Aptera News

[KarenRei]

And really, hardly anybody is going to base their buying decision on the ratio of interior space to coefficient of drag

Not directly, they won't. But indirectly they absolutely will. Two cars with the same interior space, but one has a CdA of 0.6m² and the other 0,24m²? The latter will (with no weight reduction) go twice as far on a charge, and charge twice as fast from a given power source when charger-capability limited. It'll also have a much higher top speed, all else being equal.

Drag area is not just a number; it's one of the most meaningful aspects of vehicle design. You talk about "overall practicality". Is going twice as far and charging twice as fast not part of "practicality"? And paying half as much for power, I could add?

The fact that people buy SUVs shows that the general buying public doesn't care about efficiency

1) The fact that SUVs have transitioned into (significantly lower CdA) crossovers shows that they do.
2) You can make a SUV streamliner as well.

People bought SUVs (now crossovers) because they want space. Let's reiterate: you can have space in a streamliner too. Streamlining doesn't mean sacrificing space in order to get a significantly lower drag area; it means having a larger wheelbase. There is a tradeoff between suitability as a city car and drag area, but not interior space. More to the point, the larger you go, the easier it is to streamline. Cross sectional area increases proportional to your axes squared but volume to your axes cubed; more of the vehicle gets away from ground effects; "essential" things that add drag (such as mirrors, wipers, wheels, etc) become less significant; and so on.

Two-seat cars are a very small market segment

How long are you going to continue to pretend that internal volume and streamlining are mutually exclusive? How many posts are we going to have to go back and forth where you say "But *small*" and I reply "But *we're talking relative to a given amount of usable volume*, so *not-but-small*"?

Heck, even *Aptera* was intially planned to be a 2 1/2 seater.

Aptera would have been selling to a niche market, and most of the people who would have bought one will much prefer a Model 3 or even a Nissan Leaf today.

Right, because Aptera would totally have stood still and not made new, diverse models of vehicles over time? FYI, they already had a 4 seat model in design (codenamed Palomar), even in the early days under Steve. Not related to the uninteresting sedan that Paul started work on in the company's death throes.

But it handicapped itself by trying to do too many things differently all at once: Electric, at a time when batteries were not even as good as they are now

1) Aptera would have been the only affordable, decent range (by then-standards) EV on the market. Which is a large part of how they got so many orders. And it was able to do this specifically because it was so streamlined and light. A conventional shape could not have gotten its performance at its price point.

2) Unlike Tesla, Aptera was not an EV-exclusive company. They also had projects on a 2g (gasoline) and 2h (PHEV). They looked into a 2d (diesel), but there apparently wasn't a single diesel engine on the market in their required power range that could meet California's emissions standards (partly due to the small power requirements for Aptera, and partly because emissions were rated per gallon, not per mile). That said, the others took low priority because EVs were their high demand product.

very unconventional style that would have appealed only to a small segment of the potential two-seat electric car market

Quite to the contrary, they got 4000 pre-orders, from a no-name startup, with reservations limited to California. They absolutely had a business case.

 

[daniel]

They got all those orders because at that time nobody was selling EVs except low-power (NEVs and the Xebra) or DIY back yard conversions.

Coefficient of drag is important, but you overstate: Cutting your Cd in half will not double your range. Also, the longer the car, the harder it is to find a parking space.

With the Tesla cars, we get around 4 miles per kWh. A Google inquiry says that in the U.S. the average electricity price is 12¢ per kWh. If you drive 15,000 miles a year, that's 3,750 kWh per year. At 12¢ that's $450 per year for electricity. (Compared to $1,285 for a gas car that gets 35 mpg at $3 gas.) Even using your numbers, cutting the Cd in half would only save a 15,000-miles-per-year EV driver $225 per year in electricity cost. (I drive a lot less and my electricity is cheaper. I would save about $20 per year.) $225 per year in fuel savings is just not worth it to most people for the inconvenience of the awkward design.

Yes, there was enormous pent-up demand for an EV (as seen by the 500,000 reservations for Model 3) but Aptera's advantages just don't outweigh its disadvantages in a market where several EV options exist, from the cheap commuter Leaf to the mind-blowing P100DL Model S.

