24
votes
You're wrong about Aptera's car. It's ridiculously efficient (and solar powered).
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- Title
- You're Wrong About Aptera
- Authors
- Aging Wheels
- Duration
- 16:08
- Published
- Feb 18 2024
I've been following the Aptera car project for well over a decade. Production release has been "right around the corner" the entire time. They probably are not actual vaporware, but they do seem to keep running into financial, regulatory, and scaling issues that keep pushing back the launch.
If/When they ever get their act together and actually have a mass-produced product for sale that is in line with their claims, I'll be in line to buy one.
Edit ... from Wikipedia:
Reminds me of the whole Elio thing. I would have loved to have one of those, and they did make some serious moves toward production, but it kept being a thing long, long after anyone could see it wasn't going to happen. Hopefully this doesn't follow the same trajectory.
I rather love the Aptera and odd cars like the Elio. But I feel like the US has some sort of curse on it that makes nonstandard car designs. The same guy who made this video also did a recent one on the Electra Meccanica Solo (which got taken down because of drama but he's redoing it and it will be up again later this week). It did actually get to market; quite a few people were delivered them and drove them around. But then they did a buyback recall on every single mass-produced model they made and as far as I'm aware they were all destroyed, much like the GM EV1.
The "curse" is that it's actually just really really really hard to make a viable product. The tolerances and the QA that need to go into a modern car are difficult to meet, and then you have a ton of safety/emissions/other regulations you must meet that are extremely difficult for something like a small startup to do.
This was true when the delorean came out and it has only gotten worse.
I don't know about that; the rest of the world seems to be doing it. Electro Meccanica did it, at least for a short while. I would agree that regulation is probably a big part of it, but it also seems like a lot of it is just that there aren't enough people in this huge country who would want them to warrant making them.
Well here's supposed R&D costs for them https://ycharts.com/companies/SOLO/r_and_d_expense_annual
(I don't have time at the moment to 100% validate)
But short version we're looking at a low of 7 million a year and a high of 20 million a year.
This is a very expensive field to even attempt to break into, and a lot of issues are simply hard to find until you've actually got the product in the hands of the user.
I followed the Arcimoto FUV, and before that the Electra Meccanica Solo, and before that the Corbin Sparrow, and before that the Commuter Cars Tango, all of which are EVs that made it into low number production and all of which failed within a few years.
Thus my observation is that there is no market for a single seater vehicle or a vehicle with in line seating. People want to be able to see their passenger or they want to at least have another seat where they can pick up a passenger or put items within reach. Even solitary commuters occasionally need that second seat, so at least the Aptera has the advantage of side by side seating.
But the Aptera's big sell is its efficiency. None of the other EVs, even Tesla, have focussed on making such an efficient vehicle and that's potentially their ace in the hole. If they can prove it works in the real world it could be revolutionary. However, I've heard "game changing" and "revolutionary" so often in EV ads that Im pretty jaded toward those claims. I think the Segway rode that one hard - right over the edge as I recall.
With the costs as high as they are, I think it's the reason range anxiety exists for some electric vehicles even though the vast majority of people don't daily drive anywhere near the limit of the range of most of the vehicles. The cost is still so high that you can't necessarily afford to have something else that accounts for the exceptions. Not only the actual cost, but the space to store the things as well. If it cost me $15k for an Aptera that I could daily drive, and then another $15k for something else that I could also keep that would account for exceptions, then it's sort of like paying $30k for a vehicle that does it all. With smaller items that's how it works. I don't have to choose whether to own just a fork or just a spoon, I can have both. I might use a spoon more often, but if I only had the ability to have one utensil then I'd possibly be more inclined to buy sporks instead. It may not be the best at either function, but it has elements of both. I mention this because Aptera initially was supposed to be a fairly low cost vehicle, but now it's not so it's definitely going to be judged for the exceptions it can't manage similar to other atypical vehicles.
