After 6 Years, Aptera Motors Is No More

After years of beautiful concept cars, envy-inspiring demos, and missed production targets starting in 2008, high-efficiency car startup Aptera is liquidating its assets. A pointed excerpt from Wired's account: "The truth is, Aptera always faced long odds and has been in trouble for at least two years. The audience for a sperm-shaped, three-wheeled, electric two-seater was never anything but small. It didn’t help that production of the 2e — at one point promised for October 2009 — was continually delayed as Wilbur ordered redesigns to make it more appealing to the mainstream. Aptera had a small window in which to be a first mover in the affordable EV space, and that window closed the moment the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt hit the market. At that point, Aptera teetered on the brink of irrelevance." As a compulsive driver, I had been hoping to one day drive one of these to save gas money.

Comments

Who?

[hipp5]

Doesn't help that I'd never heard of them.

Re:Who?

[Shotgun]

That's nothing. If they had some contacts in a Democratic administration, they could have blown through $500 million.

As Usual

[Mikkeles]

'was continually delayed as Wilbur ordered redesigns to make it more appealing to the mainstream.'

The perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Re:As Usual

[Colin Smith]

The good enough always wins because "the perfect" is a figment of deranged and twisted egos.
 

Re:As Usual

[sandytaru]

The thing is, I liked the design the way it was. It was cute. It was the Jetson's car without the flying.

Re:As Usual

[optimism]

So...how shall we explain that the ego-designed iPod, iPhone, and iPad won over the "good enough" alternatives?

Snow.

[arthurpaliden]

The major problem with these 'concept' cars, not just this one, is that they are only drivable in places that never have winter. Which of course rules out most of the industrialized western world.

Re:Snow.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's wrong. You can drive them everywhere, even in places with winter, as long as there's no snow at the moment.

Re:Snow.

[arthurpaliden]

I'm not talking about batteries in an electric car. I am talking about sexy concept cars with small wheels, low clearance and no weight trying to drive through a few inches of wet snow and ice.

Re:Snow.

[budgenator]

Technically the Aptera would have been classified as a motorcycle as its a reverse tricycle, no helmet is needed because of the enclosed cabin. I've seen several reverse tricycles without enclosed cabins, driven as motorcycles not as automobiles. You could drive one 9 months a year without blinking an eye, and in reality there are only a few days a year when you'd have to drive an old beater 4X4 if you did have one.
I'd love to have one, outrageous fuel mileage and an exotic look gives it major geek appeal, look at how much an Edsel is worth now.

Re:Snow.

[sunderland56]

Technically the Aptera would have been classified as a motorcycle as its a reverse tricycle

This depends on where you are. Each country is different, and each US state is different. This has been a problem in the past for three-wheeled vehicle designs; it means that (a) to drive it you must have the motorcycle endorsement on your driving license (which few people have), and (b) in some places you would still need to wear a helmet.

And as far as your Edsel comparison goes - yes, this is *just* like an Edsel. Hideously ugly with no redeeming engineering features.

Re:Snow.

[arthurpaliden]

That said, in the parts of the urbanized western world where we do get snow every year, we usually remove it from the road within a few hours.

And where is this magical place where the roads are cleared within a few hours

wrong target audience

[roman_mir]

This car is interesting but it was aimed at the wrong consumer. US consumer cannot afford this vehicle, because US consumer is subsidized (especially now with the Government Motors), and all the various loans, that make it too cheap for the US consumer, who can't really afford the new cars buy them with government guaranteed loans.

The company should have moved the idea to China and started there and aimed at the local Chinese market. I think they were going with a more or less correct idea in terms of the product, but they were not doing it at the right time and definitely not aiming it at the right clients.

Re:wrong target audience

[FooAtWFU]

The Chinese luxury market is huge right now and easily dropping kilobucks and megabucks on all sorts of status symbols. Of course, once you're in that market, you don't care about fuel costs and you can find a better status symbol than that thing.

