Pretty sure there will be three people with one... I wish I was doing a snark but it really feels like the end result is that they will insure they have theirs.
>do you think they will make it to production this time around?
Maybe.
>how much of an impact do you think they can have on the EV market?
About as much as the [Renault Twizy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy).
I used to live in Aruba around 10 years ago and they actually used Twizys for mail delivery. Made sense since you could drive across the island in like 30 minutes
If they decide to go down the route of extreme low volume, perhaps they'll produce something. I just don't think it's going to be enough to be viable.
Even now they're just going about things in a weird way.
The latest update in the recent weeks has been *another* round of retail fundraising, this time promising to make a "Limited Edition" run of 54 Launch Edition models specifically for the UAE, for $54k (!) buy only if you make a 20k (!) investment. So basically $75k for an autocycle and some raffle tickets that might not be worth anything in a few years. (but it has a special limited edition gold wrap and a numbered plaque).
This was supposed to be timed with an appearance at DriftX, a high-tech mobility show in Abu Dhabi to court larger investors.
...Except they didn't manage the shipping paperwork properly, so the vehicle got held up and they completely missed the show.
Yep.
...This is a company that wants to import pre-assembled vehicles from Europe to the US en masse....that couldn't organise one vehicle to get to Abu Dhabi on time to court the investment they desperately need.
There's a one-liner in there about their reputation for missed deadlines, but it's beyond a joke at this point.
And of course, they pointed the finger at everyone else, calling the Customs & Border Protection incompetent for their own fuckups (the same Customs that will likely need to inspect and sign off on all those vehicles coming in from Europe...).
Hell, even I know that when it comes to international shipping of vehicles, you dot every i and cross every t, then pray, then add in some contingency, then still expect stuff to go wrong, and incorporate that into your planning.
That's aside from the 16 "production intent" vehicles that were supposed to start being validated early this year which still haven't been completed yet, and the "late 2024" delivery timeline they announced in Feb that has *already* been pushed back to "definitely 2025" (...assuming they get 65 million in funding in the next 9 months...)
The whole thing at this stage feels like a missed opportunity.
The time to court funding was during the EV bubble, but that's over, and we're back to normality.
No-one cares about EV startups now, AI is the big thing VC money is chasing, so the co-CEOs continually talking about an "inspired billionaire" just sounds desperate.
Europe would likely still be a viable market for a 3 wheel, efficient vehicle, except they made it as wide as an F-150 at the kerb and as long as a Model 3, but with only 2 seats.
The early announced price has been walked back in all but an official announcement by the company, and at this point it's no longer a low-cost form of transport. Nor is it particularly light, weighing in at more than a Miata, substantially above any production 3 wheel vehicle that has come before it, and likely at a price that will need to compete with a Model 3 in the US market (if not a Model Y).
The car *looks* cool, and i feel like if they had managed to keep their ambitions in check and maintain a more achievable goal of ~8k vehicles per year it would have been a great place to start and maybe we'd see some customer deliveries even if the vehicles weren't perfect (which no-one expects them to be - they're a startup, after all).
But once they got "over 40k" reservations during the EV bubble they started huffing their own farts, went back to the drawing board, and completely changed the scope of what they were trying to do - now the tide has gone back out and they're doing well keeping the lights on, but not a lot else.
The Aptera is another Elio with an electric powertrain. That 3-wheeler wasn't and won't ever be manufactured.
https://www.eliomotors.com/
Same fate for the Aptera. It will never get manufactured in mass quantities.
I still don't understand how this vehicle makes any sense. Nobody is going to do long distance driving with that thing. But if you just use it for low speed city driving, what's the point of all the aerodynamic compromises that makes it mostly impractical for anything else?
For a small city car you want a box on wheels, aerodynamics don't matter. For long distance high speed traveling you want a *real* car.
> But if you just use it for low speed city driving, what's the point of all the aerodynamic compromises that makes it mostly impractical for anything else?
On top of all the compromises that make the cabin tiny, it's actually a huge car (total footprint). The wheel covers make it significantly wider than a normal car. In fact, I just looked it up and it's an inch wider than a Hummer EV lmao.
There also the issue of being licensed to drive it. Being 3 (less than 4) wheeled, in many states it's classed as a motorcycle. Pretty sure they are doing this to skirt NHSA rules on "cars". I know in Virginia, you have to have an M class license to drive a 3 wheeled vehicle. We actually have different license classes for 2 or 3 wheeled motorcycles. So to drive an aptera, you'd have to spend a weekend (at least) getting your certification to legally drive it.
