Aptera 2e Electric Car Launch Video
Here’s a video of the Aptera 2e Electric Car official launch event. This futuristic electric car is generating a lot of excitement with it’s styling and with it’s possible 300 mpg fuel consumption! Check this Aptera 2e video out!
Aptera 300 MPG TEST DRIVE POPULAR MECHANICS Video
Heres another video of the Aptera by Popular Mechanics and their 300 miles per gallon test drive of the Aptera 2e!
Aptera 2e in Touchstone Energy Commercial
Here’s the exciting new Aptera 2e Electric car featured in a tv advertisement for Touchstone Energy! This car is generating an amazing amount of excitement in the Electric Car market. The Apera 2e is going to be hugely popular.
Spaceage and efficient, Aptera gears up for launch
By Nichola Groom
VISTA, California (Reuters) – Thousands of miles west of Detroit, a California start-up hopes to find a market for a three-wheeled, ultra-efficient, downright odd-looking car among consumers sick of spending their hard-earned cash at the gas pump.
The Aptera is an egg-shaped two-seater often likened to a space-age car from the futuristic 1960s cartoon “The Jetsons.” Looking more like an aircraft than a road vehicle, it is a far cry from the hybrid sedans and electric sports cars being produced by conventional automakers.
Riding in the all-electric version of the Aptera feels similar to a regular car, although its roof-attached doors make getting in and out a challenge. Its long shape provides extra legroom and the car runs with a tinny, high-pitched hum.
To the executives behind the vehicle, its aerodynamic design and 100 miles per gallon (42 km per liter) range points the way to the future. And, with 4,000 customer orders already, they believe they have the early following to back up that confidence.
“We have a breakthrough level of energy efficiency which really means you are going to save so much money on operating costs,” Aptera Chief Executive Paul Wilbur said in an interview at the company’s headquarters and vehicle assembly facility in Vista, California.
Like Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and ZAP, Aptera is one of a handful of young, West Coast-based companies making cars that, unlike the sport utility vehicles that have been integral to the U.S. auto market in recent years, save gasoline and global warming emissions.
Automakers, however, have a track record of over promising and under delivering when it comes to new technology. Tesla, for instance, ran into a series of cost overruns and delays rolling out its electric Roadster. General Motors Corp, meanwhile has said that its highly-anticipated Volt plug-in will be a low-volume money-loser when it comes to market in late 2010.
Fuel efficiency is harder to sell than it was last summer when gas prices hit records. As gasoline prices have fallen, so have sales of premium-priced fuel efficient cars such as Toyota Motor Corp’s Prius hybrid.
MONEY SAVER
Aptera’s makers are still shopping the car as a money saver despite an initial price tag of between $25,000 and $40,000, depending on whether buyers want an electric, hybrid or traditional powertrain.
“It doesn’t matter if gasoline is $2 or $4 a gallon, you are still going to be buying a lot less when you buy our vehicle,” Wilbur said.
Aptera will begin shipping its all-electric vehicles to customers in the fourth quarter of this year. The electric version has a 100 mile range per charge and can be recharged by plugging into a regular electric outlet.
The company plans to make about 10,000 cars a year initially, increasing to 100,000 in the next few years. Ultimately, it will employ several thousand people at its facility just north of San Diego, Wilbur said.
Consumer research Aptera performed at the end of last year led the company to believe it will be able to sell many more cars than it originally thought.
“We walked in with one mentality about our what our volume estimates might be, and quite frankly were very happy and surprised and even a little overwhelmed by how positive the reaction was,” Wilbur said.
To fund the production rampup, Aptera is actively seeking new investors. The company’s early investors include company incubator Idealab, Google Inc’s philanthropic arm and Esenjay Petroleum, and Wilbur said the company has more than enough money to meet its fourth-quarter production target.
But the U.S. federal government declined to invest. Because of its three-wheeled design, Aptera was excluded from participation in a Department of Energy program that extends low-interest loans to manufacturers of fuel efficient cars.
Disappointed company officials said they were producing exactly the kind of car President Barack Obama advocated.
“This is Obama’s poster car for everything he is talking about,” Wilbur said. “We are the most efficient vehicle in the world. Sometimes it’s good to be innovative but in this case it’s bad to be innovative.”
Aptera aims to have fulfilled its first 4,000 orders by the middle of next year, Wilbur said. Its first customers are mainly tech-savvy, educated, affluent men who will use the Aptera as a second or third vehicle.
(Editing by Alan Elsner)
From: www.eleconomista.es
Electric carmaker Aptera raises $24 million round
Aptera Motors, the electric car start-up that on Tuesday nabbed funding from Google.org, announced Thursday that it has secured $24 million in a series C round.
The Carlsbad, Calif., company aims to spend the funds on its manufacturing center in nearby Vista.
Aptera has set the end of this year for the release of its all-electric 2e, a two-seater, three-wheeled electric car whose streamlined shape might look at home in a Jetsons cartoon. Each street-legal vehicle would cost less than $30,000.
The electric version of the three-wheeler would drive 120 miles per charge, while a hybrid version due for release near the end of 2009 is meant to achieve 300 miles per gallon.
“The Aptera 2e is designed to be the lowest-energy way to transport two passengers safely from point A to point B,” Bill Gross, chairman and CEO of start-up incubator Idealab, which backs Aptera, said in a statement.
Google’s philanthropic arm on Wednesday shared that it will split $2.75 million toward its RechargeIt initiative between Aptera and battery start-up ActaCell. Other investors in Aptera include Esenjay Investments, the Simons Family, and the Beall Family Trust.
The company said it has received 3,300 deposits of a minimum $500 each from potential customers in California
Aptera 2e Pictures