Re:wrong target audience

[TheLink]

I doubt anyone in China who wants a car would buy the Aptera. This is what they buy:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/01/chinas-best-selling-cars-of-2010/
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1909818,00.html

As for elsewhere, who (other than car collectors like Jay Leno) would buy an Aptera? And why? If I had USD20K to spend on a vehicle I'd certainly buy something else. More range, more seating capacity.

If I was rich and was going to buy an electric vehicle just for "cool factor", I'd buy something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5xf1zWSuWc :)

It's a toy "trike" and looks like it.

[couchslug]

Trikes are registered as motorcycles in the US in the same way as a conventional MC with a side car.

They aren't serious transportation. They are fun, but don't have the AGILITY of a two-wheeler or the STABILITY of a four-wheeler (wheels under each corner come in handy).

This isn't a blow against practical EVs, it's just one less toy. Since trikes don't have to meet crash standards, it was an understandable workaround....that's been done before....but makes it a toy.

I just want something to get to and from the train

[RandomFactor]

Another one bites the dust...

Is there anything out there yet that is

  - reasonably inexpensive
  - short-mid range capable (long range not required, i have a regular car if needed)
  - charges on house current (prefer all-electric)
  - reasonably road safe
  - can still keep me reasonably warm in winter (cool in summer a plus, but not as important)
  - has a radio
  -some cargo/passenger room would be nice to have since the grocery stores are only a few miles away
  - Doesn't really need to top 45mph, I'm thinking train commute (back-roads, grocery run, maybe occasional kid pickup from school)

Appearance is not a major consideration.

Really what I need seems to be in a sweet spot between CEV and general use passenger car. Is there such a thing out there? Am I missing something? Economics still seem to point to cheap gas vehicles (which is vaguely annoying).

Died in 2008 with the hiring of Paul Wilbur

[Shivetya]

He ousted two of the originals and was a old school car guy, it was no wonder that nothing that had been created before he arrived would ever satisfy him, nor much of any chance innovation was going to stick.

Aptera vs Solyndra

[Doc Ruby]

House Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been holding hearings on the corruption he accuses Obama having when Federal loan guarantees were given to Solyndra, the large solar startup that went out of business this year. Issa has also been busy denying his own work using his own power to try to get the same loan guarantees for Aptera, which is in his own district. Now Aptera has also failed. Will Issa investigate himself for corruption?

Re:Aptera vs Solyndra

[Attila Dimedici]

Were Aptera's investors major donors to Issa's campaign? If not, there is no comparison with the Solyndra case. Additionally, while Aptera may not have been a good choice for a government loan (I do not know, but their going out of business now suggests that maybe so), it was in Issa's district. It is part of his job to assist companies in his district in dealing with the federal government. At no point in any of the letters that are quoted in your link did he do any more than say he was requesting that Aptera's application be "given full consideration." If Issa's letter had brought up legislation in front of his committee as well as the loan guarantee, then there would be something to this comparison. In the Solyndra case, the loan appears to have been approved over the objections of the non-political staff at the Energy Department...not only that, when it became obvious that Solyndra was going bankrupt the loans were re-written so that the investors would get their money out before the loans were repaid in bankruptcy.
This does not mean that I approve of Issa's support for Aptera, just that it appears to be a different class of problem from Solyndra.

Re:Aptera vs Solyndra

[laird]

Solyndra's investors weren't particularly Obama donors - the Waltons (i.e. Walmart) were major investors, and they're hardly Obama fans. Keep in mind also that Solyndra was started and was fast-tracked for funding under a DOE program started under Bush, and Obama's [ep[;e actually slowed things down, did more due diligence, and put more protections in place around the loans that ended up saving us money by pulling the plug on the company. Despite Issa's partisan spinning, this isn't something to blame Obama on - any time the government sets up a fund to promote businesses, some of those businesses will succeed and some will fail, and Solyndra failed because China radically dropped the price of solar cells, wiping out Solyndra's market. The real problem isn't that the US government set up a fund to encourage solar development, it's that the US started years later than China, and with a much lower level of investment, so China is beating us. The answer isn't to give up, it's to compete harder.

