2010 Aptera 2e: A First Look at California Company's Three-Wheeled EV
The Aptera's aerodynamic shape represents a new way of looking at private vehicles, company says
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(Note: Link to Aptera 2e First Drive Reveiw and expanded video added March 25, 2008)
By John O'Dell,Senior Editor
We've been following the development of the automotive world's wingless bird fairly closely, and bugging the management team at Aptera to come let us try its unusually styled, three-wheel electric vehicle.
Monday was the day, but as we headed down the freeway toward Aptera's digs in the San Diego County community of Vista, we did so with a sinking feeling that the anticipated driving experience would be short at best.
It turned out to be non-existent - drowned out by that most rare of Southern California climatological occurrences, a genuine winter rainstorm.
Which made us wonder - if the Aptera 2e is supposed to be a replacement for the daily commuter car, should a little rain (a couple of inches, actually) be a problem?
Marques McCammon, Aptera's chief marketing office, said "no," the production model won't be bothered by weather.
But the Aptera 2e we'd been promised the chance to drive isn't quite ready for prime time - it is a pre-production model with door seals that aren't quite weatherproof and the company didn't want to soak the interior.
It went unsaid, but there's also the distinct possibility that the prototype, worth about $500,000, was deemed too valuable to be turned over to a hot-footed journalist when the streets were half-an-inch deep in running water.
Test Drive Coming
So we extracted the promise of a return engagement - with driving privileges - when it dries out later this week. (The first drive review with an expanded video of the Aptera 2e in action is now available on Inside Line.)
Notice, btw, that we say "vehicle, not "car." That's because the Aptera isn't a car: It is classified as a motorcycle because cars, by law, must have four wheels.
While we didn't get to drive, our day down in Vista was profitably spent anyhow.
For one thing, our video crew shot this first look at the prototype 2e ("2" for two-passenger, "e" for electric) inside Aptera's new production facility.
Dream Team
We also got a lot of face time with the company's new trinity: President and Chief Executive Paul Wilbur, Chief Engineer Tom Reichenbach and McCammon. All three have solid automaking credentials and were recruited out of Detroit last year to take Aptera from start-up to production.
(Wilbur's resume includes four years at Ford, 17 at Chrysler, and six at ASC, where he also was CEO of Saleen; Reichenbach, a longtime Ford racing engineer, was in charge of aerodynamics for the Ford GT, and McCammon helped start Chrysler's SRT performance brand before joining ASC and Saleen.)
Talk to them for a while and you get the feeling that if the stars are aligned right, the economy doesn't complete its impersonation of a runaway reactor core sinking deep into the center of the earth and someone doesn't discover that lithium batteries give you cancer, then little white Apteras will start showing up in garages all over California by the end of next fall.
The company - which initially is limiting sales to California in order to ensure tight control over quality and drivability factors before going nationwide with the vehicle - says that more than 4,000 people have plunked down refundable $500 deposits.
If all indeed go through with their purchases, the last of the 4,000 vehicles should be done and delivered by the end of 2010, said Wilbur
As more orders come in and expansion follows, he said, the plan is to go slow to about 10,000 a year after a few years, ratcheting up to perhaps 100,000 a year at peak in or around 2015.
Solid Market
McCammon insists that those numbers aren't a pipe dream: that market studies done for the company by San Diego-based Strategic Vision show "our market potential is in the hundreds of thousands a year," as more and more people decide to opt out of conventional gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars for environmental, economic and/or national energy-security reasons
That's a far cry from the "maybe 5,000 to 10,000, total," that company co-founder Steve Fambro was thinking when he considered production and sales goals for the company he conceived of in 2006.
That's why Fambro brought in Wilbur and his team and went back into the lab, so to speak, where he continues to serve Aptera as the chief technical officer: He did what too many entrepreneurial visionaries can't do and turned the reins over to more experienced business types who actually have to tools to make a small company grow.
It's one of the things that makes it possible to see Aptera as an upstart personal-vehicle maker with a future.
Another indicator will come soon. Aptera has been running on $30 million in initial funding obtained from individual investors, Idealab and Google.org, and, Wilbur said, hasn't spent much of that so far.
But going into production takes big bucks, so the company has just begun a new financing effort and is aiming at venture capitalists, sovereign investment funds from wealthy nations and other private equity sources. How well it does will tell a lot about is chances for success.
Ride Along
While we can't yet tell you how the 2e drives, we can report that the vehicle is a lot smaller and closer to the ground than in looks in the pictures we've seen and posted to date; that it is wide enough so that its side-by-side bucket seats comfortably fit two good-sized American males; and that even a guy with a pinched sciatic nerve can get in and out with relative ease.
We didn't drive, but we did get a short, circular ride around the floor of the assembly area and we can say with assurance that the Aptera 2e sounds and rides just like a lot of other prototype electric vehicles we've been in - quite quick from the get-go, that quickness accompanied by an electric whine and the rumble-whoosh of tires on pavement.
The vehicle seems to be quite stable - we'll know more when we get it out on the road - the configuration of two wheels up front and one in the rear providing a solid footing.
Sean Touhy, a senior engineer at Aptera, says he regularly makes brakeless 90-degree turns at 40 miles an hour on test runs around the building's exterior with nary a bobble (traction control, a standard feature, helps).
