A 330 MPG hybrid for everyone called Aptera

Completely agree with ya Slortz - it sure looks like investor bait.

I was looking again at those "drawings"...and they are out of proportion at each angle. You'd think a real professional company could put something together better than that. It looks amateurish.

Anyone could photochop a sleek super-car, make crazy claims, and want your money for further study / production.

 

Ill try To address some of these points:

<<I'm pasting this from another blog with similar questions>>
The designer hurt his wrist, and so some things are not even modeled yet, like tailights, recessed license plate holder, etc. We had to go ahead with the press release anyway. The door/side window are too small (mistake in dimensions given to CG guy), but he'll fix this after his wrist recovers.

The cheesy 'wood' looking material is actually an engineered end-grain wood....balsa. It's the same kind that's used in the new Corvette and Honda S2000..and airliner floors. Also used in the chassis are other structural cores, like divinycell. These materials are used in all sorts of aircraft and race cars.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...41/ai_n13648403
The construction pics are purposefully low res.


The tailfins move. It's active, and it's controlled by a rate gyro and computer. These help stability at higher speeds, something that low drag cars need help with and something we've done a bit of work on.

Side mirrors? There are none. There is, however, a flush mount CCD with a wide angle lens that offers complete rear, left and right view on the PFD. GM did this with the Precept, VW did with the 1L...nothing new there, just low drag.

What, no comments on the composite control arms?
When in the Carlsbad area feel free to stop by our shop and look at the prototype under construction!

As for the body style, we've done a bit of CFD and the body style reflects the low drag of the CFD with little 'styling'. It's our design ethos and we know it won't appeal to everyone. But then, neither does the Prius

p.s. Tonight, the Toyota stork delivered a healthy, new '06Prius to my wife (white, package 8). She's been on the list since September!
I drive an Insight and I'm jealous

Steve, Accelerated Composites

 

Thanks for the post Steve.
Afraid I'm not up to speed on my acronyms.
Could you provide a glossary for those you used?

 

OK, I'll try

CG: Computer Graphics
CCD: Charged Coupled Device..a our camera
PFD: Primary Flight Display. That's what we call it because we got the idea from the new Avidyne and Garmin systems. It's reall the computer based car instrumentation.
GM: General Motors. The Precept was their 80 MPG hybrid from a while ago. Why they don't make it? I do not know.
VW:Volkswagen, re: the VW 1L, their 235 MPG streamliner.

Steve

 

Thanks, Steve!
One last one: CFD?
(I think most people here know CG is "Computer Graphics".)

 

Aptera,
I'm still skeptical but I don't have my mind set in concrete either. What would help a lot in reducing skepticism is offering LOTS more information on your website.
For instance, explain what people are looking at in your photos. More photos of the overall project would be nice too.
Explain how you were able to come up with all of your performance numbers without actually having built even a prototype yet.
How can you make a claim that the car will cost under $20,000 when you haven't even finished building a single prototype yet, much less gone into full production?

Once you have a finished prototype and have demonstrated the performance, safety, and cost claims, I would be more willing to believe it. Until then, you just have a lot of claims, 3 poor CG renderings, and 3 photos of some wood composite stuff and what looks like an engine and alternator, oh yeah, and a request for "angel" investors.
Also, on this topic of investors, it doesn't make sense to me that you would spend +$20,000 on a new Prius when you are asking for money to build the car of the future which costs less than $20,000 to build. :huh:

 

but well done on your choice of owned "production" autos though

 

Steve,

I'm a little confused. Wouldn't you normally have completed the computer model PRIOR to starting the prototype?

 

One other thing, Aptera.
Could you provide some names of the people that form this team of "world class engineers and designers?"
Just like to do a little credential checking.
So far, based on your website and contact information, you are the only person there.

 

Thanks for all of the questions. As far as my wife's Prius: She works, she's an engineer and it's her money

I've spent more than I'd like to admit to get the protoype it's current stage. The finished product *should* cost significantly less than the prototype for a couple of reasons, our cost modeling takes into account discounts for materials when purchased at qty. Also factored in is the labor saving in our assembly methods.

Interesting question about the modeling....we agree! Thing is, when we started pitching to investors, and even pitching to vendors to get price breaks on materials, they wanted to see the finished product...or what it would look like. It was a universal response. We decided to cobble together all the engineering drawings sketches, everything, and give them to the modeler/designer. We decided to do it well before the press release, but the designer wasn't finished until about a day before the release!


Also, CFD is an acronym for 'Computational Fluid Dynamics'. The power of the CFD
tools that are available today vs 10 years ago are just unbelievable. In fact, the 'SpaceShipOne' which won the X-prize was modeled completely in CFD and never saw a wind tunnel. Wind tunnel time is very expensive, around $10k/day, so we realized early on that we needed to get on board with CFD.

We will post a team bio soon, so please check the site if you are interested in that kind of thing. We thought it was sort of vain, so we didn't do it, but this group isn't the first to ask about it.

 

It will be interesting to see how you pull it off. If you get it street legal in US and for sale in NE then you are very close to a sale provided you are early into the market.

In general I'm more leaning towards pure EV for my deam commuter but this is bery interesting.

Would like to see a more realistic representation of the "car" as the dors etc makes it hard to imagine how it would work. Also the cockpit would be interesting to see.

 

Actually, the law says a motorcycle is a 2 wheel vehicle and 3 wheels means it's legally not a motorcycle. Just ask our governor who got out of getting a ticket for driving a motorcycle without a motorcycle license because his "motorcycle" had a sidecar, which made it a 3 wheel vehicle and not subject to motorcycle laws.

 

Is Burt's team a resource for you?

 

The ex-fraud detective in me is beginning to raise an eyebrow.

 

Two months later...Same sorry Website. Nothing's changed. I guess the desinger's wrist hasn't healed yet