Here is some good news. Neil Hannemann has just joined Aptera. Find the article as to why this is important here: LINK

Now for my spin: Ahem… Neil Hannemann is described as, “niche automotive industry veteran”. The word “niche” can be taken one of two ways. The first connotation is very positive considering his track record which you will read about in the article found at the above URL. The other connotation is one of I find to be handicapping and belittling of the project this blog is focused on. By referring to the Aptera as a niche automobile, the writer of the article is unintentionally throwing up a mental roadblock to anyone reading about the Aptera for the first time. It’s bad enough that Steve Fambro must deal with hack blog jockeys like me delegitimizing how great his invention is just by my mentioning its existence in a (gulp!) BLOG. Steve now must fight the battle of the car being considered a niche vehicle because someone at a more established news site called it that. Albeit, $30K is not a small price for the average person to pay for a vehicle and its shape may be too different at first for many of the unwashed masses but in the end it is a great start toward the ultimate end which would be a car that anyone could afford to buy and fuel. NICHE implys it is intended only for a select group of outsiders. A niche car to me would be something like the car that can be driven under water or the one wheel Segway like vehicle by Bombardier called the Embrio. Wrapping my head and wallet around those concepts is even harder to deal with than the Aptera. Those vehicles don’t address many of the fundamental needs of the AVERAGE auto buyer like the Aptera does. The Embrio may be a fine machine, but you have the one drawback of it being a vehicle that does not enclose the rider; so everone who already doesn’t like motorcycles will probably hate this vehicle even more by virtue of the fact that it ONLY HAS ONE WHEEL! And as for the under water car, my job at SEALAB 2021 didn’t work out so I won’t be needing that car either.

I like the photo on the Aptera website of the tall guy with the bags of groceries because that photo to me says it all about the car. Just an average guy using this car for average purposes without needing a fireproof Spandex bodysuit and crash helmet. If I can ever get an Aptera I may get the bodysuit and crash helmet anyway just to live out my sad science fiction fantasies.

Scaring the neighborhood aside, Aptera needs to continue on with this sort of image building and even go a step further by taking a page out of the Smart Car playbook and take the Aptera on a U.S. tour. Build enough of them to go from city to city and allow the people to drive the car themselves. Aptera should want to do this because this was the smartest thing Smart Car could have ever done for their product. As a result they can’t even keep up with the orders comming in and it isn’t even as fuel efficient a car it should be for its size.