I would love to see someone resurrect the Aptera and prove me wrong. There will be some who will buy it, and more EVs are always better.

 

[KarenRei]

They got all those orders because at that time nobody was selling EVs except low-power (NEVs and the Xebra) or DIY back yard conversions.

Because they cost too much, because batteries were too expensive, meaning that only an efficient design like Aptera's could be affordable. The design was a feature, not a bug.

And while EVs have advanced greatly in price points since then, the same factors apply. A Model 3 SR's 220 mile range would be 440 in the event of a range doubling, and a LR's 310 mile range would be 620 miles. That's an entirely different ballpark.

Coefficient of drag is important, but you overstate: Cutting your Cd in half will not double your range

Please look at the numbers you're replying to. Do you think that 0.6 / 2 = 0.24?

Also, the longer the car, the harder it is to find a parking space.

Hence my repeated comments about "city cars". Surely you didn't miss that.

With the Tesla cars, we get around 4 miles per kWh

. A Google inquiry says that in the U.S. the average electricity price is 12¢ per kWh. If you drive 15,000 miles a year, that's 3,750 kWh per year. At 12¢ that's $450 per year for electricity[/quote]

Californians (by far the largest EV market in the US) pay well more than the national average for electricity, and some places in California have positively absurd residential rates. Europeans also tend to pay a lot for electricity.

inconvenience of the awkward design.

Ever been in an Aptera before? I have. Fun fact: you can load long 2-by-4s in there. Length is a serious advantage for many payloads.

IMHO, my ideal vehicle would have an adjustable rear height (sliding sides). Fully compacted, it's an ultra-efficient, ultra-long-range, ultra-fast-charging, ultra-fast streamliner. Fully expanded, you can fold up the back seating or use it like a cargo van. Seriously, that would be my dream car. I would have to hold onto something to avoid passing out if a company like Tesla unveiled something like that. A serious "Hurry Up And Take My Money!!!" scenario

Yes, there was enormous pent-up demand for an EV (as seen by the 500,000 reservations for Model 3) but Aptera's advantages just don't outweigh its disadvantages in a market where several EV options exist, from the cheap commuter Leaf to the mind-blowing P100DL Model S.

How many times are we going to have to play this game where you compare decade-old engineering by a much smaller company and the stats allowed for by a vehicle from that era with a vehicle benefiting from a huge budget and the latest in technology?

 

[daniel]

You make some good arguments. They don't convince me that I'd want an Aptera over a Tesla Model 3, or that the Aptera design would appeal to more than a very few people, though I'd have given my eye teeth for one at the time when it would have been the only EV on the market. I hope that someone does resurrect the idea and you can one day get your dream car. The more choices there are in the EV market, the better.

 

[voyager]

I sometimes wonder what a proper four wheeled car that capured its spirit would be like. I kind of wonder how a four wheeled vehicle would play out where the wheels, motors and batteries were built into two streamlined "pontoons", with the car suspended between and above them. The CG would be low, the packs easy to build (not needing to match a complex body curve), you'd have great ground clearance and suspension travel on the body, etc.

There used to be an EV called Edison 2 that was supposed to be ultra-lightweight and slippery. It looks a bit like a 4 wheel Aptera too. Found their link: Edison2 - Next Generation VLC

 

[KarenRei]

Ugh, Edison2... Yes, they made a pretty low drag vehicle. But every design decision they made in the process I disagree with, giving them an ugly, impractical vehicle.

 

[voyager]

A three-wheel layout (or semi three-wheel layout, i.e. two rear wheels clustered closely) allows for an ultra-lowdrag shape. Could be built pretty seriously lightweight too. You could even accommodate three, while still keeping vehicle width limited. Here's an interesting comparison with the lightweight EV the Technical University of Munich conducted.

 

[palmer_md]

@voyager: The X-prize Aptera was after Paul's "redesign". Most customers were disgusted by what he had done to it by that point; it was so bloated that it looked like it was "pregnant". The efficiency had been hurt so much by that point that they had to swell the size of the battery pack. And in the process they pushed the CG backward, while it needs to be as far forward as possible for a design like that. By that point, most of the people on the Aptera forum were laughing at, not disappointed by, its bad performance; we pretty much expected it. The people remaining, that is - most people had drifted away by then.