Very solid point. And also why I insist to my EVangelist friends that I dont think JUST an EV will cover everything I need to do. Utter heresy they say - and then I note that they live in the city, dont have to drive 4 hours to the nearest big city in -40c weather or have to plow their driveway before they can leave home in winter.
If I get an Aptera it will function like my current low range EV - it's a three season car mostly for commuting into town to save on gas.
One of the most common observations I've seen about these vehicles is people, perhaps correctly, not feeling safe in them. These things are, to memory, classified more as motorcycles because they don't have 4 wheels, and thus much more lax safety standards. Just an average sedan colliding with you sure looks like it could cause serious harm, and while I believe they're more safe than you might expect, they're still more dangerous than something like a Civic.
I know it goes without saying, but there's a good chance people wouldn't be as worried if the cars that got sold here weren't so needlessly massive and heavy, and that includes the big freight trucks that drive seemingly everywhere.
True. Aptera doesnt need to conform to crash test standards the same as a car although they say they will be doing crash testing to show the car's safety. Either way it turns out, physics says that an 1800 lb car is going to get bounced pretty hard when hit by a 5000 lb SUV.
I think people over focus on the SUV issue. It is an issue, especially in the US, but again, a bog standard honda civic, hardly the beast of the road, is still 2800-3100 lbs.
That extra energy is going somewhere, and it's not like motorcycles are known for their safety. These are going to be much the same in that a same direction collision is probably fine, but any sort of "t bone" situation is very likely to be extremely dangerous if not fatal.
The only thing that might make it more than survivable in a t-bone situation is that the shell is extremely strong and because of its rounded shape and seat height, its possible that a normal car hood might scoop under the Aptera and push it up instead of just plowing straight into it. The bottom of the seat is actually about knee high which is a bit higher than a car but probably on par with a big SUV. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Aptera_Side_View_with_Open_Door.jpg
But only crash testing will prove that theory. Im thinking of it as 'better than a motorcycle, but worse than a car' and I survived many years on a bike and many highway miles so I dont think its a huge risk.
I mean, that's probably worse? The whole reason cars look so wrecked in modern accidents is because all the energy from the impact is going into the frame.
If it can't go into the frame, then it's going into the driver. The whole Dale Earnheart crash looking unimpressive and all that
I suppose youre right. I dont know how or if carbon fiber and fiberglas absorbs impact. It does have a front crumple zone built into the aluminum(?) subframe, which also holds all the charger/inverter and AC/heat components.
I guess if you're gonna hit something it better be head on?
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Going to be honest, I have never heard of this Aptera company. But the product shown in this video is unlike any vehicle I have ever seen in my entire life. What a weird (cool?) car. I mean, I have lived in a city, and I have seen many similar ridiculous trike vehicles that people mod to be extra loud and irritating. But this one is seemingly very quiet and very aerodynamic, and also fully enclosed. It features:
These factors apparently give the vehicle an incredible level of efficiency, to the point where the solar panels are actually useful. (Remember that about 93% of car trips are under 25 miles.) I simply do not believe the 1000-mile figure, but from what this reviewer says, I would believe it still has a very substantial range in warm weather.
This review is pretty rosy overall. The car is not in production. But it is drivable, and apparently handles nicely. I'm not sure I would take it on the highway in its current state, but then again, people take motorcycles on the highway all the time. Overall it looks like a great vehicle for childless car enthusiast types in Southern California. Very much a transportation or sport vehicle and not a storage or utility vehicle, though it does have some space for that kind of thing.
The vehicle will apparently start at $25.9k USD MSRP for the version with the absolute cheapest customizations. I don't necessarily believe that figure will stay below $30k, but I believe that Aptera believes in their figure right now. The "launch edition" will have a 400-mile range at $33.2k USD.
Their FAQ claims that "production is slated for [late] 2024." I'm skeptical because they seem to lack some amount of capital. But OK.
