Something I find incredibly weird about US company culture is how they talk about overtime like it’s a good thing.
“Our employees worked weekends, days and nights to make this happen! We wouldn’t have succeeded without people who are willing to give up their personal lives!”
I hope they not only succeed but get shares. Doing weekends or nights for a company you don’t (partially) own feels like a con.
it is a con
Find people who care about what they’re working on and they’ll go well beyond the extra mile. As an extra motivator, make it clear the company won’t be around if they don’t succeed. I’m sure these employees have shares, but tha only really matters if the company succeeds (extra motivation!). Unfortunately, there have been a ton of green/green-adjacent automotive “startups” that have struggled to gain a foothold. See also:
(I’m sure many others)
Here are a few other interesting green automotive startups that didn’t make it:
- Sono Motors’ Sono: Compact EV with solar panels, power sharing, intended to be easily repairable and included a detail manual. They had prototypes but never went to production. Now the company does niche solar applications.
- Workhorse: Series Hybrid (think Chevy Volt) Pickup truck with onboard power for tools etc (was announced around or even before Rivian). Was a very pragmatic idea IMO. Later sort-of resold to Lordstown. Now company does some other things, like drones.
- Lordstown Motors’ Endurance: EV Pickup Truck with hub motors. Made a few hundred, but they have been dragging it out long enough for Ford to make electric pickups. And the idea wasn’t too original even when it was announced.
Fisker is nothing but a conman, always has been. His MO is literally to start a company, secure funding, make a personal fortune and then abandon the bankrupt shell and leave customers hanging.
Nothing says product quality like overworked employees
The Aptera has been promised for over a decade now. I’m somehow amazed they are still trying.
It’s also a bit strange to see a production-intent build of a solar electric vehicle without any solar panels. Still, Aptera shared that technology will be implemented next alongside the SEV’s production-intent thermal management system and exterior surfaces.
This thing is pure vaporware. My new Leaf isn’t.
No one is trying to take away your Leaf, though.
Let them push the envelope. Failing is a required pavestone on the road to almost every success story.
I suppose that the solar panels are in a field somewhere. It’s much more efficient.
Im not saying it isn’t, but fitting custom curved prob special solar panels on a test vehicle does not sound cost efficient, especially when you can test the solar panels separately perfectly fine.
Cars are complex to construct properly even without drivetrains, plenty to test there.
True, but my understanding is the amount of solar energy that hits an area the size of a car multiplies by the max possible solar energy conversion is still far below what’s needed to power a car. Sure, you can continue to charge it while parked, which is cool. However, you could also put cheaper non-custom panels on a building and then plug your non-solar electric car into it to charge while parked, and the building panels will have significantly better solar exposure and be cheaper per panel.
If your goal is making something effective that reduces carbon output, an EV and solar on a building is much better. If you’re creating junk to get VC funding, this is what it looks like. If this comes to market at all, it’s not going to make any waves, except maybe for how impractical it is.
Oh, I agree with you there (well, not in the tech itself, why not both, have panels on buildings and on some cars – plenty of people drive only a few thousands of kilometres/miles per year & still need a car).
I’m just saying that as engineer I would start testing them separately, in lab conditions first to get the basics & correct obvious initial faults, then separately outside.
As management I however would insist that engineer has to find a way to glue whatever solar panels they can find to the prototype if there is gonna be a press release.I didn’t read much what they are doing/going for tho, so can’t say much about that.
Why not both is because most people don’t have unlimited money. It’s about opportunity cost. It’d be better to buy a cheaper EV and better rooftop solar than and expensive EV that has mediocre solar charging.
For sure they should test them separately if they’re doing this though, or at least not use custom ones for the prototype. You can buy small panels for a reasonably good price, and they could just stick those on the car for a proof of concept. The problem with this is it’d prove that the amount of power required is way more than is going to be generated. If they can talk about concepts then then people can still wonder “what if…” If they actually implement it then it makes it obvious there’s no reasonable path to a good market and they lose FC funding.
In a free market and under current western capitalism the final consumer price (or entire consumer market supply for that matter) isn’t directly linked to features.
Ie they will sell you at max price as little as they can, not at a cost based price.
