Aptera completes low-speed drive in its first production-intent solar electric vehicle
Aptera completes low-speed drive in its first production-intent solar electric vehicle
Spoiler Alert: The low-speed function test is short and sweet but a milestone nonetheless. Solar EV startup Aptera Motors has...
![Aptera completes low-speed drive in its first production-intent solar electric vehicle [Video]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2b90b865-fcd6-4c43-ab94-4ae44fca7bd9.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
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.
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' Sion: 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.
I was thinking about the US lately. Can't remember why exactly maybe some friends popped up on my Facebook.
But I decided it actually wouldn't be that bad of a place to live. If it wasn't for the toxic work culture.
If they worked normal hours and had 20+ holidays it would be alright. Other shit annoy me and you would have to make sure you live in the nice areas but I could live there and enjoy it. But the work culture is an absolute no go. Wish they were like the Aussie. Show up do hard day of work fuck off for some beers. If the surfs good call in sick and end up seeing your boss in the line up. Work hard for a few months then decide fuck it and go to Bali for a weekend accidentally stay there for two months then decide you need to go back to work because travelling is too much effort walk into a job 1 week after landing home.
it is a con
Nothing says product quality like overworked employees
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.
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.
Their tech isn't just the solar, they've optimized the car solely for efficiency. They claim their car can get 10 mi/kwh, so with 700W of solar panels they can get up to 40 miles of charge per day with just the solar. By contrast, the solar panels that are available on the new Prius get 4 miles of charge per day.
Now that their production-intent vehicles are just starting to be built up, I'm eagerly awaiting their actual test data that hopefully verifies their claims on efficiency, range, crash safety, etc. but we'll see 🤞 I really hope they succeed.
Yes, the aerodynamics + solar panels is what makes this vehicle enticing, not just the solar panels alone.
Solar panels are also added weight, which reduces range. Any way you look at it, it makes more sense to have the solar panels at a base location you go back to.
I guess an RV, or a camp trailer, makes sense to have panels on it, but that's about it
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.
Been following this company’s development for over a decade now. I really want them to succeed but I have major doubts.
I want them to succeed. I really hope they do.
It's good to see that Aptera is still a possibility!
For real. I was so hopeful for the Type-1 and would've reserved one if I had the money.
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.
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.
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.
I'm excited to see them succeed. I love it when stuff is designed with function over form, and made practically. I'm a tall person, this is the only small electric vehicle I feel I could actually fit in
A few things the cynics are missing.
- The engineers who are designing this car don't have the political power to push for better mass transit.
- Even in ideal circumstances, there will still be a need for personal transport vehicles and infrastructure. Small cars will still be needed.
- Aptera has 31 employees as of 2023. If they're working overtime, it's because they're letting the company do it. Maintaining good moral is way more important in small companies.
Bummer. I want to give them my money, but they're not accepting new investments right now.
Please just do trains. They can even be solar powered - a lot easier than this.
Trains are easy and they're easily electrified already. So putting solar on the trains won't have any advantage.
Rails are the difficult part of railways. They never seem to put them between my house and my work. They've put something called a road in between instead.
Kind of a different scale. $5.15 billion per mile of track for Caltrain. Aptera hasn’t even broken a billion in funding.
I note with interest that you are repeatedly posting the same cherry-picked factoid.
Average cost per mile for new track in the USA can be anywhere from $100mil/mile to over $1billion/mile for complicated projects like tunneling. This is roughly 50% higher than Europe - most likely for the simple fact that they have a larger industry for it. These are both quite high on an international scale- China builds new track for 24-48mil USD per mile.
Lots of people here criticizing Aptera who clearly haven't researched the company or the tech.
A solar powered car that topped at 70mph would be ideal,
But goddamn, could you imagine just having one that topped at 30 MPh in a city? Infinite travel!
If you can park on top of a parking garage, or in a spot on ground level where sunshine is not too much blocked by the surrounding buildings, you could surely commute on sunshine. Home parking barely matters for day shift workers in this scenario.
Oh. That absolutely won't happen. You'll be losing battery power while you're driving around.
They can make all solar vehicles that will go and keep going as long as there's sunshine, but they aren't anything a regular person could use.
Yep. Iirc apterra does 100wh/mi and is covered with less than 1000w of solar, so you only make at most 10 miles of range per hour in perfect solar conditions.
We have that already; it's called a bicycle.
The future of transportation everybody: a car.
that is not a car. It is a Reliant Robin meets the BORG
Good, now keep the momentum up, Aptera. You're so close to the reality.
The Aptera has been promised for over a decade now. I'm somehow amazed they are still trying.
Just make sure you are under 100 lbs and have no baggage.
