Aptera Electric Car Goes Down

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The once promising Aptera – maker of weird-looking electric cars has called it quits.  The egg-shaped electric car that some believed (although not consumers, apparently) might actually be the electric car of the future couldn’t find solvency.

Aptera needed somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000,000 to obtain Federal matching money and received about one-quarter of that amount dooming their future.  Electric cars are finding it pretty tough sledding, and those companies that don’t have deep enough pockets are going to be dropping like flies over the next few years.  A pattern that is not uncommon at all for new technology companies.

The company has less than 30 employees, so it’s not a large company.  However, it had aspirations of employing 50 times that amount soon – and only if Federal money had ever been obtained.  So the company dissolves.

Yes, we feel for the Aptera faithful.  And for those that labored so much.  But lookin back in the history of American innovation, thousands of Apteras could tell of a similar story – whether in the electric car business or not.  New, progressive companies need money.  Generally, if investors don’t believe in a new product (for whatever reason), chances are that buyers would not believe either.  So, better to fail than to put the taxpayer on the hook for more than what buyers would have ever considered.

Here’s to the Aptera vision and the Aptera people, however.  Godspeed to new visions and new creations.