6 ms·

This can never work simply due to physics. It has a 100 kWh battery pack and no more than 1 kW maximum of solar panel capability, and probably quite a bit less

by breput 4y ago

This can never work simply due to physics. It has a 100 kWh battery pack and no more than 1 kW maximum of solar panel capability, and probably quite a bit less due to the odd angles and less efficient panels. EEVBlog did a video[0] on this concept recently and pointed out that his entire rooftop of ideally placed solar panels, in a nearly ideal location (Australia) could never power his own EV car. Backed up by real world data and common sense calculations. Aptera themselves only claims "41 miles per day from sunlight under optimal conditions" which is the upper limit and will likely be a quarter or less in reality. Compare this car to Tesla's prototype solar trailer[1], which easily has 10x the solar panel area as well as a battery. "If those are all 300W panels (and they look a little small for that), then the optimum output would be 2.7kW. That means it would generate less than 50 miles of range a day extended or a third of that folded up. " [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIokNnjuam8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIokNnjuam8 [1] https://electrek.co/2022/07/04/tesla-unveils-solar-range-extender-trailer-spacex-starlink-internet-terminal/ https://electrek.co/2022/07/04/tesla-unveils-solar-range-ext...

ceejayoz 4y ago
That’ll be highly dependent on how often and how far you drive your car. Some people do a few miles once a week. They’d never run out.
- sebular 4y ago
  I work from home and all of my driving outside of road trips probably averages out to about 40 miles a week. Considering that I paid $15k for my ICE car, something like this would be super attractive. Heck, it would be even more attractive if I was commuting ~5 miles a day, which is farther than I’ll ever be willing to commute.
- breput 4y ago
  Sure. If that's your situation then leave the car outside 24/7 and it will probably work. Hopefully you have a secure, shade-free location. The US DOT says the average miles driven per year is 13,476 miles. You could never ever do even a fraction of that solely with on-vehicle solar.
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
    Shade might be a problem. Otherwise you can easily fit 3 sqm of panels which at Boston should [1] generate 688 kwh/yr. At 15kwh/100km efficiency that’s 4500km or 2800 miles or about 20% of your figure. So… if you have shade, drive lots or live with little sun - buy something else. But if you can’t install solar on your roof and park on street - maybe solar car is decent fit! 1: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=42.360253,-71.058291,11&s=42.360253,-71.058291&m=site&pv=small,180,0,0.6 https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=42.360253,-71.058291,11&...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    So at the quoted 40mi/day for very good sun areas, that's almost exactly your average mileage. More realistically most will get half that, so will have to get slightly more than half their power from a charger. Sounds like a fraction to me. The key difference between the aptera and other versions of similar concepts is they focused on making the vehicle as efficient as possible first. The thing barely uses more energy than a bicycle if the (very reasonable) claims about cd and weight are to be believed. You'd never power a typical ICE car on 3kWh/day, or even something more efficient like a tesla or small electric motorcycle. But if you start with the most efficient vehicle possible, then you can make it work.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > The US DOT says the average miles driven per year is 13,476 miles. You could never ever do even a fraction of that solely with on-vehicle solar. Divide that by 365. 36 miles a day? Seems like it'd be fine here.
- breput 4y ago
  Also the 100 kWH battery pack is curious - a Tesla Model Y only has a 75 kWh battery pack and has a 300+ mile range. That is a ton of weight to be carrying around for a car that you would only drive a few miles once per week.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    They're going for that magic '1000mile range' marketing phrase. Most people would only need the 25kWh version.
crooked-v 4y ago
That video is about the Lightyear Zero, but the Aptera is dramatically different in that it's designed from the ground up for maximum efficiency instead of just having a sedan body plan with solar panels slapped on it. That's the key thing behind stuff like the "thousand mile range battery pack" - that's actually just a normal (for an EV) sized battery, the car's just using it way more efficiently than most.
- breput 4y ago
  So less surface area in exchange for less air resistance? That's a difficult tradeoff when the A/C and other electric load devices will be constant despite the motive demands.
  - prestigeplot 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Other electric load is negligible. I do think lack of solar rejection and insulation is a big problem in their value proposition though. And with the solar panels built in you can't even reflect the light.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Shipping products implies real things and physics that work. What they say on the aptera website seems entirely reasonable: 700 watts of solar power good for up to 40 miles per day. Basically this vehicle is very efficient so doing 40 miles while soaking up 6-10 hours x 700 = about 4-5 KWH seems doable. A Tesla would do about 4-5 miles/kwh. This thing is lighter, more slippy, and has one wheel less so it's probably a bit better than that. This car is covered in small panels and has a surface area that is probably 6-8 square meters. let's call it 7. 100w/square meter is not unreasonable. Probably it's a bit higher than that and the effective square meters of solar is a bit lower. But 700watt is not a strange number for a car that size. The 25K model obviously does not have a 100KWH battery; that would be the top model which is presumably a lot heavier and logically less efficient and twice the price according to the article. Nobody is claiming that that vehicle would do 1000 miles on just solar power. If you think about it, with such a huge battery, you could do 20 50 mile journeys without plugging in even without solar. Or about a month of commutes. And it would add 20-40 miles back in every day. And since this company is based in California, they get a lot of sunlight there so I could see how that would average closer to 40 than to 20. Assuming you are not commuting on weekends it would either take months to drain the battery or you'd manage to keep it topped up with just the sun. And when you do run out eventually, you just plug it in and deal with it. If that happens a couple of times per year, so what? And you can go on a long journey and just fast charge and then most of the time when you don't do that, you just rely on the sun topping you up. Seems, like a great value proposition for people with a bog standard 10-20 mile commute. 365*40=14600 miles per year. Most drivers don't do that in a year. Probably the 25K model is all they'd ever need.
- breput 4y ago
  They have built exactly 3 prototype vehicles[0]. They are nowhere near shipping even their first production model. [0] https://aptera.us/faq/ https://aptera.us/faq/ "We’ve completed three Alpha vehicles, Noir, Sol, and Luna. We are currently finalizing development of our Beta vehicles and plan to begin production closer to the second half of 2022."
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago

by breput 4y ago

ceejayoz 4y ago

That’ll be highly dependent on how often and how far you drive your car. Some people do a few miles once a week. They’d never run out.

