California Green Car Company Aptera Motors Closes

COMMENTARY | A leader of losers, California hosts the loss of another business gone bad. According to Green Car Reports, Aptera Motors, a start-up green car company located in Carlsbad, closed its doors on December 2, 2011, before much of a beginning.

Aptera Motors made an electric car that was to be the future of gasoline-free vehicles in environmentally conscious California. The Aptera could seat two people in an aerodynamic design for tooting around town. Three wheels rather than four balance the car, like fixed landing gear on a Cessna 152. Perhaps owners were to think the car would take off. Well, it doesn't and it didn't, in any sense of the words.

Aptera, however, had high hopes for its 2e (two-person electric) vehicle and a hybrid (fueled by that awful hydrocarbon, gasoline, when it wasn't regenerating energy from the brakes). The money for developing the product ran out and replacement funds were not forthcoming. Aptera applied for low-interest loans from the Department of Energy Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, but that too never materialized. Reading the writing on the wall, Aptera returned customer deposits made on orders for both the 2e car and the hybrid.

Aptera Motors went out of business for good on Friday last week. Sound familiar? So-called green companies in California make closings routine of late. But besides Californians putting their money on the pipe dreams of green technologies, overregulation and excessive restriction on business make leaving the state a common occurrence. Put those two together and you have a breeding ground for business failures of the most striking kinds.

Now that Aptera is officially closed, no need exists for the futuristic 2e body parts in the factory. A demolition derby appears to be conducted on company premises. According to a Fox News video, employees are shown taking their wrath out on the cars. That or celebrating the end of a company that wouldn't make it anyway.

Either way, Aptera is another green company dead on arrival in California.