That said, concerning width, it has always been wide (albeit only for a very small area at the front wheels, and the doors opened within that width). You could also see the front wheel pods while driving, so you could position them exactly.

Yep. I was a very early reservation holder (dec 07). I loved the simplicity of the early designs and was fully aware and willing to deal with some of the design issues like the windows. I liked that the lack of moving windows kept it more aerodynamic. The doors did not swing out further than the wheel pod, so if the front was clear when I drove in and I needed to do something outside like push a intercom button or something I could easily just open the door.

when I saw the redesigned version of the car, I withdrew my reservation and let them know why I was pulling the reservation...not that they payed any attention to what their customers were saying at that point.

Steve was going to write a book about the experience...still waiting for that one.

Funny side note: The IT guy for the company has the same name as me, and Paul fired him thinking we were the same person ( on the Aptera forum). Paranoid? (I'm not certain this is true about the firing, but its what I heard).

 

[palmer_md]

Ugh, Edison2... Yes, they made a pretty low drag vehicle. But every design decision they made in the process I disagree with, giving them an ugly, impractical vehicle.

After I got out of the Aptera reservation, I switched my allegiance to Edison2. I agree it was not nearly as elegant as the Aptera, but it did still fit with most of what I was looking for. I met Oliver and had an opportunity to spend a few hours with him discussing the car and got to take a drive around Oakland/Berkeley area in the car. It was a great car. I was on the list to buy one of them, and would still do it if they offered it today.

 

[palmer_md]

I sometimes wonder what a proper four wheeled car that capured its spirit would be like. I kind of wonder how a four wheeled vehicle would play out where the wheels, motors and batteries were built into two streamlined "pontoons", with the car suspended between and above them. The CG would be low, the packs easy to build (not needing to match a complex body curve), you'd have great ground clearance and suspension travel on the body, etc.

I'm sure you saw these renderings from Jason Hill. Aerolight Series - Design by 11

 

[KarenRei]

I'm sure you saw these renderings from Jason Hill. Aerolight Series - Design by 11

Hmm, I don't remember these. Really don't like the front wheel arrangement in the first pic - if you're going to have your front wheels out on pods, you should close them off (like Aptera did), so they're nice clean airfoils with that sleek airplane look and low drag coefficient. As for unshrouded front wheels, I think the second design is a lot better - although I'm not sure about that door design, it looks like it might just be draggy flair. I guess it depends on what's going on where we can't see, e.g. air ducted in from the front... If that's not just flair, then that would be pretty keen. I guess the part that sticks out more would contain the side crash structure.

 

[palmer_md]

And on the subject of 4 wheel aero vehicles and Edison2. Jason was also hired to design their production car after the x-prize. Here is the rendering of the never built VLC4. They did build one rolling chassis, but I do not believe that they ever built a full car.

Edison2 VLC 4.0 - Design by 11

 

[doug]

Back from the dead?

Exclusive: 3-Wheeled Aptera Reboots as World’s Most Efficient Electric Car

I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed at this point, but it would be interesting to see.

 

[KarenRei]

Back from the dead?

Exclusive: 3-Wheeled Aptera Reboots as World’s Most Efficient Electric Car

I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed at this point, but it would be interesting to see.

My thoughts exactly. In its day, Aptera could easily have conquered the low-end EV market (that Tesla was attacking top-down), using efficiency to overcome the then-high price of batteries and EV powertrains. But now it seems to be purely a race for mass production-driven cost reductions. I don't know how they're supposed to compete.

I still have a big piece of my heart in that design. But am I going to leave well-established Tesla for a tiny startup at this point? Maybe if I had money to burn I might get both. But I don't.

IMHO, I think they need to do more than just go for "most efficient". I think they need to exploit that efficiency to pull off feats that others can't. For example, they could go for the super-low-end (very few batteries = cheap) and focus on emerging EV markets like India. Or contrarily, they could make use of its lightness and streamlining for performance, and/or exploit its low Wh/mi alongside fast charging to make it capable of record-setting cannonball run times.

 

[palmer_md]

I think there is still a huge opportunity for an efficient vehicle. Looking forward to seeing where this leads. I may head down to help them out. Sounds like a great opportunity. .