(Anyway, a cars worth of solar panels is such a negligible cost in relation to cars base price or options lists that it doesn’t matter that much)And I don’t ever think you need any kind of prototype or testing to show how much solar energy can a surface of a car produce and how much travel distance does that represent - to ballpark it that is just a simple online search (you have enormous quantity of solar panel efficiency data, per latitude, as well as actual electric car consumption rates).
Bcs of that obvious common sense & various types of other solar cars out there I really doubt anyone is getting deceived here on solar mileage. The company does not claim they invented any revolutionary new solar panels (I doubt they hide the wattage spec they intend to install), nor hide the car (it’s a design 10+ years old, the point of which is that it has about a 0.1 drag coefficient, so about half of that of the sleekest other cars today). Their goal here is to put the existing design into production, so more of a logistical challenge - their prototypes need to prove they can build cars (to establish a production line), not to prove any overall concept of a solar car itself.
Additionally you can already get Hyundai Iconiq 5 with a solar panel sunroof for years now, it ads a mile/kilometer per day in real life (for people with a couple of miles/kilometre commutes that’s actually noticeable). But for decades you could get some car models (Toyota & Audi at least) with a solar panel sunroof, mostly they just powered the 12V battery with it to run auxiliary systems (like ventilation, AC).I think you might have jumped to the conclusion this company is trying to sell solar cars with unlimited (outside?) range.
I think you might have jumped to the conclusion this company is trying to sell solar cars with unlimited (outside?) range.
No, I jumped to the conclusion that it must be less effective than the alternative of rooftop solar + conventional EV. There is no world in which this is better. Rooftop solar will always have better solar access, and conventional EV will be cheaper because of effeciency of scale. This design is limited to powering the car only, and will never be as ideally situated as rooftop solar. The opportunity cost of this car will be worse than rooftop solar + EV. Sure, for people with unlimited money it might sell, but most of us don’t have that and have to compare cost to value and choose the best option for that.
Sorry, but what sort of conclusion is that? I don’t understand, it’s divergent things.
Lots of tech that cars offer I can also have at my house, like a sound system or massage chair.
Car prices don’t reflect constriction costs.
Cars won’t be more or less expensive bcs of 200$ of solar panels.Also people with budgets constraints dont buy new cars, why would they?
I have rooftop solar, but only for the house because I can’t reach my car to charge it in the street.
The car sits outside for days (I work from home), so in my case this would be great.
This is the 1st I’ve seen of this car, so haven’t read any other details, but I’d be surprised if external charging wasn’t possible.
Solar panels aren’t worth it for a normal EV, but supposedly the Aptera is so small, lightweight, and aerodynamic (with that teardrop shape) that they actually add a significant amount of range.
There’s something that people really fail to grasp with solar, and that’s the fact there is bugger all energy in the sun, and you need a huge surface area to get any meaningful energy.
A home solar array often takes up a significant chunk of the roof area, and the amount of surface area a car typically has means that even perfectly efficient solar panels wouldn’t collect enough energy to significantly contribute to the vehicle’s range.
There’s a good reason why vehicle manufacturers don’t bother adding them.
There is good amount of energy in the sunshine. The output of solar arrays struggle to make big power out of small surface areas because we haven’t figured out how to get more than 20% of the power that hits the panel. If they do get 20% or more, it’s been with very expensive and fragile panels.
Yes, but with a light and efficient vehicle, along with enough area covered in solar, it should be able to get you about 15 miles of free travel when left out on a sunny day. It has a battery. It isn’t just running on sunshine and lollipops.
Yeah, this is why it’s dumb. When is a parked car parked ideally to capture sunlight? Just put the money into solar panels on a building or in a field, charge your car when parked, and you have a much better and cheaper product. The solar panels on the building can also be used to power other things, unlike the car. It’s such a stupid idea and will be very expensive to get custom panels for the car that aren’t super fragile and also efficient. Just spend that money and larger cheap panels. This is purely to get VC funding and nothing more. It’s a waste of time and energy.
I mean, it’d be cool to get a couple miles of range here and there without having to plug in. Could make for a nice little errand vehicle in a smaller city where there aren’t trees or tall buildings to block light and you just park in a driveway or apartment parking lot. If say the battery itself would be big enough for an 80 mile range, I could see some people never having to plug this car in.
It’ll come down to price, of course. If it’s cheap, it could be cool and useful. If it’s expensive, it’s a novelty and would have no practical reasoning to be purchased.
