i liked this concept from the start. need kind of elbows to secure your space on that market. shure though we\'ll see that one on the road cos it\'s perfect in function ... let\'s not talk about the rollover test. maybe two back-wheels 4ft wide would give it the necessary grip for dangerous driving.

They tried to reach too far. This would always have been a low-production niche vehicle, not mainstream. It might have had better acceptance, and actual production and sales, if they had introduced a gas(petrol) -engine variant first, followed by a gas(petrol)/electric hybrid, then finally the electric version. Businesses usually fail due to bad business decisions, this failed due to ideological shortsightedness.

I hate to speak ill of the recently departed, but this always reeked of vaporware to me. At best, I could imagine it becoming a 21st century counterpart of the DeLorean, something that would sell only a few thousand vehicles. But the Aptera never even made it that far. Heck, it didn\'t even make it as far as the Tucker \'48, where a few cars were built and today are in the hands of collectors and museums. Nothing but testbeds here, not even limited production.

Yet another Solyndra - even down to the taxpayer funding. There\'s plenty of other cool tech that understands you have to serve multiple purposes for the customer, not just one. A sign of business maturity is to listen to the customer closely. If they\'re not buying, find out why - and quickly. A religious deathgrip on Global Warming is not enough.
Or if they\'re not buying, just do a GM and get billions in bailouts to produce the next Chevy Volt bonfire. If it\'s green, it can suck totally and still be cool. For awhile at least.

People in India would buy one billion of these cars if it has a purchase price of $4,000.00 each.

There were buyers, as denoted in the pre-sale deposits, but none sold? Why was this? Owners talking about and driving the vehicles would have been the best marketing, especially since attention is drawn to the vehicle\'s uniqueness.
Model change after model change, and none of them put on the ground. The technique of Fire, Adjust, Fire, Adjust, was not used. Nobody fired.
Why oust the diesel-electric hybrid? If the environment was a concern, a bio-diesel fuel alternative could have been promoted.
Obviously, more transpired than what this article provides. I would appreciate someone \"in the know\" to comment in this space.

is the terrafugea based on this in anyway? I mean take a look!

Aptera should have learned the lesson from TaTa and Apple and build a simple, good enough car. Do a introduction program liked BMW with their electric car to test and adjust. It\'s a shame that the company went under because of bad management team.

This comes as no suprize to me. But sadly most of these companies are OPM (other people\'s money) companies (\"vaporware\" as Gageteer puts it), meaning they take a great idea, manage to get some backing, market the heck out of it, get more backing, finally they need to come up with something to show for it, build a prototype, dog and pony that around, get more backing, repeat as necessary until reatily finally catches up. Pretty much the great idea is lost in the ability to make a fine living and not do anything with the idea. In this case, as in most, the great idea was poorly executed, meaning too narrow of a focus and too little of a market to start with as pointed out by WTL and TD. I liked the idea and still do, but this car was a very bad execution in fulfilling the consumers needs, as also pointed out above. In all likelyhood, there was never any intention to manufacture the car. I\'ve seen first hand, fake assembly lines in OPM companies intended to WOW potential investors, but nothing ever gets built, with the exception of a prototype or two to take to trade shows and demo for investors. A sad reality for those truely great ideas that will never see enough money to get as far as Aptera.

like the concept, great ideas, but the car is ugly, it looks like a slug, or a sperm \"...it was perhaps a bit too extreme for the average buyer...\" water it down all you like, but its ugly. No matter what kind of innovation is put into it when you talk about sales the aesthetic factor will always come into play.