There's more noise in the cabin than we'd like in a daily driver, and a narrow window in the rear hatch and small, triangular rear quarter-panel windows limit rear and over-the-shoulder vision.
But Aptera is using the prototype to figure out what more needs to be done and all of those problems have been noted and are on the fix-it list, Reichenbach said.
Also to be added: electrically controlled roll-down windows to replace the fixed side glass in the prototype.
"Only about 30 percent of the car out there will be the same in the final production model," he said of the prototype model squealing its tires on the assembly plant's smooth concrete floor for our videographer.
Most of the changes will be small tweaks, but the team is still fine-tuning the suspension, experimenting with tire widths, comparing battery chemistries and doing the thousand-and-one other things that need to be done before a final version of the vehicle is locked in and production can begin - an event now slated for October.
Tech Stuff
On the subject of battery chemistry, Wilbur won't say exactly what is planned for the production model because talks, and fine tunings, are still underway. He would say that it will be a lithium-something battery pack, smaller and lighter than that used in a Tesla Roadster.
Lithium iron-phosphate was discussed at one point, but the company isn't saying anything about that chemistry now.
Reichenbach said the batteries will be configured in long, narrow pack that will fit below and along the center-line of the passenger cabin floor.
They can be charged in about 8 hours via standard 110-volt household current, or in about half that time from a 220-volt outlet. A solar panel array on the vehicle's roof will provide power for the air conditioning and hearing and will trickle a little extra juice into the batteries when the vehicle is parked in the sun.
Whatever kind and however powerful the batteries might be, they'll provide power for a 75 kilowatt-hour electric motor that will push its torque to the front wheels through a single-speed transaxle.
The company claims a top speed of 90 miles an hour and a 0-60 acceleration time of "under 10 seconds."
Reichenbach says of all the performance claims that they are, by intent, conservative. "We are under-promising so we can over-deliver."
Safety
We have only Aptera's word for it - federal and state laws exempt three-wheelers from the rigorous crash safety testing that four-wheeled cars and trucks must undergo - but the word is that the vehicle is as safe as a car.
The company has run computerized crash tests using the same programs mainstream automakers use, and has engineered the Aptera "to meet or beat all of the federal motor vehicle safety standards," said Reichenbach.
The composite body helps - its plastic structure helps it keep its shape on a collision rather than folding in on the occupants as would happen with the sheet metal in a regular car.
The strong composite material also gives the Aptera far more roof-crush protection than demanded by federal rules, he said.
Added protection comes from front and rear crumple zones, car-style safety beams in the doors and front and side air bags for driver and passenger.
No Shape Changer
One thing that won't change: Aptera's unique aerodynamics.
The teardrop shape takes some getting used to. Frankly, we'd hate to be one of the first Aptera owners: The people swerving out of their lanes to get a good look as we commuted down the freeway could turn the daily drive into a hellish obstacle course.
But the airplane-like fuselage, constructed of proprietary infused composite materials, repels sledgehammer blows and, per an in-house test, can support the weight of eight adults without so much as dimpling. It also is the ideal shape for slipping through the air and that, said Wilbur, is what the Aptera is all about.
It is, he said, the first of a new class of "ultra-efficient" vehicles in which aerodynamics and weight - or lack of it - provide the magic need to achieve tremendous fuel efficiency.
100 MPG, and Then Some
With a curb weight of just 1,760 pounds - slated to drop to 1,500 pound in the final production version - and a drag coefficient that's about half that of the most aerodynamic production cars on the market today, the battery-electric Aptera 2e can go at least 100 miles on a full charge with two 180-pound adults and 250 pounds of cargo on board, Wilbur said.
That's a fuel-efficiency equivalent of getting 200 miles per gallon.
Configure the vehicle as a range-extended plug-in hybrid with an internal combustion engine generating juice for the electric motor once the initial grid charge is depleted and fuel efficiency jumps to more than 300 miles per gallon-equivalent, he said.
Even running a plain old internal combustion engine burning gasoline, he said, a slippery Aptera can deliver around 100 miles per gallon fully loaded.
Wilbur mentions all three of those powerplants because plans for the Aptera call for more than just the battery-electric two-seater.
Expanding the model lineup is how Wilbur pans to hit that 100,000-a-year goal.
The company is planning an extended-range plug-in model and probably a gasoline-burner as well; and other alternatives including compressed natural gas and hydrogen fuel cells are being looked at, as are larger versions with capacity for four or more occupants.
Pricing begins at $25,000 for the base 2e and, as Aptera adds additional powertrains and more options, is expected to climb to as much as $45,000 for a series, or extended-range, plug-in hybrid.
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Photos by Scott Jacobs
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- John O'Dell February 17, 2009, 2:45 AM
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- Aptera, Plug-ins and Electric
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- Aptera 2e, Electric Vehicles, Steve Fambro
If it's classed as a motorcycle, wouldn't you have to wear a helmet?
Ca. Cehicle Code exempts certain vehicles:
"This section does not apply to a person operating, or riding as a passenger in, a fully enclosed three-wheeled motor vehicle that is not less than seven feet in length and not less than four feet in width, and has an unladen weight of 900 pounds or more, if the vehicle meets or exceeds all of the requirements of this code, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and the rules and regulations adopted by the United States Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration."
This thing has powered hearing?? SWEET!
But seriously, good article.