Hybrid/Plug-in Aptera

[csl177]

Has anyone here looked over the potential of this "car" yet? I couldn't pull images out of their website so here it is...

Aptera

It's a 3-wheeler so it's technically considered a motorcycle. The styling and engineering considerations are impressive and compelling for a future car.
Production supposedly begins this year. Considering how most people use
cars and rapidly increasing fuel costs, this looks pretty neat to me.

[Dary]

Sorry i don't know anything about it
and those photos from wallpapers section at the same web site

[coolieman1220]

read about it, shaped like a tear drop, to cost like under 30K and get like 300 miles to the gallon or something

[f6fhellcat13]

Watch Aptera employees smash prototype electric cars as company goes under

A shame.

[Matra et Alpine]

Being the US, I suspect they had to destroy them to avoid them ever being used and any defect ending up in a lawsuit

[NSXType-R]

Not surprising, it's very difficult to run a new car company.

[csl177]

I had hopes Google (or some other whale) would step in as the tech and concept are compelling. A shame there were several engineering issues improperly addressed all while money was tight, but the transportation industry needs revolutionary ideas. Matra's probably right about liability, but those were just shells... haven't seen any news of destroying complete cars. Molds and plans are somewhere, maybe it's not the last we'll see of the Aptera.

The latest from Reuters:

(Reuters) - Aptera, the California startup best known for developing a space age-looking, three-wheeled car, has closed its doors after failing to raise the funds needed to put its ultra-efficient vehicles on the road.

The company had received a conditional offer for a $150 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, but failed to secure the $80 million in private investment needed to close that financing, Chief Executive Paul Wilbur said on Friday.

“A couple of years ago the market was pretty gung-ho about new EV companies starting up,” Wilbur said in an interview, noting that production delays and ballooning capital requirements at car startups like Tesla Motors Inc. and Fisker Automotive have spooked many venture capitalists.

“There is a hesitancy now for investors to put large capital into almost any investment, but the automotive investment — it’s pretty difficult to find those investors.”

In particular, Aptera failed to find a lead investor to inject about $50 million into the company.

“We were looking for a big dog to lead the way,” Wilbur said.

Aptera’s investors include technology incubator Idealab, Google and NRG Energy Inc. Its primary backer was Idealab, which was the sole investor in Aptera’s first VC round in April 2007, a $20 million investment, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). Aptera raised another $4 million from Idealab, Google.org (Google’s philanthropic arm) and Esenjay Investments in July 2008, then it picked up a $2.23 million bridge loan from Idealab in July of this year, Thomson Reuters reports.

Five years ago, venture capitalists thought electric vehicles were promising. Venture Capital Journal (peHUB’s sister publication) reported in September 2007 that venture firms had invested $216 million in electric vehicles in the prior 16 months. (VCJ subscribers can read that story and see a detailed table of investments by clicking here.)

Aptera will not file for bankruptcy, Wilbur said, but rather will implement “an orderly liquidation.”

The company is in talks with several prospective buyers on selling some of its technologies, Wilbur said.

Carlsbad, California-based Aptera’s closing was announced in a press statement earlier on Friday. In the statement, Wilbur said the company had been in talks to reactivate a mothballed automotive plant in Moraine, Ohio, for production of its first commercial vehicle. The action would have created 1,400 jobs.

Though best known for its first planned vehicle, a three-wheeled car often likened to one from the 1960s cartoon “The Jetsons,” Aptera planned to use its Department of Energy loan to bring a four-wheeled, five-passenger electric sedan to market.

The vehicle aimed to deliver the equivalent of more than 190 miles per gallon and a 130 mile range at a cost of less than $30,000.

“We had all of our commercialization plans in place. We were a check away from going into production,” Wilbur said.

Like Tesla, Fisker and Coda Automotive, Aptera was one of a handful of young, West Coast-based companies making cars designed to save gasoline and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But American consumers have been slow to embrace electric and rechargeable vehicles, in part because of their additional cost. In recent weeks, the vehicles have taken another public relations hit after federal safety officials opened a probe into battery fires in General Motors Co.’s plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt.

By Nichola Groom, Reuters

[Kitdy]

The green/electric car scene is of little interest to me, but this project held my attention due to the sheer beauty and elegance of the car.

[pimento]

Four videos have surfaced showing what is understood to be the destructive aftermath following news of Aptera's closure last week. Without knowing for certain what's happening, the videos appear to depict employees (or former employees) laughing as they trash prototype bodyshells of the three-wheeled, hyper-efficient vehicle.

Using a forklift, the people in the videos crush a bodyshell against the wall, drop on from on high and then put it into a dumpster. At the end of the first video, someone says, "None of this shit ends up on YouTube." In another, an off-screen voice asks, "How much do you think these videos are worth?" Well, now that they're publicly available, not much, but at the very least, these videos suggest that the shells were pretty sturdy. That's worth something, right?

This all has the potential to go from bad to worse very quickly. Steve Fambro, Former Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of Aptera, wrote on the Aptera forum that, "There is no viable or logical reason for this to have been done, only to prevent the founders from ever seeing their functioning works again."

Earlier, Aptera co-founder Chris Anthony wrote on the Aptera forum that the overall plan for the company once it went out of business was to put the assets into:

a trust with a very well respected Managed Liquidation Company. Their responsibility is to maximize the value of the remaining assets for the benefit of debt and share holders. There are no employees at Aptera and no Board of Directors. Everything that is Aptera, in terms of assets and IP, are now held by the Managed Liquidation Company.

This process to establish how the liquidation will occur has begun, but will take several weeks to be fully defined. Eventually, the assets will be auctioned off to the highest bidder to do with what they choose.

It is the responsibility of the managed liquidation company to protect Aptera's assets and maximize their value now. They were there when the doors were closed and hold the only access to these assets now.

Nothing will be destroyed, taken away, or otherwise impacted in a way that value will be decreased.

Source

Seems like it's not a liability reducing thing..

[Kitdy]

That is upsetting. Seeing such an elegant machine destroyed is upsetting. I did not watch the videos.

[ruim20]

A real shame, one of my future dream cars, i'm genuinely sad about this. i guess that's what you get when you put an incopetent in charge, would you really ask someone that ran 2 o 3 good companys to the ground to come and take care of your business?

[Dino Scuderia]

Seems like it's not a liability reducing thing..

You can be sued for saying that!

[NSXType-R]

To be very honest I didn't really have any high hopes for any electric car start up.

[pimento]

You can be sued for saying that!

Bring it! They can fly me over for it, I'll have a nice holiday.