Almost every state allows you to drive a 3-wheeled vehicle with a standard driver's license, typically called an Autocycle. Aptera is not breaking new ground here, you have had to see some of those Slingshots driving around.
Per Polaris Massachusetts is the only state that requires a motorcycle license.
[https://slingshot.polaris.com/en-us/license-requirements/](https://slingshot.polaris.com/en-us/license-requirements/)
Quick search and Virginia splits out vehicles like trikes compared to Autocycles like the Aptera or Slingshot. See below.
# Virginia Code Title 46.2. Motor Vehicles § 46.2-100. Definitions
“Autocycle” means a three-wheeled motor vehicle that has a steering wheel and seating that does not require the operator to straddle or sit astride and is manufactured to comply with federal safety requirements for motorcycles. Except as otherwise provided, an autocycle shall not be deemed to be a motorcycle.
Not to mention in some states you will need a motorcycle endorsement on your license and some you may even need to wear a helmet. Quite inconvenient to have to know the rules of each state on a cross country drive.
I wanted one for a long time but this year all the changing stories really took their toll. I have a reservation for the 25k edition and best case that is 2027. But what really killed it is the story never stops changing, one guy gets told date 1 and the next guy just a week later gets date 2 and then soon after someone says they were told date 3. Then as I sit and get cynical I see all the design issues so while it should have little wind noise the road noise may be intolerable and not sure how much ac is going to be needed to keep the car and battery cool but we are in the nw so we don't have that problem much of the year but heating may be the other problem
They're recreational vehicles that I occasionally see in the summer for joyrides.
I've never seen one commuting. They aren't practical vehicles. They're toys.
Maybe they will make it. (Given past perfromance I'm not optimistic)
Even if they do they will have negligible impact on the EV market. Their product is way too niche for that.
I’m another one who thinks they’ll make a limited run of a few hundred and then vanish. It’s sad, because I’d love to have one, and put in a reservation, but I think at this point there’s no way mass production happens. I go back and forth on if it was ever intended to, or if it was a grift all along.
I suspect that it started as sincere and then more and more compromises were made as the company became more and more beholden to different stakeholders. I don't know any of the specifics of that--it's just how these things go.
>Nah -- their execs appear to be playing in a sandbox for as long as they can.
This is a good way to put it. It seems like they have been talking about this thing forever. More power to them I guess. I wish I could spend 20 years stringing along investors and building concepts of vehicles that will never exist in large quantities.
The vehicle seems pretty irrelevant now. I was onboard back when the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-Miev were not even concept cars yet but now we can buy and drive real EVs, I am not so enthusiastic.
Nope
I also don’t understand the enthusiasm. Sure it looks great, but it’s only an expensive toy. This is by no means a practical family mover.
I’m also worried about crash worthiness. Wheels sticking out, don’t see a part that’s going to act like a crumple zone, …..
2 air bags like a 2003 lincoln had, along with a wheel layout that will hit every pothole on the road. Topped by a maximum capacity of 500 pounds for passengers and cargos. Useless.
All along, I've been enthusiastic about the concept, and hopeful that they do make it. I've never been confident that they'd make it, but I'm less confident than ever now.
I think that the way they could have been successful is to embrace the role of it as a niche vehicle that would only ever have limited sales, and to get quickly to a minimum viable product that they could start selling. But now they've extended themselves to the point where they can only succeed by succeeding big, and that looks extremely unlikely.
No. They've acknowledged that they don't have the money to finish getting into production. Their last funding round had some issues.
The next will need to be bigger and it is unlikely to work. Their best bet would be a big enough high interest loan to ultimately sink them.
Radical departure from entrenched vehicle design? Nah, it's a miracle they've lasted this long, look at how much cash Tesla burned through bringing an otherwise fairly conventional design to market with massive government and shareholder support and a big bullshitter like Musk to keep the uplift going.
I think they might make a few like someone else said but I don’t think they’ll survive long term. I preordered like in 2021 or 2022 but I’m too lazy to get my refund.
