Aptera, whose struggles have become more than legendary in electric car circles, but have actually become a new cliche for “EV that never was”, has apparently hired a web design company to come in and tear up their website.  It’s now featuring some lame blocked design with each block set up to be linking to some section of the site – though none of the links actually work now.

A tiny section of text on the right-bottom corner says

Aptera
The combination of AMAZING AERODYNAMICS AND ADVANCED COMPOSITES means the coming of a new generation of that will change what we expect from our cars.
Keep watching!
2.0 IS COMING

Speculation in the press, like this report from Fox News, is that the “cloaked vehicle” under the “Aerodynamics” tab is some kind of hint that Aptera plans to dump the 3-wheeled design and go with a more conventional approach.

I guess they could be doing that, but I doubt it.  Given that the other graphics used on the splash page are all stock photos you can get from any photographic outlet, I suspect the aerodynamics photo is just what some web designer who knows nothing about Aptera put up there as part of the build.

Regardless, with the huge number of financial and other troubles the company has had, their inability to secure a Department of Energy loan, and their extremely pathetic showing at the Automotive X Prize, it’s doubtful that “Aptera 2.0″ will be much different from “Aptera 2″.

The company still hasn’t secured the Department of Energy loan they were apparently riding their entire future on.  They aren’t likely to get one either, given the whole Solyndra thing and the widespread press bashing of Fisker Automotive, who did receive one.  Bashing, by the way, that was completely unfounded since even a modicum of (non-partisan) research would have shown that the loans were largely spent stateside and the Karma is, when you analyze its parts sources, a net export from the USA to its intended European market.

At any rate, Aptera has returned all deposits put down for the 2e electric and looks to be attempting to re-style themselves somehow and maybe get beyond their current stigma.  Of course, unless you’re President Obama, you can’t style your way out of a financial toilet, so I suspect that this will just be a last throe of hopelessness as Aptera attempts to draw new investors before finally imploding.

Oh well.  Such a cool concept.  Too bad it’s not likely to ever see production.

This entry was posted in Car Company