few weeks ago.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie