Shakeup at Aptera?

[Big Dave]

Aptera, Tesla, Chevy Volt. All are floundering and it will take a miracle for any of the three to see a commercial market. For new manufacturers and old, new products are a real bear, but in these three cases there is a common thread.

They are each highly dependent on high-performance battery technology that does not seem to be ready for prime time. For over a century, this has been the bugaboo of electric cars (yeah, I know the Volt is a series hybrid, but its IC performance is no improvement over the stuff on the market). Battery electric vehicles have been around since Billy Durant was building buggies and wagons, but they have always been relegated to niche markets because of battery limitations.

The same is true today. Batteries still are not up to the job of powering automobiles except in severely limited service. That remains the dominant truth until somebody makes a breakthrough in battery technology.

Electric cars have not been held back by some deep, dark conspiracy. They have been held back by the limitations of battery technology.

There is scope for electric ground transportation, but to make it work you’d have to go to the big end of the ground transportation spectrum: freight trains and trucks.

Freight railroad electrification is proven technology. Everything is more or less available off the shelf. With modern variable frequency motor drives we can now use efficient AC induction motors for trains. The only thing holding back railroad electrification is capital cost, but today the total amount of mainline railroad track in the US is down to about where it was in 1880 (about 35,000 miles). At a cost of about $5 million per mile, that would require about 175 billion. Dieselization took about twenty years to accomplish, so using that time frame, the capital rate would be about $9 billion per year to accomplish over a twenty year span.

By comparision, if GM sold a million Chevy Volts a year (a rate that would take about 20 years to displace other vehicles in the fleet) at forty grand a pop, that would require $40 billion per year.

Likewise, we could electrify the truck lanes of our Interstate highways. Trucks would abandon their mechanical transmissions and the engines would drive generators. Big VFD-controlled motors would drive the wheels. Off the Interstate, their engines drive them. On the Interstate, they would raise collectors and run off the catenary and shut down the diesel. A signal wire in the road bed would collect data to bill the operators for electricity used.

Back on the initial topic, I agree with Neil in that CARB’s mindless antipathy to diesels would make a gas version of the Aptera more likely, at least in CA. I could see a 3-cylinder Metro engine/transaxle driving an Aptera.

I could see Honda swoop in and buy Aptera and put a 600 cc motorcycle engine with a Civic transaxle in it. The shape is too stunning to ignore. The problem is that the Aptera is a motorcycle. Driving it in some states requires wearing a helmet.

[Frank Lee]

No state that I'm aware makes you wear a helmet in an enclosed trike.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

Aptera, Tesla, Chevy Volt. All are floundering and it will take a miracle for any of the three to see a commercial market.

Excuse me, but how exactly is Tesla floundering? Last I read, they were getting close to shipping their 1000th Roadster, and showing a profit.

IThe problem is that the Aptera is a motorcycle. Driving it in some states requires wearing a helmet.

Why's that a problem? Even if the helmet thing were true (which I don't think it is), there are a lot of motorcycle riders out there. Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki... none of them seem to be going bankrupt selling motorcycles.

[NeilBlanchard]

Okay, now I'm really sad about the troubles at Aptera. Read Karen Pease's article over at Gas2.org:

Aptera’s Troubles: Get the Full, Inside Story Here : Gas 2.0

Editor's Note: Karen Pease has developed many personal relationships with people inside and out of Aptera over the years. She's been able to get the best picture we've seen so far of the quirky EV manufacturer's troubles from her inside sources. In most cases names and identifying specifics have been withheld at the source's request to protect their livelihood.]

How did a woman who the Securities and Exchange Commission says planned one of the largest accounting frauds in US history end up as Chief Financial Officer of Aptera Motors?


It’s just one of many questions swirling around what appears to be a meltdown in progress at the beleaguered manufacturer of safe, hyper-efficient electric vehicles (see the posts here, and here if you don’t know what’s going on).
When a business is running smoothly, there are strong incentives for everyone to be a team player and hide any signs of internal strife. However, as the rate of layoffs and “vacations” has increased over at Aptera, so has the potential for leaks. And sometimes a simple name can take you places you never thought you’d go.


Laura Marion is Aptera’s CFO. By their ‘Team’ webpage, you’d think that her career in finance began at Specialty Vehicle Acquisition Corp. Yet she only started work there in 2007. Where was her “15 years of finance” spent? From her resume, it appears that since 2006, she hasn’t held a single job more than a year.
The reason is that in 2006, Laura Marion was cited by the SEC for her role in one of the largest accounting frauds in US history at Delphi.
Delphi is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. According to the SEC complaint, in Q4 2000, employees wrote Marion a handwritten note stating that they had been instructed by a member of senior management to “maximize the financial engineering relating to [precious metals], cores, and batteries.” Over the next several years, Marion edited, reviewed, and drafted documents to present inventory exchanges as sales, grossly overstating the company’s profits. In order to save Delphi’s creditors the cost of litigation and in recognition of Delphi’s cooperation, the SEC settled out of court with those charged. Marion paid a $40,000 fine for her role.
How on Earth did such a person end up as Aptera’s CFO? Two words: Paul Wilbur.

Paul Wilbur is Aptera’s CEO. A high-priced executive selected by talent search agency Heidrick & Struggles and hired by Aptera in September of 2008 (shortly before Aptera’s first scheduled deliveries), Paul was pure Detroit. This stood in sharp contrast to the more tech-industry style of the existing company. His background includes running ASC for five years until it went bankrupt, and then running Saleen for one year and leaving shortly before it went bankrupt.
For whatever things he is good at, raising money is not among them. When Paul took over Aptera, it had raised approximately $30 million and was rapidly expanding. In the year and a quarter he has been Aptera’s CEO, he hasn’t raised a dime for the company. The way he presents it at any point in time, he’s always just about to close a deal. But they never seem to come.
If you ask him why the company hasn’t raised money, you’ll hear something to the effect of, “it’s a tough market.” It is quite true that it is a tough market for most industries. But for electric vehicle companies, not so much. Coda Automotive, spawned from a manufacturer of poorly-rated neighborhood electric vehicles and several Chinese manufacturers, raised $24m in August. ZAP, an electric vehicle company that a Wired expose all but called a scam, raised $25m in August. Tesla Motors, with only one low-volume EV on the road got a $50m investment from Daimler that valued the startup at a staggering estimated $550m—then in September, they raised $82m more. Bankrupt Th!nk raised $47m. Fisker raised $85m. The list goes on and on. Talk of 25% of the world’s vehicle market being electric in a decade draws out the investors in even the toughest economy.
How could their fundraising possibly be this bad? One VC and Aptera reservation holder recounts the following:

“Our firm raised capital for a green and clean tech fund and I tried to get Aptera interested by contacting Laura directly. Months later their placement agent contacted us, after we had fully committed the fund. There is a ton of money out there seeking clean tech investments.”

Shortly after Paul Wilbur came in, my sources are clear on two things. One, he stacked the executive team with his people, and two, step by step, everything about the vehicle had to change before a single one could roll out the door.
For over a year, every delay in the vehicle’s ship date—and there have been many—have been credited to one thing: “the windows don’t roll down.” But all of my sources tell me that the company already had a solution as early as February 2008: a split window. Indeed, the tape outline of a split window can be seen in the background in one picture from the company, while a press rendering of the 2e with a split window, intended for launch in 2008 currently adorns the title bar of the Aptera Forum.
The split window offered major advantages—not only that it fit into the existing door, but that it also dramatically increased the vehicle’s resistance to side impact crash damage. Rather than a hollow space for the entire pane to slide into, the door could be filled with the same structural reinforcing foam as the rest of the vehicle, giving it over four times the side impact crush resistance the federal government requires for cars.
Wilbur would have none of it. He found it ugly and was concerned that the “fast food” crowd would be inconvenienced. He even vetoed the idea of releasing with a split window for those who want it and having a later model update for full-roll down windows for those who don’t.
Contrary to the concerns, an Aptera engineer took a prototype to an In-N-Out Burger and ordered a double-double combo with drink. He simply opened his door and took the food. Unlike a normal car door, the Aptera’s doors open upwards, largely within the wheelbase, and hence are easier to use in tight spaces.
All in all, sources say Paul had 60-80% of the vehicle redesigned, micromanaging the process down to the component level as though he were an engineer.
More concerning, though, is that there seems to be little overlap between the target market for the Aptera 2e and your average fast food eater. A leading target for ridicule on the Aptera forum is Detroit’s obsession with lesser factors of the vehicle ownership, such as cupholders or the stats of the vehicle’s consumer electronics hardware. Yet Aptera’s communications often seemed to focus on just these aspects. Who is running their marketing operation?
His name is Marques McCammon.

Like Laura and Paul, Marques too arrived from the ruins of Saleen. He replaced Tony Kirton, who once stated, “We understand deeply that our customers will make this brand. They will own it. And we will do our utmost to respect that at all times.” The marketing operation didn’t always run smoothly under Tony, but that could be in part because part of his work for the company was as a volunteer.

But if things occasionally didn’t run smoothly under Tony, they fell apart under Marques. Two “monthly” newsletters have been released in the past year. Three “Daily Charge” blog entries that weren’t from the July newsletter were posted in the past six months. The comments section on the website has been broken for months, despite repeated bug reports. In fact, the only recent time updates to the website were noticed was a ham-fisted attempt to hide bad news from the site’s RSS feed by hard-coding a link to their press release as the only story and removing the code to rotate stories. Apparently news reports of dwindling cash reserves, boardroom fights, the ouster of the founders, of a staff that has dwindled from around a hundred to closer to twenty are what it takes.
In a recent poll of what Aptera Forum members thought of Marques’ communications operation, the results were running 59 to 2 against it. And of those two, at least one was cast because the person agreed a bad job had been done but they didn’t expect a good job.
It’s hard to understand why the communication was so bad. But if the company felt that those with pre-orders weren’t worth the time of even a newsletter and that they needed to only focus on investors, they shot themselves in the foot. At least half a dozen pre-orders, and probably many more, are held by people at VC firms. Who knows how many could have been potential angel investors. Like the Tesla Roadster, the vehicle seems to have caught the eye of many in the Silicon Valley tech crowd. But who would put their money in a company that can’t handle a monthly newsletter?



When the ax fell the last time around, something was different. An anonymous employee began liveblogging the blow-by-blow:

“Paul Wilbur has just sacrificed the company to line his own pockets. Crap, I’m crying.”

“This is exactly what he did to Saleen. Why did they hire him with a history like that? I’ll never understand.”

“He’s marching around the place like a peacock and firing everyone. The design still needs work to make production numbers. What is he doing?”

“Seems to think suspending operations til govt$$ come in will make him a rich man. So sad for Steve Fambro, he’s a great guy being ruined.” (Steve Fambro is the company’s founder, having reportedly sunk over $100,000 of his own money into the company).

“I’m panicked someone like the Chinese could make an offer and Wilbur would take it just to get rich and move onto destroy the next innovation”

“Management directors in a meeting now. Still waiting for the hatchet to finish falling.”

“They’ve just taken the 1st guy into the office. Mood is certainly somber.”

“It looks like they just let Tim Dine go. Wow.” (Tim Dine was the Senior Fabrication Engineer and Fabrication Supervisor, someone so dedicated to the cause that he volunteered at Aptera in it’s early years)

“Chris Anthony got let go. He’ll go back to Epic Wake Boats.” (Chris is the company’s cofounder)

“Yep, They let go Steve, Anthony and Trisha Fambro. Please make sure everyone knows. & keep an eye on Steve. He’ll be back.”

In a seldom-seen occasion, Aptera’s PR machine swung into overdrive. Marques wrote, “We needed to reduce our burn rate on anything not associated with getting a production vehicle out the door.” The release included a quote from Steve, stating “Some folks were let go, and since they hadn’t seen me around—they put two and two together and made a fairly large and incorrect assumption.” The article asserts that Chris voluntarily went on to pursue other business interests and Steve is taking vacation to spend more time with his family.
If they were hoping to silence the issue, the release didn’t achieve its goal. Many commenters on the news articles were skeptical. Andrew wrote, “Marques said the same exact thing last year to the Saleen employees. Top Notch Management Crew over there…” Bacon117 wrote, “Don’t worry Popular Mechanics, my dad has been on vacation since I was 4. It will be ok.” Everywhere the press release was posted, some commenters took the release at its word, but most seemed to consider it a transparent attempt at damage control.

Indeed, PR experts often discount press release quotes from individuals as worthless. But where does the truth lie? Without prompting, a source from the Detroit team was quick to dispel rumors of a sellout to the Chinese, pointing out that the company is proud to be American owned and run, and that only the batteries are sourced from China. But the same source is yet to weigh in on the reports of a close boardroom ouster.



The deeper you dig into what has transpired at Aptera in the past year while the company put on its best happy face, the uglier it gets. Over the coming months, even worse details will continue to leak out.
Will the world ever see an Aptera vehicle hit the streets? The future looks increasingly hazy. If Tesla is any guide, their DOE loan application could be half a year away—if granted at all. Customers are bailing from their reservations much faster than new reservations are being landed, a fact that the current management is loathe to admit. The company no longer has its original Carlsbad office. Only time will tell what fate has in store for what’s left of Aptera.

[brucey]

Another bright eyed start up shot down just before it reaches prime time?

Shame, I really would have liked to see this one on the roads.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[cfg83]

Neil -

Wow. I want to know how Paul Wilbur happened to Aptera. He brought a resume of two bankrupt companies, soooooooo, they hired hom to bankrupt Aptera?!?!?!?

Now I know why the website changed. A few years ago they actually had real data on what they were doing. Now it's just a puff-piece website.

I'd rather have the split window if it's safer.

CarloSW2

[Frank Lee]

I want an Aptera with a Palmear V8!

[Big Dave]

The auto biz is tough and it is unlike other businesses. The team brought into GM in the 1990s was mostly from Proctor & Gamble - a well-run company if there ever was one - and nearly ran GM into the ground fiftenn years ago.

Daimler-Benz couldn't save Chrysler but they had those legacy cost problems that simply cannot be overcome.

History is littered with startup auto companies that couldn't make it.

Is the smart fortwo dead as well?

Is the smart fortwo Doomed in the US? | Autosavant

From Rants - Autoextremist.com ~ the bare-knuckled, unvarnished, high octane truth...

Quote:
“(Posted 11/17, 9:30am) Detroit. Two weeks ago, in an item in our “On the Table” column, I suggested that the Smart adventure was nearing an end, saying the following: “Back when this venture was first announced I went on record as saying it would last 12 months, tops. Well, 20 months in and with sales trending downward month after month - October sales were down a staggering 70.4 percent - I think we can safely say that the Smart experiment is a bust. Even with an electric version allegedly coming here, it doesn't matter. It's a niche car, and the niche has been filled. Buh-bye now.”
Smart (and for this discussion I will capitalize the “S” even though the official name of the vehicle uses a lower case “s”) is the huggable two-seat urban car that enjoyed considerable success in its home European markets when it was launched several years ago, and it was easy to see why. It fit perfectly in the manically crowded streets and byways in cities all across Europe, and it was an instant success. Americans even became very familiar with the sight of the Daimler-owned Smart during their travels over there, commenting often about how you saw Smart cars “everywhere.”
Wondering how to capitalize on the success of Smart in Europe, the idea of bringing the Smart car over here was something that was visited and re-visited often by Daimler, but the timing never seemed right. Or maybe it was just because Dieter Zetsche - the incredibly overrated German auto executive who initially was Mr. Popular here but who then flamed-out big-time by being a major player in Daimler AG’s gross mishandling of its Chrysler infatuation - couldn’t envision a scenario where it could be done with a modicum of profitability.
That is until he began discussions with auto entrepreneur Roger Penske in late 2006, which continued throughout 2007, culminating in an agreement by which Penske would create a distribution network for Smart. That deal was announced with much fanfare at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2008, and the Smart launch in the U.S. was under way.
At first the timing of the Smart launch seemed visionary, because this country was headed for the highest recorded gasoline prices in our history, and Smart sales took off. In typical American consumer fashion, the “first on the block” syndrome played heavily in the Smart car’s initial success. It was cute and huggable, it was dramatically different, it came in bright, cuddly colors, and it seemed like the right car, at the right time, with the right affiliation, a “hipster” star in the making.
After all, if Roger was involved, it had to be a successful proposition, right? And at first it was boom times for Smart, with almost 2700 cars sold in May 2008, and 24,622 for that year. A fairly respectable showing for what was - by any measure - a niche car.
Slowly but surely, however, reality set in. After the “first on the block, gotta get me one of those” buyers were sated, and the small car frenzy that was initiated by $4.00+ per gallon gasoline gave way to more rational thought, the Smart was exposed for what it really was: a very nice European urban micro car albeit with some serious drawbacks that made it ill-suited for most of the U.S.
What were those drawbacks? There were three. First of all was the fact that the transmission was so far below par that it actually negatively impacted the driving experience. It was (and is) jerky and balky, and only the most starry-eyed early-adopter consumers could ignore the fact that it was simply unacceptable for contemporary motoring. Secondly, the mileage wasn’t all that great in comparison to other fuel-efficient offerings out there. And finally, the value component left a lot to be desired because you could simply get more car (as in more room and comfort) - with mileage that was comparable or better to the Smart - for pretty close to the same money as a fully-loaded Smart.
And once gasoline prices started to ease up and consumers took a deep breath and took a giant step back and surveyed the market, it was clear that the Smart came up short in the Big Picture of vehicles out there. And the sales started to wane, month by month.
Which brings us to where we are today, and that is with just 661 cars sold last month and 13,082 sold year-to-date in 2009, Smart sales are well and truly in the tank.
Seeing where this is going - in other words, nowhere good - Daimler is taking a flyer on giving Smart a new reason for being as a short-term urban rental car. In a program that was announced today in Austin, Texas, Smart cars will be offered to consumers in a new program called car2go.
The car2go rental program makes Smart cars available to registered consumers in Austin for as long as needed, after which they can then return the cars to designated parking spaces in and around the city which are included in the fee. The cost will be 35 cents per minute including insurance and gas and the cars will also be available for one day or multiple day uses.
Two hundred Smart ForTwo cars will be initially allotted for the effort, mirroring a program Daimler first tested in Ulm, Germany, last year. The pilot program will be run by Austin city employees, which goes hand-in-hand with the fact that Austin views itself as one of America’s visionary “green” cities, and its leaders see this as a golden opportunity to curb urban congestion.
And the idea is to take it to other cities, too, with Zetsche hinting at the fact that many other cities are interested in the new program. That’s all well and good, but the interesting thing is that this is a Daimler AG program and that the Penske Automotive Group – the U.S. distributors for Smart – is not involved.
Right now the Smart brand is dead in the water in the U.S., and that presents a huge problem for Smart dealers across the country - and for Roger Penske. It’s fine that Dieter and his troops are thinking of ways to pump up the Smart ForTwo’s raison d’etre, but in order for Smart to continue to be viable in the U.S., it desperately needs a larger car. Like yesterday.
At one point there was a larger Smart “ForFour” in Europe from 2004 to 2006 based on the European Mitsubishi Colt, and Daimler is said to be considering a new-generation Smart “ForFour” concept now, but nothing has been decided as of yet. They better get on with it because without a larger Smart vehicle the Smart brand will not survive in this country, period.
What’s the lesson in all of this, if there is one buried in here somewhere?
There are two, actually. The travails of the Smart car adventure in this country reveal two, time-honored High-Octane Truths about this business.
The first is that this is a relentlessly tough business (yeah, I know, that’s a bulletin, right?). You can line up all of the seemingly essential ingredients – and believe me having Roger Penske involved is very much about having the right “essential” ingredient - but that unto itself is really no guarantee of the level of success that will be achieved. There is a kaleidoscope of variables involved - distribution, pricing, the retail component, market conditions, promotion, marketing, “the buzz” etc., etc., etc., and any one of those things can go awry, and in a big way too.
Which leads me to the next High-Octane Truth about this business and that is you can have all of those aforementioned variables in perfect order, but if the product itself isn’t up to snuff it ultimately won’t matter, because it is, was, and always will be about the product.
As a car, the Smart leaves a lot to be desired. You don’t enter this market with a built-in fatal flaw – and believe me, the Smart gearbox is a fatal flaw – and expect to succeed. Combine that with a value quotient that comes up short when compared to, for example, the Honda Fit, and add to it the notoriously short attention span of the American car buying consumer, and you have a recipe for a short-term proposition in this market, at best, because in the end “buzz” can only carry you so far.
Oh, and by the way, I think there are a few lessons in here somewhere for Sergio’s Fiat-Chrysler entourage, if they can quit pontificating to themselves long enough to pay attention, that is...”