Re:Aptera vs Solyndra

[Attila Dimedici]

It was not "fast-tracked" for funding under Bush. The Solyndra loan was put on hold by the Bush Administration (at least partly because they were not going to be able to complete evaluation before the transition and therefore left it for the new Administration to reach a decision). The Obama Administration may have put more "due diligence" in place, but they then made a decision before that "due diligence" was completed. Somebody from the DOE predicted that Solyndra would go bankrupt in September of 2011 before the DOE renegotiated the loan guarantees so that the investors would get paid first, then, what do you know, Solyndra went bankrupt in September 2011. The Administration is trying to claim that the email predicting the bankruptcy was talking about something else, but this is the same Administration that claims upper levels of the Administration were unaware of Project Fast & Furious when they were making speeches touting the program.

The problem...

[Lumpy]

If your wierd car costs $20K-$40K then I can tell you without a doubt that you will fail instantly.
Wierd and efficient cars need to target the sub $9000 price point for a econo 2 seater. There are a metric buttload more buyers at that price point than the more likely $40K per car point that it would have ended up at.

Chevy understood this as well as Nissan. They are producing incredibly few Volts and Leafs because they know there is no market for an economy car at $40K. the economics of the cars do not make any sense to anyone, and the only buyers will be "look at me I'm green! LOOK AT ME!!!!!" people who have a lot of money for a toy. If the chevy volt looked 100% identical to a $15,000 car it would have sold nothing at all because there is no "LOOK AT ME!!1!1!" factor.

Honda Civic new is $16,000. Chevy Sonic is $15,000 Both get 40mpg. If your car costs MORE than that you are set up for Instant-FAIL. Even if it was to get 60mpg. In reality a new, never heard of company needs to be way,way, under that to get sales because nobody wants to "risk" getting stuck with a poorly built or defective car from a unknown car company.

Re:The problem...

[jeti]

If you're new to building cars, you can't go for cheap. You can't compete with mass-produced cars on price and you don't have the capital to set up mass production. If the manual labor required for assembling your car makes it 10k more expensive than a comparable car of a big company, your best hope is to produce cars for a market segment where the uniqueness of your model is worth the additional cost to enough customers.

That's why most small car companies produce super sports cars. It doesn't matter if they cost 210k instead of 200k. But selling a small car for 25k when the competing product costs 15k just doesn't work. Tesla was smart to start with the Roadster. Now they have the means to go after a bigger market with the Sedan.

Re:The problem...

[Bill Dimm]

BTW why doesn't electric street motorcycles get more attention?

Motorcycle riders can't figure out how to take the baffles out, so they'll never catch on.

It's difficult

[JBMcB]

Building a concept car is relatively easy. Making a limited production run of expensive one-offs is also pretty easy. Mass producing a car affordable for the general market at a profit is *insanely* difficult. Basically, your quality has to be near-perfect, because one recall to fix a defective CV joint or door latch will blow your profit margin out of the water. So will rising commodity prices. So will rising labor prices. So will changing regulations. So will dozens of factors you probably haven't even thought about.

Re:I just want something to get to and from the tr

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Find yourself a cheap econobox gasser and convert it to electric. I have a soft spot for 1st generation Saturns since they're light and reasonably resistant to rust. It's not THAT expensive to do (US$10K in parts plus your labor) since the original car is practically free.

http://www.phoenixeaa.com/photoalbum/streetevs/suiter1/main.html

Oil prices will never be permanently high

[Colin Smith]

High oil prices destroy demand, causes recession and subsequent price collapse of oil.

Anyone who is going to market a replacement vehicle for oil based ones is going to have to market it to people who cannot afford oil when it's low. i.e. it hast to be cheap. Think TATA motors Nano, but electric and with reasonable range, which is a pricing challenge.

~$100 is the new low BTW.

Re:I am shocked! Surprised! Horrified!

[laird]

The Aptera looks like it does for a reason - its primary goal is efficiency, which is how they got over 200 MPG.

But to do that, they had to not waste energy pushing the car through the air. So they made it aerodynamic, so it looks like an airplane rather than the traditional "box on wheels." And their initial target was a two seater, which is most efficient (because most driving is 1-2 people, and with a two seater you're pushing around less mass).