I'm all for people buying smaller and more efficient vehicles when it works for them. This vehicle is still on the expensive side for most folks, and for that reason will be more of a plaything than anything else, but I think it demonstrates how much established automakers could gain from making their vehicles actually aerodynamic. Instead of 3-ton cuboids.
I'm all in on Aptera, well, kinda. I made a little profit off crypto and reinvested in something almost as risky - Aptera stock. So I have a few bucks in the company and am sincerely hoping they succeed. And I have a reservation for one that I may or may wish to use when the time comes.
I particularly like the idea of a car that generates its own power just by being parked in the sun. Thats true automotive autonomy - dont even have to sign up for a charging network, use an app or pull up to a charger (that may not work if its not a Tesla supercharger)
There are definitely some headwinds. The first one being that the car is so different that it take some getting used to for the average buyer. It's also a reverse trike (which I've always loved) that a lot of people who haven't driven one will have questions about. Its actually a very stable vehicle - as the weight is down low and forward so rolling one is nearly impossible (see the 'moose test' swerve video on youtube). And its only a two seater, although its a lot bigger than it looks in most pics. That back hatch area is long enough to sleep in.
But the biggest problem, as with all startups, is money. They have made some very good progress there has been a LOT of impressive R&D and they have production molds ready to go for formulating the bodies, which are only 4 carbon fiber pieces instead of the thousands of metal pieces that make up most cars.
But after a massive fundraising campaign in the last year, they have enough to keep going but Im not convinced they have enough to actually make it to production. And their chief marketing officer just left the company a day or two ago - which isn't exactly comforting. They seem to be bleeding staff slowly which would indicate a lack of funds to keep them.
There is also another factor, and this is entirely my own theory, but just as Musk had to fight gov regulations and dealerships to push Teslas into the marketplace, Aptera also has to fight a) to get 'autocycles' ie, three wheelers approved in every state, b) an entire electricity utility market based on paying customers not 'free' power, c) an entire auto parts industry based on selling parts and repairs - The Aptera is a relatively simple car with fewer parts than most cars and they are committed to giving customers the right to repair. Most EV makers are going the opposite, not only demanding that your car be repaired only by them, but also controlled by them with over the air updates and the ability to enable or disable features as they choose.
So my theory is that Aptera has very few friends in the auto sector and therefore lobbyist and auto heavyweights are not going to be championing their cause at the gov level, even if they have one of the greenest cars on the planet. Oil and gas wont like them, dealers wont particularly like them, repair shops wont be thrilled with them, electric utilities wont make much money off them - they need a strong champion with a billion dollars in his pocket to champion their cause - and there are only so many Elon Musk's to go around. Which is probably why they are in Saudi Arabia this week showcasing their car to some of the richest people on the planet.
Honestly all the fundraising emails I get from Aptera is what makes me not want to invest. I don't think they're a vaporware company or that their product isn't good, but they need mass production to hit the prices they are targeting. Their prototypes look awesome, but getting a factory up and running costs hundreds of millions of dollars. If they can't get the funding they need it's bound to fail.
I am curious if their production facility will work as planned. Unlike traditional assembly lines, the cars move around on robotic platforms from station to station and can be directed wherever they are sent. Since the cars are so light (1800 lbs) it makes production on any flat warehouse floor possible without a huge gantry system. So far though, its only been shown in virtual space, so there's no indication it will work in real life.
This looks pretty incredible, added bonus that you aren't enriching Elon Musk by purchasing it!
I followed Aptera for a while, starting back when they were claiming it would cost 20k or less. As others have mentioned, the launch is always right around the corner and always gets delayed.
I never really planned on buying one, but it seemed like a cool project. Eventually it went on for long enough that I lost interest. Though I did see a big marketing push they did a couple years ago, complete with pre-orders. I assume that got delayed too. If you can't manage even a small production run after a decade plus on a product that uses existing technology, something is wrong.
