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Two various tidbits: - The inventor apparently managed to rescue several jewish people [0] when designing and prototyping for the Wehrmacht in Riga, Latvia. -

Two various tidbits: - The inventor apparently managed to rescue several jewish people [0] when designing and prototyping for the Wehrmacht in Riga, Latvia. - This immediately made me think of the little known Volkswagen 1-litre car [1]. Something like that with an electric drivetrain would be close to my ideal car... [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Schl%C3%B6r_von_Westhofen-Dirmstein https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Schl%C3%B6r_von_Westhofen... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car

capitainenemo 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors#Production_plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors#Production_plans Aptera seems to have resurrected... similar form.
- sovreign 5y ago
  Hope the Aptera safety testing comes back better than these older cars. Aptera and similar aerodynamic, (hopefully) inexpensive cars are really a nice middle ground between hefty Teslas and EV motorcycles.
  - bagels 5y ago
    Modern engineering and modern materials. Shouldn't be hard to do better in a crash than something designed before seat belts and crumple zones were implemented in cars.
    - capitainenemo 5y ago
      One warning is they deliberately chose 3 wheels to qualify as motorcycle and thus lower requirements (probably in interests of weight and to allow more innovative technologies - I remember design #1 had issues with wanting to use cameras instead of mirrors for more streamlining, but bikes had to have mirrors too, at least at the time). But, yeah, overall the design seems good and certainly far better than a typical 3 wheel motorbike.
  - iSnow 5y ago
    https://sonomotors.com/ https://sonomotors.com/ - if they make it. I like their solar-augmented car, and it's not terribly expensive. But they need a lot of money to get the production started.
    - eliaspro 5y ago
      They just IPOed at Nasdaq and raked in €172.5 Million. This should hopefully help them to get a bit further towards production.
bserge 5y ago
Yeah, yeah, everyone and their dog in Germany managed to "rescue several Jews" during WW2 according to their own postwar records lol. Nice VW, though.
- Lev1a 5y ago
  > according to their own postwar records Please actually read the article before making such indiscriminate accusations. Pertinent part from the article in GP: "Im letzten Kriegsjahr kehrte Schlör nach Göttingen zurück und wurde hier von der Gestapo verhaftet. Man warf ihm vor, jüdische Flüchtlinge aus Riga bei sich aufgenommen zu haben. Schlör wurde im Volksgerichtshofgefängnis in Potsdam eingesperrt. Allerdings konnte der Ingenieur nicht verurteilt werden, weil die Haftanstalt am 30. April 1945 von der Roten Armee befreit wurde." Rough translation: "In the last of the war Schlör went back to Göttingen was arrested by the Gestapo. He was accused of sheltering jewish refugees from Riga. He was incarcerated at the peoples' court jail in Potsdam. The engineer couldn't be sentenced since the jail was liberated by the Red Army on the 30th of April 1945." Since he was actually arrested for this and they were preparing to sentence him, I'm gonna give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
  - bserge 5y ago
    [dead]

capitainenemo 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors#Production_plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors#Production_plans Aptera seems to have resurrected... similar form.

sovreign 5y ago
Hope the Aptera safety testing comes back better than these older cars. Aptera and similar aerodynamic, (hopefully) inexpensive cars are really a nice middle ground between hefty Teslas and EV motorcycles.
- bagels 5y ago
  Modern engineering and modern materials. Shouldn't be hard to do better in a crash than something designed before seat belts and crumple zones were implemented in cars.
  - capitainenemo 5y ago
    One warning is they deliberately chose 3 wheels to qualify as motorcycle and thus lower requirements (probably in interests of weight and to allow more innovative technologies - I remember design #1 had issues with wanting to use cameras instead of mirrors for more streamlining, but bikes had to have mirrors too, at least at the time). But, yeah, overall the design seems good and certainly far better than a typical 3 wheel motorbike.
- iSnow 5y ago
  https://sonomotors.com/ https://sonomotors.com/ - if they make it. I like their solar-augmented car, and it's not terribly expensive. But they need a lot of money to get the production started.
  - eliaspro 5y ago
    They just IPOed at Nasdaq and raked in €172.5 Million. This should hopefully help them to get a bit further towards production.

bserge 5y ago

Yeah, yeah, everyone and their dog in Germany managed to "rescue several Jews" during WW2 according to their own postwar records lol. Nice VW, though.

Lev1a 5y ago
> according to their own postwar records Please actually read the article before making such indiscriminate accusations. Pertinent part from the article in GP: "Im letzten Kriegsjahr kehrte Schlör nach Göttingen zurück und wurde hier von der Gestapo verhaftet. Man warf ihm vor, jüdische Flüchtlinge aus Riga bei sich aufgenommen zu haben. Schlör wurde im Volksgerichtshofgefängnis in Potsdam eingesperrt. Allerdings konnte der Ingenieur nicht verurteilt werden, weil die Haftanstalt am 30. April 1945 von der Roten Armee befreit wurde." Rough translation: "In the last of the war Schlör went back to Göttingen was arrested by the Gestapo. He was accused of sheltering jewish refugees from Riga. He was incarcerated at the peoples' court jail in Potsdam. The engineer couldn't be sentenced since the jail was liberated by the Red Army on the 30th of April 1945." Since he was actually arrested for this and they were preparing to sentence him, I'm gonna give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
- bserge 5y ago
  [dead]