A year ago (apparently) marketplace realities kicked in. That is, while sedans are less efficient, people prefer buying them because it's useful to be able to carry more people when you need to. So the marketplace for sedans is much larger than two seaters, making it a much smarter business to be in. But since they didn't get their funding, we'll never know how that would have played out.

Though I would love to see what a truly efficient sedan might look like.

Very disappointed

[sandytaru]

I've been watching them since they first started working on the car. I cheered them on at the EV races two years ago. The Aptera was a great concept car that showed energy efficiency could look really cool in a way that no other EV has quite achieved yet. Even if it had a plain old boring conventional motor, the aerodynamic shape would have given it a good boost in gas mileage, and it just looked stylish. It really is a pity.

so much hate

[0111 1110]

What's with all the hate for the Aptera? Did the owner rape your sister or something? I can't believe so many of you are getting so worked up about hating this guy and his company and his car. I smell some kind of agenda, although I can't imagine what it could possibly be. Maybe you guys work for companies that make those pathetic hybrids that barely get more than 50 mpg? It was a concept car that never made it off the ground. It could have been any small automotive startup. The fact that it was a car that looked like an airplane and got much higher gas mileage than anything else on the road in North America is not why they failed. Even for major manufacturers, most concept cars never see the light of day. I would have bought an Aptera if they could have sold it for less than 30k. It was strikingly beautiful and had an incredibly low coefficient of drag. I think it would have been one of the best cars ever made.

For now I will continue to salivate over Volkswagen's efforts with the XL1. Although I much prefered the former, more radical, tandem 2 seater L1 A real jetson-mobile.

Re:so much hate

[luther349]

agreed. many concepts no matter how good most of the time they relies the car will be to expensive. wile 4 years ago they might have been able to get in the market with a mid cost ev now they have to compete with the the volt that is the same thing. wile it might be only 40 miles on the battery's alone on the volt thats enough for most people for in town driving and if its not use the gas engine/hybred modes. but even the volt cost to much to ever get the gas saving back in extra cost.

WTF?

[bussdriver]

Sperm shaped? WTF? It looks like a small aircraft without the wings -- there was so much hate for something truly different.

I'm hoping they open source the designs or enough leaks out so somebody can put out a kit car or something. I'd bite.

Re:I am shocked! Surprised! Horrified!

[Rei]

That's absolutely not true in the least. They were getting about 100Wh/mi at 55mph on flat ground. Do you realize how incredible that is for a full size non-cramped two-passenger EV with full safety, climate control, entertainment, etc systems?

At highway speeds, aerodynamic drag is the dominant energy loss mechanism. Drag is proportional to cross-sectional area (rounded body = corners cut off, and the driver in the Aptera vehicles is a bit more tilted back) and drag coefficient (which *dramatically* varies between vehicles, and was obscenely low on their vehicles). We're talking less total aerodynamic drag at a given speed than a person riding a bike.

The main drag mechanisms on a passenger vehicle are:
  * Road turbulence
  * Wheel turbulence
  * Turbulence from protrusions (mirrors, wipers, etc)
  * Wake turbulence (a *big* one)

A smooth underside dramatically reduces turbulence between the vehicle and the road. Shrouded wheels dramatically reduce wheel turbulence. The Aptera (depending on the version) either eliminates or significantly reduces mirror presence, and the windshield wipers are shrouded (and the antenna is concealed, and all sorts of other such issues). And most importantly they do dramatic things to reduce wake turbulence. Rather than a kammback and vortex generators, they simply keep laminar flow adhering to the skin all the way to the rear, which is a superior solution (which is why aircraft, where aerodynamic drag is utterly critical, use it). And what little bit of wake turbulence is left is filled in with internal air, like the wake-filling rockets on some modern artillery shells.

There's a lot of complexities to vehicle drag, mind you, such as the effects of crosswinds on the drag coefficient, but your statement is just flat-out wrong.

And FYI, Wilbur totalled the vehicle with a redesign, turning it into a bloated, heavy, higher drag monstrosity, which they entered into the X-prize with minimal testing.