Whatever Happened to Aptera’s 1,000-Mile Car, Anyway?
Aptera is back, with a new video showing its "production intent" car. No mention is made of when the car will be in customers' garages.
It'll go 400 miles on a charge, and with solar panels plastered all over it, you may never even have to plug it in, Aptera says.
Pricing is listed on the Aptera website at $30,700.
There is no one more vigilant than an Aptera deposit holder. Scan the internet discussion boards and you will see they are divided into two groups: the true believers whose faith is unshakable despite years and years of delays, and the whining naysayers who don't think the car will ever come out.
Well, both those guys just got something more to cling to. Aptera released a video showing a "production-intent" car cruising slowly around the company parking lot with two full-face-helmeted engineers inside, strapped in with six-point belts even though they were going about four miles an hour.
The PI2, "production-intent 2" performed its first low-speed function test in the parking lot of Aptera's Southern California engineering facility.
"It was a very big moment," says Aptera co-founder Steve Fambro.
Fambro was part of the original Aptera but "stepped down" in 2007. Aptera garnered attention by entering the previous model, the 2e, in the 2008 Automotive X Prize competition.
At that time, the company claimed the 2e would get the equivalent of 300 mpg and cost less than $30,000. Promises of production startup in 2009 and 2010 came and went without any action. Then the company shut down in 2011, lay dormant for a while, then restarted, with Fembro and co-founder Chris Anthony at the helm.
Now...?
"Everyone is super-excited to see years of design work. This is the first Aptera vehicle that doesn't have tape or tie wrap or things like that," Fambro says in the new video.
"Everything you see on it is production-intent. Production-intent geometry or even production-intent manufacturing with tool parts. It's a step-function level better than anything we've ever done. It is designed to be manufactured in high volume, it's not a prototype. There's nothing prototype about this vehicle. Virtually everything on it is ready for production."
In the video, the FWD three-wheeler is missing a hood and the skirt for the rear wheel, as well as a windshield and windows, none of which was necessary for the low-speed test, Fambro says. Engineers will add those components and do high-speed tests at a race track, he says.
Why are we even listening? Because the Aptera is, at least it appears to be, the most efficient means of enclosed transportation ever made. The shape is like a crazed, slippery sunflower seed, with two fairing-enclosed front wheels, a slippery aerodynamic wonder of a body, and a single rear wheel enclosed in another aerodynamic fairing.
The electric powertrain can be fueled solely by its acres of solar panels, making it what Aptera calls a solar-powered car, or sEV.
Its 45-kWh battery, augmented and charged by the onboard solar panels, gives it a claimed range of 400 miles. The whole thing weighs just 2,200 pounds. (Two years ago, last time we wrote about Aptera, the claim was 1,800 pounds and 1,000 miles of range.)
The body returns a coefficient of drag of just 0.15, or 0.13, depending on which Aptera source you're looking at. It's considered a motorcycle, according to co-founder Chris Anthony, who says in another video interview and shop tour that you don't need a motorcyucle license to operate it nor do you have to wear a motorcycle helmet, but you do get to pay motorcycle insurance, which he says is less.
Production will take place in Aptera's 77,000-square-foot facility near San Diego, Anthony adds, where they can make 40 cars a day on one shift and 80 a day on two shifts.
Pricing is listed on the Aptera website at $30,700 "price subject to change" for the Launch Edition. If you want one, they only ask "$100 due today."
The efficiency of it all is like catnip to Southern California's huge population of high-tech engineers and scientists, almost 50,000 of whom have put down deposits. Will they ever be rewarded? We have heard promises before. No production date is mentioned in the latest video. Let's hope we see it rolling down the highways soon.
Is Aptera ever going to see the light of day? Let us know in the comments below.