Also, now at over $30k for a 3 wheeled vehicle with limited cargo and passenger space and minimal amenities, why not spend an extra 5 to 10k for a fully featured electric vehicle? At this point I'm not sure what they're offering beyond novelty.
Apparently they went bankrupt in 2011 but they're still trying.
Yeah, the original version of the car was also gas (or diesel?), sub-$20k, and aiming for 300+ mpg fuel efficiency, so it still would have been a pretty nice vehicle, even running on fossil fuels.
The latest incarnation looks quite different and it does sound promising. The company actually has money and employees and a lot of pre-orders. Here's hoping ...
It sounds like they’re kind of short on money?
I actually really like the look of these, they feel straight out of Star Trek. I wonder how well they'll stack up in the UK's sunlight.
I had a chance to sit in a really early version of this car in a showroom in San Diego. It looked very cool but the interior looked completely handmade. The steering wheel was just a Tesla steering wheel lol. The wheels also didn’t have any coverings when I saw it. The car was super low to the ground and very small, seemed like it would be a fun sports car
Cool to see that they are actually being built
Is the showroom at their office in Carlsbad, or do they have another location closer to the city?
It was at the Bang and Olufsen showroom in La Jolla at one point. It wasn’t there last time I went by
There was an episode of How I Built This with the CEO Steve Fambro.
I love the idea of a solar-powered battery for a car. I think that it would drastically increase batterylife/mileage per drive for cars, and am slightly confused why it isn't a thing already.
You've already commented further about this lower down, but I love the idea of using solar power for cars as well and wanted to look deeper into this so decided to use this as an excuse. There are three cars using solar panels that immediately come to my mind:
The Revero was a hybrid, with 500km of range and about 80-130km of that in all-electric mode. The company that made the solar roof stated that the car had a 200 watt solar array and that was able to charge the 21.4-28 kWh battery (depending on spec) in a way that provided around 8km of range per day in the best case scenario.
The Prius Prime is a hybrid with something like a 4.4kwh battery. An optional solar roof that can produce up to 10.2 km of range per day, assuming you live in a place with 12 hours of direct sun per day. Realistically, it's about 5km of range per day.
The Ocean EV, in its Extreme trim level, has a 77.4 kwh battery providing up to 560km of all-electric range. The solar panel provides about 5.6-8km of range per day. By far having the largest battery, the amount of range the solar panels provides to the Ocean is incredibly small compared to its range and battery size. Conventional charging will always be the better option for EV owners outside of the most ideal circumstances (and really if your commute is that short and your weather is that good, consider bicycling).
Solar panels on cars are just not enough. And you can't solar charge overnight, when most people sleep, which is really the ideal time to be charging for the sake of convenience. The other time is while at work (or even driving), but that requires that you park the car in an uncovered spot, which is both inconvenient due to weather and not accessible in many cities where this kind of electricity generation would be most practical.
In order for solar charging to work we need to see solar electricity-generating windows come to market, incorporate more solar into other panels of the car (hood, perhaps?), and most importantly lower the weight of the car to improve range. Oh, and we need heat pumps in all EVs. I only learned today that Rivian's first-generation models don't have heat pumps. That's stupid and range-reducing in an extreme way.
For the cost of these solar panels to be incorporated into the car, let's say it's $1-2k including R&D and manufacture per Prius, I'd rather people pool that money into a program that builds out industrial-scale solar arrays and then gives those car buyers a share of the money from the output over the life of the panels they are "buying." That way it's an investment and we're building solar in places that make sense and at scales that make sense.
you should probably watch the first minute of the video, it goes into it a bit, specifically for the modern cars.
lol you're right. I should have been more clear, I think that there should be a way to use solar panels to help with regenerative driving. I guess we're still pretty far away from being able to do anything of the sort with the amount of energy needed to charge a car.
