Southern California electric vehicle startup Aptera Motors is out of time, out of money and out of luck. It announced today that it is shutting its doors, liquidating its assets and laying off its staff.

The company, which first showed off its three-wheeler in 2007 and was working on a more conventional sedan, has long been struggling. Even as it unveiled the production model of the super-aerodynamic 2e electric car (shown above) in April 2010, CEO Paul Wilbur all but pinned his company's future on receiving a federal loan. Wilbur said in a statement today that Aptera came within spitting distance of turning things around but simply ran out of time and money.

"After years of focused effort to bring our products to the market, Aptera Motors is closing its doors, effective today," he said in the statement. "This is a difficult time for everyone connected with our company because we have never been closer to realizing our vision. Unfortunately, though, we are out of resources."

Wilbur said the company had been engaged in "exhaustive due diligence" with the Department of Energy and, having had its business plan "examined from top to bottom," recently received a conditional commitment letter for $150 million under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program. That money would have underwritten development of a five-passenger, mid-sized electric sedan.

"The last remaining hurdle was finding new funds to match the DOE loan," Wilbur said. But the company, which had secured $40 million from private investors since 2007, was unable to even begin raising the $80 million needed to secure the loan, said Marques McCammon, Aptera's chief marketing officer.

"We were just starting that process," McCammon said. "The market got skittish, and it got skittish just at the moment we needed it most."

However, the Energy Department told The New York Times that it was not conditionally committed to granting the loan.

“I can confirm that Aptera did not receive a conditional commitment for a loan from the department,” Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to Times.

In an interview with Automotive News, Wilbur said his company's inability to secure funding shows investors are cooling on EV startups. McCammon reiterated that point, saying Solyndra's bankruptcy, a federal investigation into two Chevrolet Volt fires and "two other electric vehicle companies having to go out and raise money – again" made investors wary of supporting Aptera.

It's a stretch to say Aptera was hobbled by anyone's perception of EVs. What happened is a reflection of the company, not the industry.

The truth is, Aptera always faced long odds and has been in trouble for at least two years. The audience for a sperm-shaped, three-wheeled, electric two-seater was never anything but small. It didn't help that production of the 2e – at one point promised for October 2009 – was continually delayed as Wilbur ordered redesigns to make it more appealing to the mainstream. Aptera had a small window in which to be a first mover in the affordable EV space, and that window closed the moment the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt hit the market. At that point, Aptera teetered on the brink of irrelevance.

Eventually, though, Wilbur realized the 2e would never be anything but a niche vehicle and switched gears, something potential investors made clear must happen. They wondered about the market demand for such a funky vehicle and the long-term viability of the company if it didn't expand its product lineup.

"Those were legitimate questions," McCammon said. "And we heard them from the DOE as well.”

So the company made the sedan – which McCammon said had always been part of the plan – its top priority and essentially mothballed the 2e after building a dozen prototypes. McCammon said Aptera had developed a composite manufacturing system that led to vehicles 30 percent lighter but three times stronger than conventional automobiles. The system also allowed for body panels to be manufactured with their finish already applied, eliminating the need for a paint shop. Aptera believed the process could save $750 million in manufacturing start-up costs.

The company had built a styling model of the sedan and an engineering mule to test its drivetrain, and had in recent months begun looking into setting up shop in a mothballed auto factory in Ohio.

In the end, though, it was too little, too late. Even with the DOE loan, Aptera simply couldn't raise the money needed to go forward. So it is shutting its doors, liquidating its assets and laying off more than two dozen employees effective immediately.

“Nobody here feels this is finished," McCammon said. "Everyone here is passionate about what we did and why we were here. If we find a way to do this again, we’ll do it again. It can't be as Aptera, but the vision and the principles that Aptera was founded upon are strong, and they’re right.”

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com