 

[daniel]

Back in the day I'd have given my eye teeth for an Aptera. Today, why would I give up my Model 3, which has loads of cargo space, the most comfortable seats of any car I've ever owned, and the highest safety rating the NHTSA has ever given? And who cares about efficiency when you get your electricity for free from the solar panels on your roof? This new Aptera (if they ever manage to build it) would have been able to make my long summer road trip, but I would not have been able to carry all the gear I needed for that trip.

They're touting 1,000 miles of range and 100 Wh/mile, which means they'll have a 100 kWh battery. That little car is going to carry as much battery capacity as a Model S 100? I doubt it. And it better have mighty comfortable seats if they're pitching it to people who want to drive 1,000 miles on a charge. They're touting the extremely strong and rigid construction of the passenger capsule as a safety feature. What makes a car safe is not rigidity. What makes a car safe is a crumple zone.

If they manage to build this thing now it will be a niche product for people who only need two seats and only a tiny amount of cargo space. (I assume it will have some cargo space.) People who want to make long trips in a tiny, less-than-comfortable car with little luggage space. Motorcyclists do this, but they do it so they can feel the wind in their hair. Once upon a time Aptera appealed to those of us who desperately wanted to drive electric and there was nothing available but a NEV or a Zap Xebra. Now it will only appeal to those few people for whom a tiny improvement in efficiency is worth a tremendous reduction in size from what's readily available with other cars.

Oh, and forget about a service network. They blew it when they had the chance. The time for this kind of endeavor has passed.

 

[voyager]

Aptera might have catered to early-adopters. Its weird looks would have been a bonus - you either like it (I do, so did Jay Leno), or you don't. Its extraordinarily wide stance, and subsequent large footprint, combined with the mere two-seat capacity, is what makes it unpractical though. You don't need to have a wide imagination to see that the Aptera risks having its front wheels sheared off when it's in the slightest collision. Again, the wide stance was meant as a precaution to prevent it from toppling over. But that could have been compensated for by having the vehicle tilt during cornering.

 

[KarenRei]

Again, the wide stance was meant as a precaution to prevent it from toppling over. But that could have been compensated for by having the vehicle tilt during cornering.

This is a common misconception. Look at an overhead view of the vehicle. The wheels have to be that far out for them not to collide with the central body when turning. Remember that there's no penetration in the central body for the wheels to rotate into.

I don't think they're at any more risk of being "sheared" than any other vehicle; it depends on the strength of those struts, which is entirely their decision. Nor am I sure that being sheared in an offset collision would actually be a bad thing for passenger safety.

My main thing is simply just... they're a startup, vs. highly established companies now that didn't exist back then. They have no volume. They have no service network. They have no charging network, beyond the inferior non-Tesla networks out there. They have tiny budgets for the development of things like infotainment, etc. And yeah, charging has gotten so fast that the tradeoff for giving up your rear seats is a lot harder to justify now.

I still love the design. I just love efficiency, and I still think it's beautiful. I was an Aptera megafan back then. But I just find it hard to justify today. I was kind of saddened to learn that they're starting back up, because I know some of the founders, and they're great people, and I don't want them to be let down if demand doesn't rematerialize.

 

[voyager]

With those big wheel cowlings you might be right. Still, the X Prize test proves I am right. Aptera oversteered like crazy. A three-wheeler's tendency to pivot around the single rear wheel can be offset by a wide front stance up to a certain point, after which it will vehemently oversteer. It is still better to 'shrug off' lateral forces by having a three-wheeler tilt: lean into the bend.

 

[KarenRei]

With those big wheel cowlings you might be right. Still, the X Prize test proves I am right. Aptera oversteered like crazy.

Ugh, please don't mix up that bloated whale that Paul built with the light, streamlined thing that Steve and Chris had been working on. When Paul took over he ruined the efficiency trying to "mainstream" the design, which meant enlarging the battery pack, which meant enlarging the shell (looked almost like it was pregnant ) and shifting the CG up.

By the time of the X-Prize, most Aptera fans had already soured on what was happening with the company and there was almost a sort of schadenfreude watching Paul's version perform so poorly.