[cfg83]

Big Dave -

Originally Posted by Big Dave

...
What were those drawbacks? There were three. First of all was the fact that the transmission was so far below par that it actually negatively impacted the driving experience. It was (and is) jerky and balky, and only the most starry-eyed early-adopter consumers could ignore the fact that it was simply unacceptable for contemporary motoring. Secondly, the mileage wasn’t all that great in comparison to other fuel-efficient offerings out there. And finally, the value component left a lot to be desired because you could simply get more car (as in more room and comfort) - with mileage that was comparable or better to the Smart - for pretty close to the same money as a fully-loaded Smart.
...
As a car, the Smart leaves a lot to be desired. You don’t enter this market with a built-in fatal flaw – and believe me, the Smart gearbox is a fatal flaw – and expect to succeed. Combine that with a value quotient that comes up short when compared to, for example, the Honda Fit, and add to it the notoriously short attention span of the American car buying consumer, and you have a recipe for a short-term proposition in this market, at best, because in the end "buzz" can only carry you so far.
Oh, and by the way, I think there are a few lessons in here somewhere for Sergio’s Fiat-Chrysler entourage, if they can quit pontificating to themselves long enough to pay attention, that is...”

Interesting that the article lambasted the tranny. From everything I read, the manumatic was terrible, and ruined the hypermiler potential of the US Smart.

And yes, the Honda Fit is arguably much better for the $.

CarloSW2

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

...you could simply get more car (as in more room and comfort) - with mileage that was comparable or better to the Smart - for pretty close to the same money as a fully-loaded Smart.

I wonder why no one ever appreciates the fact that there are people out here who DON'T EFFING WANT more room and comfort - especially when "comfort" is equated to a bolt-upright seating posture in a car that handles like a waterbed.

As for sales, there's something wrong with selling over 10K units (at $11-16K per) of a niche car in a year, especially in the middle of the worst recession since the '30s?