Dec 4, 2011

Aptera 300 mpg carmaker goes bankrupt

Aptera electric cars were also listed as a technology to watch but they never produced their super efficient electric and hybrid cars. 

However in December 2011, Aptera Motors Inc., an electric-car company that had Republican Representative Darrell Issa’s support for a U.S. loan, said it’s shutting down because it couldn’t get private financing.

Aptera, based in Carlsbad, California, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that it had received a “conditional commitment letter” for $150 million from the federal Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program based on raising matching funds, which it was unable to do.

Aptera, which never produced a car, had planned to make a five-passenger sedan priced at less than $30,000 that would run on electric power. Electric cars made by General Motors Co. and Nissan sell for about $41,000 and $33,000 before a $7,500 U.S. tax credit.

“We were so optimistic that the company would move forward that we were in discussions to reactivate a mothballed automotive plant in Moraine, Ohio,” Paul Wilbur, Aptera’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.


Read on at: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/memjet-printers-over-70000-sold-finally.html