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I had limited exposure to Aptera. Most was on the forum, and then there was a week at Xprize.
What I saw was a company vaporizing money needlessly as soon as Wilbur took over. I saw a few decisions that were frugal, but many were flat-out wasteful: The decision to rent a separate facility at Xprize, the flaunted catering while there, the new, big empty factory with top-shelf chairs, and the custom shaft driven bicycles to ride around Xprize and the factory, the rented trailer for public tour and all associated overhead, the big re-design to 2E adding unnecessary bloat and all costs associated with that, and now I see they were bleeding money into a 4 wheel design as well.
All I saw was a pretty car with mid-pack performance at Xprize surrounded by plastic PR smoke & mirrors with a herd of talented engineers trying to keep up with the PR hot air, trying compensate for the handling penalties of re-design, and trying not choke to death on the fumes of burning money. It was thick in the air at Xprize.
I cannot believe how much money they wasted. It's a shame. Edison2 was nearly the opposite. They were frugal and cheap on everything except the car. Every penny went into the vehicle.
Edison2 has been very quiet on their blog and facebook. Blog had one rushed, poorly written summary of 2011 after 2 months of silence, and the Facebook page is eerily quiet. Hope all is well.
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