Rift Reported Between Founders and Board at Futuristic Carmaker Aptera

Paul Wilbur, a Detroit auto industry veteran who was named CEO of Carlsbad, CA-based Aptera 14 months ago, gave no indication of internal turmoil at the futuristic car’s headquarters when he appeared last week at an event sponsored by Cleantech San Diego.

But as Darryl Siry reports today on Wired’s Autotopia blog, a prolonged power struggle that pitted Aptera founders Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony against Wilbur and Aptera board members apparently came to a head in recent weeks. Wired says rumors about the founders’ departure, as well as layoffs amid financial difficulties, began appearing last week on the Aptera Forum, an online message board for Aptera car enthusiasts. Aptera did not immediately respond to an e-mail query seeking the company’s response to the reports. According to Wired, the company says it’s slowing down its burn rate while waiting for the Department of Energy to review its loan application, and maintains that its relationship with Fambro and Anthony remains positive.

Fambro, who founded Aptera about six years ago, has previously said his aim with the company was to build a safe and comfortable passenger vehicle that was more fuel-efficient than anything else on the road. The company says the prototype of its aerodynamic pod-shaped, three-wheel vehicle gets 230 miles to the gallon.

Aptera raised about $24 million roughly 18 months ago from investors that include Google and Idealab. CEO Wilbur told me last year that the company was having no trouble attracting additional funding, but the Wired blog reports that additional funding has in fact been difficult to secure during a drawn-out battle over which course the company should be steering.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.