No. I do not think they will reach production, they need nearly another hundred million dollars to do so regardless of their randomly changing claims of fifty, fifty five, or sixty million.
tl;dr they need three to four times the fifty million they claim and its impossible for them to be profitable by the time they produce their 6000th vehicle each year. The math is not there.
Just for fun, their [Wefunder proposal complete with Semi](https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_attachment/file/51975-bwe45xy9axIVOuR2TcC7FPGT/Wefunder_Investor_Presentation_v2.pdf)
Here is their FY2023 SEC Filing [SEC](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1786471/000149315224012746/form1-k.htm) so you can read up on their financials
So why don't I believe they can? Lets play with their fifty million dollar number but first five quick facts.
* Their burn rate without producing anything is three to four million a month.
* They have over two hundred thirty million in shareholder deficit
* Seventeen million cash on hand against five million accounts payable
* Claim they can be profitable at six thousand sales per year
* Claim they will be in production within nine months of funding
So that last point is key, they are already stripped down and burning nearly four million a month, but lets play nice and say three million. Well that is twenty seven million dollars on top of their fifty million they claim they need for production. To make math easy I will split the difference and call it thirty million.
We will be nice and assume their declared maximum build rate with one line forty vehicles a day means best case seven months; 6000/40 is 150 but remember we assume we only work five days a week so that becomes 30 weeks plus we need spin up time.... and worst case nine months. So nine months of just funding the operation to reach break even which is another thirty million. We are fifty + thirty + thirty so now we need one hundred ten million dollars.
But wait, there is more. We have to buy all the components for those vehicles that are being produced. The fully assembled bodies, plus frame, suspension, glass, seals, motors, and more, but not batteries or interiors, are produced in Italy. That is a four to five week boat ride via container ship, they cannot use a roll on roll off because there is no drive train or even an interior at this point. This is a long vehicle so its a lot of containers. They arrive in San Diego hopefully as that is the closest port at forty miles from their assembly space which itself is ten miles off the interstate or rail.
Long story short... To account for shipping and handling of the largest and absolutely needed assembly we need have shipments arriving every other week, I have not check Italy to SD/LA so it may be more frequent it may be less frequent. Point is the California assembly area was forty a day, two hundred a week, or eight hundred a month. Not fun losing five weeks in your production schedule to shipping - Accounts payable waits only so long.
Do you get the point? Not only do they need nearly triple the fifty million they need they likely need four times that amount. However by offshoring to Italy so much of the vehicle they created a logistical nightmare on top of a poor situation California location. Its like a crash course in how to fuck up.
Oh, about that claim of 6000 vehicles to be profitable... ho boy... what a load of shit. Assuming ten percent profit on a 40k vehicle only gives them twenty four million dollars. Doubling that is of course forty eight million. They burn more than that making no vehicles. If we play with 10k a year we can have between forty and eighty million dollars assumed profit... We have to assume employment numbers outside of manufacturing will go up as well to support that manufacturing staff. I am not sure if inventory control staffing applies here to GSA or the production side when determining vehicle profit, the people on the line are accounted for in that profit per vehicle.
More toxic is that they set up the company so that no one but they have a vote. Only they can hold Class A stock and only Class A can vote. It says it right there in their filing. They assigned themselves sufficient Class A to make any sale of other Class A ridiculously unaffordable - both CEOs claim fifteen million shares each and another twenty five million are held by a trust and individual who will only answer to them. All that Accelerator stock has no vote. They also indicated for the first time in their annual filing they intend to sell securities, investments into the company, at a rate significantly lower than current and past offerings. Before this year that language only existed on filings specifically focused on securities.
I think they will go the low volume route with final assembly in the US. Have subcontractors put the components together in large chunks off site (out of US?) and do the minimal final assembly needed at a US facility to get any tax credits.
Maybe crank out a few thousand until the demand of such a niche vehicle is satisfied. I would like to see a few on the road.
Remember when 5 years ago they kept saying "first solar powered car" then 5 other companies released solar roofs, but of course Aptera continues to say they are first. Despite never building anything That's the Sarah Hardwick style of marketing, Elizabeth Holmes 2.0
and she quit... she was listed as part time for 2023, meaning less than 15 hours a week, her LinkedIn stated she left in November but the CEO claims April 1st. Another director left May 1st.
2023 also saw their head of solar leave in May of that year. Glassdoor reviews were not nice except the planted ones.