It will not be cheap. It’s going to be the price of an EV + the price of custom shaped solar + the price of R&D + the price of being a niche product and not having the efficiency of scale. It’ll be a novelty without any doubt.
Everything takes r and d. Also, it’s not “custom solar panels” anymore if you’re ordering 10,000 of them. The article stated that supposedly they have a ton of pre orders of sorts. Custom means a one off, or even a few dozen of something. Not thousands.
In america? Litterally everywhere. Even driving down the highway would get trickle charging.
If your expecting to fully charge from the panels, youre gonna have a bad day. But every extra mile would overcome the cost over its lifetime.
Again, I said ideally. When will it ever outperform solar on a rooftop of the same size? How much more size could you get for the price?
It would never overcome its opportunity cost, even if it recovers it’s cost (which you’re speculating on and have no idea of the cost). You could spend the extra money for a solar car, or spend the money for rooftop solar. Rooftop solar will always outperform it for the price, so you have a negative opportunity cost.
Look at you owning a rooftop to put solar on.
A lot of americans are renters and that number is unfortunately growing.
Or 43 miles in Aptera’s case
I’ll believe that when I see it.
I’m not believing they’ll get even close to that in a production vehicle that’s US street legal.
They are skirting the “street legal” and safety stuff by making an electric motorcycle instead of a car. Months (years?) ago I read something about how they are planning to tackle helmet laws in court because of this. Accident safety features are heavy, this thing is going to be a death trap on US roads in order to be as light as possible.
Overall I think that’s the right move, but I wouldn’t get in rush hour traffic in this thing.
That’ll help keep it as light as they’re planning. They still won’t get 45 miles a day on solar unless they’re doing 15mph on a flat road in Nevada during the summer. No way would it be an expected rating.
The body weighs around 360kg, with a 60kwh battery it supposedly weighs around 800kg (the smallest and lightest option is 25kwh), with a drag coefficient of 0.13.
In comparison to some of the most efficient cars - the Hyundai Ioniq 6 is around 1,860kg with a drag coefficient of 0.21. Tesla Model 3 is around 1760kg with a drag coefficient of 0.219.It’s going to be a whole lot more efficient than the average car just based on these numbers.
Now it depends on how much of the car’s surface will be covered by the solar panel and what’s the panel’s efficiency.
The Honda civics in the 1980’s weighed around 800 or so kg as well. You know one of the reasons they got heavier? Crash ratings and safety features.
So once again I’m calling bs that they will get 45 miles out of this. Even if they got it classified as a motorcycle and scape around the car safety requirements, it still won’t get a real world 45 miles a day from solar charging. Your math will never add up to that.
That’s a weird comparison to make. The Aptera is smaller and uses different materials.
Afaik it’s going to be classified as a motorcycle in many states in the USA, but they’re still aiming for a high rating. I know they have crumple zones and a safety cell made from composites akin to F1 cars.
Whether what they’re planning will be enough, we’ll only know for sure once they test it.The math works quite well as long as the information is accurate.
Of course things can always turn up to be different in the end product.
But from the information we have now, ~4 hours of good sunlight conditions will be enough for 43 miles.
15 miles a day under ideal conditions isn’t really a significant amount, most EVs could run for multiple weeks without being charged under those conditions.
I currently have an ICE car, and with how much I use it, 15 miles a day getting added to the battery on average would probably cover most of my usage. And you can still plug it in for longer trips. You’re not forced to rely on solar alone.
That’s 100 free miles a week. Sure, most people will need to charge it anyway, but that’s still 100 free miles a week.
But I don’t think it’s a good idea. It would be more efficient to just put the same solar panels in your roof, where they don’t contribute to the car’s weight, don’t force your to park in sunlight instead of indoor parking or garage, and whose output can be used for charging the car OR for anything else as needed.
It’s not any more free than any other EV. it still uses energy. That energy can only be used for the car though. Put some solar on your house and it can charge your car (not free, the price of the panels same as the car). It will also be more efficient because it can be placed ideally, unlike the car. It’ll also be cheaper for a larger area because it can take advantage of cheap standard panels instead of expensive custom ones.
I want them to succeed. I really hope they do.
Please just do trains. They can even be solar powered - a lot easier than this.
Trains are already electrified.
