Waiting Lists for Green Cars

Aptera: Really the inspiration for this post, David A Kates at Alternative Energy: Aptera called Aptera and they were unbelievably forthcoming. Quoting David: "I contacted CEO Steve Fambro. He said they now have 996 California customers. 70 percent of these orders have been for the hybrid. Aptera returned about 355 deposits from customers outside California. (The company wants to perfect its customer service in California before expanding.) So the total number of reservations is around 1,350. I can't wait to see them on the road in Los Angeles!". The EV is $26900, while the hybrid is $29900, reservations are $500 for both models. Aptera hopes to deliver small numbers (30) of the EV this year.

Fisker Karma: According to Forbesautos: A New Breed of Hybrid, they have been getting "between 50 and 100 orders a week" for the Karma. Since it's first debutted at the Detroit Auto Show in late January, there have been about 8 weeks, so that puts the total number of orders between 400 and 800. Not bad for a $80000 vehicle with a $1000 reservation. They plan to deliver the first of the vehicles in Q4 2009.

Tesla: It's been widely reported that the 2008 year is sold out, a total of 650 reservations, at $50k and $30k reservation prices for the $98k sports car. Information on the 2009 model year has not been released, but with the new $5k reservation price, they probably got quite a few new customers, so it's fairly safe to say that Tesla also has at least 1000 reservations. And unlike the others here, they have actually delivered the first "production" vehicle to a paying customer - their own CEO, of course.

ZAP Alias. They are taking reservations for the ZAP Alias for $5k, the MSRP is $32.5k. I was not able to find any information anywhere about how many had been reserved to date, even though it's been taking reservations for at least six months. I called ZAP and spoke to Alex Campbell, who said that they have not been promoting the reservations of the Alias, and that the number to date is "not impressive". ZAP feels it is more important to focus on the engineering of the vehicle right now, and once they have the design work done and some prototypes built they will start the marketing. They still hope to deliver the first vehicles in late 2009.

Bonus: GM Chevrolet Volt. GM is NOT taking orders for this vehicle yet. But according to GM-Volt.com, 13,300 people have sent in their email addresses to be on the "I want one" list, and an additional 400,000 people voted at "Vote for Volt" that GM should make the vehicle. Obviously submitting your email address hardly qualifies as a commitment, but it's still a demonstration of market demand.

So it looks like these vehicle have found a small market - despite the high prices and despite the entirely legitimate concern that they will be buying largely untested technology from companies with zero history (startups), at least 2,400 people have put down some real money to reserve their place in line for these innovative green vehicles. Will the Automotive X Prize make this market explode?