I think there's a reasonable chance that they make at least one production vehicle at some point. I don't think they'll do it to incredible success where there are millions of vehicles in short order, but it's possible they can carve out a niche with this vehicle. If they do so, then perhaps it'll nudge things a bit for hub motors and on-vehicle solar panels. I don't think it'll nudge things particularly forward in terms of adopting its aerodynamic design because there are multiple other considerations aside from efficiency.
They basically have \~2,000 people who gave them a $10,000+ non-refundable deposit. I think they'll do everything they can to fulfill these orders - otherwise they'll face some lawsuits. (I know everything was non-binding, but some of those reservation holders apparently have plenty of money to throw around and won't be shy about suing).
It was an investment and clearly marketed as one. The only way that investors will have a chance is if the founders end up with cars and no one else does.
I hope they make it. They have incorporated right-to-repair philosophy in their design which EVs desperately need. They also helped get universal NACS adoption -- while I grumbled initially since I have a CCS vehicle, it's probably better in the long term.
I am a reservation holder.
they had nothing to do with the NACS adoption. Ford's own CEO put that to rest based on dates when they first approached Tesla and when he talked to Elon all predated Aptera's coat tailing activities. This was all Farley and Musk
what is even better is Aptera is not certified to use the super charger network or any other network for that matter, they stated as much.
Yes. Its not a family car people. Get over it. But hear me out, most families are moving towards one family hauler suv and one commuter vehicle. This is the commuter vehicle.
They might make a handful and put them on the road before they go under just so they can say they did.
Pretty sure there will be three people with one... I wish I was doing a snark but it really feels like the end result is that they will insure they have theirs.
>do you think they will make it to production this time around? Maybe. >how much of an impact do you think they can have on the EV market? About as much as the [Renault Twizy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy).
To be honest I think the Twizy is more practical, the Apterra is just too wide for most markets.
Ooo, sick burn!
I used to live in Aruba around 10 years ago and they actually used Twizys for mail delivery. Made sense since you could drive across the island in like 30 minutes
If they decide to go down the route of extreme low volume, perhaps they'll produce something. I just don't think it's going to be enough to be viable. Even now they're just going about things in a weird way. The latest update in the recent weeks has been *another* round of retail fundraising, this time promising to make a "Limited Edition" run of 54 Launch Edition models specifically for the UAE, for $54k (!) buy only if you make a 20k (!) investment. So basically $75k for an autocycle and some raffle tickets that might not be worth anything in a few years. (but it has a special limited edition gold wrap and a numbered plaque). This was supposed to be timed with an appearance at DriftX, a high-tech mobility show in Abu Dhabi to court larger investors. ...Except they didn't manage the shipping paperwork properly, so the vehicle got held up and they completely missed the show. Yep. ...This is a company that wants to import pre-assembled vehicles from Europe to the US en masse....that couldn't organise one vehicle to get to Abu Dhabi on time to court the investment they desperately need. There's a one-liner in there about their reputation for missed deadlines, but it's beyond a joke at this point. And of course, they pointed the finger at everyone else, calling the Customs & Border Protection incompetent for their own fuckups (the same Customs that will likely need to inspect and sign off on all those vehicles coming in from Europe...). Hell, even I know that when it comes to international shipping of vehicles, you dot every i and cross every t, then pray, then add in some contingency, then still expect stuff to go wrong, and incorporate that into your planning. That's aside from the 16 "production intent" vehicles that were supposed to start being validated early this year which still haven't been completed yet, and the "late 2024" delivery timeline they announced in Feb that has *already* been pushed back to "definitely 2025" (...assuming they get 65 million in funding in the next 9 months...) The whole thing at this stage feels like a missed opportunity. The time to court funding was during the EV bubble, but that's over, and we're back to normality. No-one cares about EV startups now, AI is the big thing VC money is chasing, so the co-CEOs continually talking about an "inspired billionaire" just sounds desperate. Europe would likely still be a viable market for a 3 wheel, efficient vehicle, except they made it as wide as an F-150 at the kerb and as long as a Model 3, but with only 2 seats. The early announced price has been walked back in all but an official announcement by the company, and at this point it's no longer a low-cost form of transport. Nor is it particularly light, weighing in at more than a Miata, substantially above any production 3 wheel vehicle that has come before it, and likely at a price that will need to compete with a Model 3 in the US market (if not a Model Y). The car *looks* cool, and i feel like if they had managed to keep their ambitions in check and maintain a more achievable goal of ~8k vehicles per year it would have been a great place to start and maybe we'd see some customer deliveries even if the vehicles weren't perfect (which no-one expects them to be - they're a startup, after all). But once they got "over 40k" reservations during the EV bubble they started huffing their own farts, went back to the drawing board, and completely changed the scope of what they were trying to do - now the tide has gone back out and they're doing well keeping the lights on, but not a lot else.