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According to this video, one of the the primary reasons solar panels are not used on typical vehicles has to do with their ridiculous weight and their even more ridiculous lack of aerodynamics, not just the tech itself, though that is of course a problem too.
There is nothing physical stopping car manufacturers from making their cars more aerodynamic. They choose the square-ish/blocky form factor because it's in vogue right now, just like it was in the 70s and 80s. Retooling production lines is expensive, but that happens periodically no matter what. They also choose to make them bulkier than is necessary, dramatically increasing weight.
If they decided to focus on efficiency, solar panels would make a lot more sense. Aptera's 40 mile figure is incredible but honestly we don't even need to shoot that high. Getting 10 or 20 miles of range out of a solar panel on a car covers the majority of trips. Hell, even a 5-mile solar panel range would cover 60% of trips. And I think that is pretty achievable for normal cars that do NOT look like the Aptera, if manufacturers tried.
Materials engineering to make vehicles more lightweight is a more expensive area of research, but manufacturers' choice not to do that is also still a choice. The issue is that, on the manufacturer side, the only consistent incentive to make vehicles more efficient is government regulations. Most consumers care about car-fashion and whatever is popular, not what actually saves them money. Cars are a status symbol for many, hence the popularity of pickup trucks among people who do not haul. This is partially because an enormous portion of consumers are either not financially literate, or do not have enough financially literacy to understand the true cost of vehicle ownership. (For example, "Only about 24% of millennials demonstrate basic financial knowledge." Millennials don't have the excuse of being in college anymore, they are in their 30s and 40s...) For instance the theoretical lifetime cost-efficiency of an EV seems marginal to people. They look at the sticker price. It is extremely easy to convince someone to buy a vehicle over a long loan term as long as the monthly payment is low, even though that will not save them money; and it is likewise hard to make someone appreciate the less immediate benefits, like lower maintenance costs, especially when those lower costs are not enormously lower, just somewhat lower. Because aerodynamics and solar panels currently only offer some benefit to consumers (and not huge benefit) without producing an odd vehicle like Aptera's, manufacturers don't see the point of trying at all.
This is all to say that the market can't make fuel-efficient vehicles popular by itself. They either have to be so obscenely efficient (with zero other drawbacks) that the difference is night-and-day, or people have to be influenced by other factors, such as the literal availability of certain kinds of vehicles from manufacturer production lines, or tiktok influencers or whatever, to voluntarily buy them in large quantities. This is why I am so excited about the EPA's recent fuel efficiency increases. This will encourage more streamlined, lightweight, and aerodynamic vehicles in addition to more EVs generally.
There's something that irks me about coming right out of the gate with "you're wrong about _____".
I didn't have any opinions about Apteras car. Don't tell me I'm wrong before I've even started engaging with the premise.
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Yes, I was a little annoyed by that title too and was uncertain if I should keep it. The actual video title is just "You're wrong about Aptera" which I thought was too clickbaity, so I added the second sentence about efficiency. I think it's better than the video title, but not a lot.
Some people don't like it when I rewrite/editorialize the title too much (for any reason at all), so I'm not sure where to draw the line.
Part of the consideration I make when I choose titles is that people literally do not click on links I share if they're purely descriptive. And what's the point of sharing something if people don't read or talk about it? Admittedly, those topics tend to be technical or not something people interact with day-to-day (and are therefore less likely to have opinions on), but even among the crowd here who reads technical and domain-specific content I share, they are unlikely to engage with content that feels strictly like a thought experiment, or is abstract, even though it's sometimes important in general. For example:
People don't really click on that kind of headline because they don't see a reason why. Even though energy generation and climate change are interesting to people who read ~enviro, they won't automatically click on every headline. In contrast, topics that tend to get a lot of attention are ones that either speak directly to the reader (you think X, Y will happen to you, etc) or otherwise incite an immediate reaction based on some preconceived notion, even a small or subconscious one:
Those ones are implanting a particular thought in the reader's mind that the reader either feels compelled to disprove by reading the article/engaging, or are puzzled by and want to investigate. I think there are ways for a headline to be attention-grabbing without being specifically clickbaity, including headlines that address the reader, though they still tend to have some sort of technically opinionated premise/axiom:
But those examples were also threads I posted when Tildes was significantly more active, so it's not a direct comparison.