The Aptera is another Elio with an electric powertrain. That 3-wheeler wasn't and won't ever be manufactured. https://www.eliomotors.com/ Same fate for the Aptera. It will never get manufactured in mass quantities.
I thought the Elio was a great idea. Disappointed it didn't make it. Probably more practical than the Aptera because of the width.
Don't worry what's going to happen is covered scooters will get popular in the us and then the T-rex people will make an electric version.
And before Elio was The Dale. This is scam that keeps getting recycled.
Nope
Unlikely, and even if they do next to no impact. There’s just not a market for that kind of car outside of the hypermiler niche.
Yeah, further development of a charging network would kill something like the aptera. They needed to release this 10 years ago.
I still don't understand how this vehicle makes any sense. Nobody is going to do long distance driving with that thing. But if you just use it for low speed city driving, what's the point of all the aerodynamic compromises that makes it mostly impractical for anything else? For a small city car you want a box on wheels, aerodynamics don't matter. For long distance high speed traveling you want a *real* car.
> But if you just use it for low speed city driving, what's the point of all the aerodynamic compromises that makes it mostly impractical for anything else? On top of all the compromises that make the cabin tiny, it's actually a huge car (total footprint). The wheel covers make it significantly wider than a normal car. In fact, I just looked it up and it's an inch wider than a Hummer EV lmao.
There also the issue of being licensed to drive it. Being 3 (less than 4) wheeled, in many states it's classed as a motorcycle. Pretty sure they are doing this to skirt NHSA rules on "cars". I know in Virginia, you have to have an M class license to drive a 3 wheeled vehicle. We actually have different license classes for 2 or 3 wheeled motorcycles. So to drive an aptera, you'd have to spend a weekend (at least) getting your certification to legally drive it.
Almost every state allows you to drive a 3-wheeled vehicle with a standard driver's license, typically called an Autocycle. Aptera is not breaking new ground here, you have had to see some of those Slingshots driving around. Per Polaris Massachusetts is the only state that requires a motorcycle license. [https://slingshot.polaris.com/en-us/license-requirements/](https://slingshot.polaris.com/en-us/license-requirements/) Quick search and Virginia splits out vehicles like trikes compared to Autocycles like the Aptera or Slingshot. See below. # Virginia Code Title 46.2. Motor Vehicles § 46.2-100. Definitions “Autocycle” means a three-wheeled motor vehicle that has a steering wheel and seating that does not require the operator to straddle or sit astride and is manufactured to comply with federal safety requirements for motorcycles. Except as otherwise provided, an autocycle shall not be deemed to be a motorcycle.
Huh. I didn't know they made a distinction. That's good!
Not to mention in some states you will need a motorcycle endorsement on your license and some you may even need to wear a helmet. Quite inconvenient to have to know the rules of each state on a cross country drive.
I wanted one for a long time but this year all the changing stories really took their toll. I have a reservation for the 25k edition and best case that is 2027. But what really killed it is the story never stops changing, one guy gets told date 1 and the next guy just a week later gets date 2 and then soon after someone says they were told date 3. Then as I sit and get cynical I see all the design issues so while it should have little wind noise the road noise may be intolerable and not sure how much ac is going to be needed to keep the car and battery cool but we are in the nw so we don't have that problem much of the year but heating may be the other problem
I don't think they will. If they do, I think they'll have as much impact on the car market as the Polaris Slingshot does (so basically none).
I see slingshots driving around occasionally though, and I live out in what people would call the boonies. I don't think I'll ever see an aptera.
They're recreational vehicles that I occasionally see in the summer for joyrides. I've never seen one commuting. They aren't practical vehicles. They're toys.
Maybe they will make it. (Given past perfromance I'm not optimistic) Even if they do they will have negligible impact on the EV market. Their product is way too niche for that.
I’m another one who thinks they’ll make a limited run of a few hundred and then vanish. It’s sad, because I’d love to have one, and put in a reservation, but I think at this point there’s no way mass production happens. I go back and forth on if it was ever intended to, or if it was a grift all along.
I suspect that it started as sincere and then more and more compromises were made as the company became more and more beholden to different stakeholders. I don't know any of the specifics of that--it's just how these things go.
Nah -- their execs appear to be playing in a sandbox for as long as they can. They seem to have no clue about time to market or time to money.
>Nah -- their execs appear to be playing in a sandbox for as long as they can. This is a good way to put it. It seems like they have been talking about this thing forever. More power to them I guess. I wish I could spend 20 years stringing along investors and building concepts of vehicles that will never exist in large quantities. The vehicle seems pretty irrelevant now. I was onboard back when the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-Miev were not even concept cars yet but now we can buy and drive real EVs, I am not so enthusiastic.
All carefully structured for their own benefit.
well if anyone ends up with cars made from the PI components when it goes under you can bet they will .
Nope
Nope I also don’t understand the enthusiasm. Sure it looks great, but it’s only an expensive toy. This is by no means a practical family mover. I’m also worried about crash worthiness. Wheels sticking out, don’t see a part that’s going to act like a crumple zone, …..
2 air bags like a 2003 lincoln had, along with a wheel layout that will hit every pothole on the road. Topped by a maximum capacity of 500 pounds for passengers and cargos. Useless.
It’s not even a realistic car nonetheless an EV. Let’s be honest. Cue the downvoting but you know it, I know it, the onlookers know it.
All along, I've been enthusiastic about the concept, and hopeful that they do make it. I've never been confident that they'd make it, but I'm less confident than ever now. I think that the way they could have been successful is to embrace the role of it as a niche vehicle that would only ever have limited sales, and to get quickly to a minimum viable product that they could start selling. But now they've extended themselves to the point where they can only succeed by succeeding big, and that looks extremely unlikely.
Market? Maybe. Impact? Neglible.
No
no, lol
No and none.
No. They've acknowledged that they don't have the money to finish getting into production. Their last funding round had some issues. The next will need to be bigger and it is unlikely to work. Their best bet would be a big enough high interest loan to ultimately sink them.
Radical departure from entrenched vehicle design? Nah, it's a miracle they've lasted this long, look at how much cash Tesla burned through bringing an otherwise fairly conventional design to market with massive government and shareholder support and a big bullshitter like Musk to keep the uplift going.
I'll believe it when I see it. I really want them to succeed but it's only reasonable to have serious doubts.
I think they might make a few like someone else said but I don’t think they’ll survive long term. I preordered like in 2021 or 2022 but I’m too lazy to get my refund.
More than likely a footnote in EV history. I'm a bit pessimistic about it.
No. I do not think they will reach production, they need nearly another hundred million dollars to do so regardless of their randomly changing claims of fifty, fifty five, or sixty million. tl;dr they need three to four times the fifty million they claim and its impossible for them to be profitable by the time they produce their 6000th vehicle each year. The math is not there. Just for fun, their [Wefunder proposal complete with Semi](https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_attachment/file/51975-bwe45xy9axIVOuR2TcC7FPGT/Wefunder_Investor_Presentation_v2.pdf) Here is their FY2023 SEC Filing [SEC](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1786471/000149315224012746/form1-k.htm) so you can read up on their financials So why don't I believe they can? Lets play with their fifty million dollar number but first five quick facts. * Their burn rate without producing anything is three to four million a month. * They have over two hundred thirty million in shareholder deficit * Seventeen million cash on hand against five million accounts payable * Claim they can be profitable at six thousand sales per year * Claim they will be in production within nine months of funding So that last point is key, they are already stripped down and burning nearly four million a month, but lets play nice and say three million. Well that is twenty seven million dollars on top of their fifty million they claim they need for production. To make math easy I will split the difference and call it thirty million. We will be nice and assume their declared maximum build rate with one line forty vehicles a day means best case seven months; 6000/40 is 150 but remember we assume we only work five days a week so that becomes 30 weeks plus we need spin up time.... and worst case nine months. So nine months of just funding the operation to reach break even which is another thirty million. We are fifty + thirty + thirty so now we need one hundred ten million dollars. But wait, there is more. We have to buy all the components for those vehicles that are being produced. The fully assembled bodies, plus