I try to share content that people will engage with. The comments represent an opportunity to learn or share or change perspective or whatever (I don't really care about the votes a topic gets except I guess that they help display the thread to more people who could comment). That is why I try to write a starter comment on my threads, because it has something other than the article/video to go off of. (That is why I also try to put my opinion in those comments, rather than making it just a summary.) I have to balance that with my extremely specific interests (like railroad infrastructure mechanisms), but I would rather people engage with a topic than not, even if the mechanism to make them engage is a tad unscrupulous. Good conversation can still happen on a thread with a presumptuous title. And people kind of just don't respond to content that doesn't "presume" something about them, the only exceptions on this website being groups like ~tech or ~comp where visitors have way too much subject-matter expertise to stay out of even the most mundane discussions, and I guess some political news that everyone can relate to.
In the future, I'll refrain from titles that are literally just clickbait, and I will edit out portions of titles that accuse the reader of something, but I don't think there's any escaping headlines that are designed to make you gasp or scoff a little.
It's a common problem when people who spend hours on niche forums produce YouTube videos that reach a wide audience. The video's creator might spend 10 hours per week talking about car startups. Getting outside of that mindset to create the video requires both having the expertise that drives someone to spend so much time in the bubbles that inform them and a general perspective that keeps them grounded.
Person paid for video about solar electric car likes solar electric car!
Shocking news at 11!
The video, at 14:55
Yeah but in Europe just recently a study on ~580 influences and youtubers ended, concluding that 96% are funded by corporate entities, 80% do not correctly declare this every time, and ... I forgot the exact number, but it was still grotesquely high are explictly trying to obfuscate their sponsorship.
That is to say, if it's on Youtube or Tiktok, it is paid for by a company, by and large. And even if they explicitly stay otherwise, chances are solid it still is. People don't make these high-production videos for fun (or at least, not after a while). It's a business, not a passion.
It's a little hard to believe this study without any details on it at all. The most I can find is that an EU commission checked 576 influencers, with no information on their selection process. Was it random? Were these influencers already suspected of skirting these rules? Were these influencers in specific demographics that tend towards shady sponsorships (crypto, fashion, fitness, etc.)? Is it specific to the EU, or did they screen people from around the world? It really can't be a truly random sampling of people, because if 97% of channels were getting paid by corporations... You realize that 97% of channels can't possibly be getting paid sponsorships, right?
If you believe him anyhow, he says he wasn't paid. He says in the video that he reached out to them, they didn't reach out to him, he paid for his own flight out to the place where they have these prototypes to drive it, and he isn't part of their referral program. He also argues his video would do better if he made a negative video about Aptera rather than positive.
Granted, I'll take the last part about whether the video would do better if it was negative rather than positive with a grain of salt. That one at least is something he could say without outright lying whereas if he's claiming that he didn't get paid or such then that has the potential to hurt him more if it turns out to not be true.
I dont know if he was paid but I will say, even as an Aptera fan, that their 'ambassador' program is annoying. They understand that bringing a car to market will take a long time and that missing deadlines causes a cascading effect of negativity that can kill a project. But to counter that they have a entire tribe of brand ambassadors that continuously post positive but sometimes INANE things about Aptera, just to keep up the conversation. ie. In one forum there are questions like "does anyone know how to take the bolts off the rear wheel?" or "are you going to take your Aptera through a car wash?" or "what kind of polish will you use on your Aptera?" which would be a good question for a car in production, but dear lawd, we are likely at least a year or two or more from that, so why bother even asking except to trigger conversation.