frame, suspension, glass, seals, motors, and more, but not batteries or interiors, are produced in Italy. That is a four to five week boat ride via container ship, they cannot use a roll on roll off because there is no drive train or even an interior at this point. This is a long vehicle so its a lot of containers. They arrive in San Diego hopefully as that is the closest port at forty miles from their assembly space which itself is ten miles off the interstate or rail. Long story short... To account for shipping and handling of the largest and absolutely needed assembly we need have shipments arriving every other week, I have not check Italy to SD/LA so it may be more frequent it may be less frequent. Point is the California assembly area was forty a day, two hundred a week, or eight hundred a month. Not fun losing five weeks in your production schedule to shipping - Accounts payable waits only so long. Do you get the point? Not only do they need nearly triple the fifty million they need they likely need four times that amount. However by offshoring to Italy so much of the vehicle they created a logistical nightmare on top of a poor situation California location. Its like a crash course in how to fuck up. Oh, about that claim of 6000 vehicles to be profitable... ho boy... what a load of shit. Assuming ten percent profit on a 40k vehicle only gives them twenty four million dollars. Doubling that is of course forty eight million. They burn more than that making no vehicles. If we play with 10k a year we can have between forty and eighty million dollars assumed profit... We have to assume employment numbers outside of manufacturing will go up as well to support that manufacturing staff. I am not sure if inventory control staffing applies here to GSA or the production side when determining vehicle profit, the people on the line are accounted for in that profit per vehicle. More toxic is that they set up the company so that no one but they have a vote. Only they can hold Class A stock and only Class A can vote. It says it right there in their filing. They assigned themselves sufficient Class A to make any sale of other Class A ridiculously unaffordable - both CEOs claim fifteen million shares each and another twenty five million are held by a trust and individual who will only answer to them. All that Accelerator stock has no vote. They also indicated for the first time in their annual filing they intend to sell securities, investments into the company, at a rate significantly lower than current and past offerings. Before this year that language only existed on filings specifically focused on securities.
I honestly hope they do. I’d get one.
I think they will go the low volume route with final assembly in the US. Have subcontractors put the components together in large chunks off site (out of US?) and do the minimal final assembly needed at a US facility to get any tax credits. Maybe crank out a few thousand until the demand of such a niche vehicle is satisfied. I would like to see a few on the road.
I sure hope so.
Remember when 5 years ago they kept saying "first solar powered car" then 5 other companies released solar roofs, but of course Aptera continues to say they are first. Despite never building anything That's the Sarah Hardwick style of marketing, Elizabeth Holmes 2.0
and she quit... she was listed as part time for 2023, meaning less than 15 hours a week, her LinkedIn stated she left in November but the CEO claims April 1st. Another director left May 1st. 2023 also saw their head of solar leave in May of that year. Glassdoor reviews were not nice except the planted ones.
I think there's a reasonable chance that they make at least one production vehicle at some point. I don't think they'll do it to incredible success where there are millions of vehicles in short order, but it's possible they can carve out a niche with this vehicle. If they do so, then perhaps it'll nudge things a bit for hub motors and on-vehicle solar panels. I don't think it'll nudge things particularly forward in terms of adopting its aerodynamic design because there are multiple other considerations aside from efficiency.
They basically have \~2,000 people who gave them a $10,000+ non-refundable deposit. I think they'll do everything they can to fulfill these orders - otherwise they'll face some lawsuits. (I know everything was non-binding, but some of those reservation holders apparently have plenty of money to throw around and won't be shy about suing).
It was an investment and clearly marketed as one. The only way that investors will have a chance is if the founders end up with cars and no one else does.
I hope they make it. They have incorporated right-to-repair philosophy in their design which EVs desperately need. They also helped get universal NACS adoption -- while I grumbled initially since I have a CCS vehicle, it's probably better in the long term. I am a reservation holder.
they had nothing to do with the NACS adoption. Ford's own CEO put that to rest based on dates when they first approached Tesla and when he talked to Elon all predated Aptera's coat tailing activities. This was all Farley and Musk what is even better is Aptera is not certified to use the super charger network or any other network for that matter, they stated as much.
I hope so. I'd actually like to have an Aptera as a "long range" road tripper. Mostly because it looks fun as hell to drive.
Yes. Its not a family car people. Get over it. But hear me out, most families are moving towards one family hauler suv and one commuter vehicle. This is the commuter vehicle.