sebular 4y ago
I work from home and all of my driving outside of road trips probably averages out to about 40 miles a week. Considering that I paid $15k for my ICE car, something like this would be super attractive. Heck, it would be even more attractive if I was commuting ~5 miles a day, which is farther than I’ll ever be willing to commute.
breput 4y ago
Sure. If that's your situation then leave the car outside 24/7 and it will probably work. Hopefully you have a secure, shade-free location. The US DOT says the average miles driven per year is 13,476 miles. You could never ever do even a fraction of that solely with on-vehicle solar.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Shade might be a problem. Otherwise you can easily fit 3 sqm of panels which at Boston should [1] generate 688 kwh/yr. At 15kwh/100km efficiency that’s 4500km or 2800 miles or about 20% of your figure. So… if you have shade, drive lots or live with little sun - buy something else. But if you can’t install solar on your roof and park on street - maybe solar car is decent fit! 1: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=42.360253,-71.058291,11&s=42.360253,-71.058291&m=site&pv=small,180,0,0.6 https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=42.360253,-71.058291,11&...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  So at the quoted 40mi/day for very good sun areas, that's almost exactly your average mileage. More realistically most will get half that, so will have to get slightly more than half their power from a charger. Sounds like a fraction to me. The key difference between the aptera and other versions of similar concepts is they focused on making the vehicle as efficient as possible first. The thing barely uses more energy than a bicycle if the (very reasonable) claims about cd and weight are to be believed. You'd never power a typical ICE car on 3kWh/day, or even something more efficient like a tesla or small electric motorcycle. But if you start with the most efficient vehicle possible, then you can make it work.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > The US DOT says the average miles driven per year is 13,476 miles. You could never ever do even a fraction of that solely with on-vehicle solar. Divide that by 365. 36 miles a day? Seems like it'd be fine here.
breput 4y ago
Also the 100 kWH battery pack is curious - a Tesla Model Y only has a 75 kWh battery pack and has a 300+ mile range. That is a ton of weight to be carrying around for a car that you would only drive a few miles once per week.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  They're going for that magic '1000mile range' marketing phrase. Most people would only need the 25kWh version.

crooked-v 4y ago

That video is about the Lightyear Zero, but the Aptera is dramatically different in that it's designed from the ground up for maximum efficiency instead of just having a sedan body plan with solar panels slapped on it. That's the key thing behind stuff like the "thousand mile range battery pack" - that's actually just a normal (for an EV) sized battery, the car's just using it way more efficiently than most.

breput 4y ago
So less surface area in exchange for less air resistance? That's a difficult tradeoff when the A/C and other electric load devices will be constant despite the motive demands.
- prestigeplot 4y ago
  [flagged]
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Other electric load is negligible. I do think lack of solar rejection and insulation is a big problem in their value proposition though. And with the solar panels built in you can't even reflect the light.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Shipping products implies real things and physics that work. What they say on the aptera website seems entirely reasonable: 700 watts of solar power good for up to 40 miles per day. Basically this vehicle is very efficient so doing 40 miles while soaking up 6-10 hours x 700 = about 4-5 KWH seems doable. A Tesla would do about 4-5 miles/kwh. This thing is lighter, more slippy, and has one wheel less so it's probably a bit better than that. This car is covered in small panels and has a surface area that is probably 6-8 square meters. let's call it 7. 100w/square meter is not unreasonable. Probably it's a bit higher than that and the effective square meters of solar is a bit lower. But 700watt is not a strange number for a car that size. The 25K model obviously does not have a 100KWH battery; that would be the top model which is presumably a lot heavier and logically less efficient and twice the price according to the article. Nobody is claiming that that vehicle would do 1000 miles on just solar power. If you think about it, with such a huge battery, you could do 20 50 mile journeys without plugging in even without solar. Or about a month of commutes. And it would add 20-40 miles back in every day. And since this company is based in California, they get a lot of sunlight there so I could see how that would average closer to 40 than to 20. Assuming you are not commuting on weekends it would either take months to drain the battery or you'd manage to keep it topped up with just the sun. And when you do run out eventually, you just plug it in and deal with it. If that happens a couple of times per year, so what? And you can go on a long journey and just fast charge and then most of the time when you don't do that, you just rely on the sun topping you up. Seems, like a great value proposition for people with a bog standard 10-20 mile commute. 365*40=14600 miles per year. Most drivers don't do that in a year. Probably the 25K model is all they'd ever need.

breput 4y ago
They have built exactly 3 prototype vehicles[0]. They are nowhere near shipping even their first production model. [0] https://aptera.us/faq/ https://aptera.us/faq/ "We’ve completed three Alpha vehicles, Noir, Sol, and Luna. We are currently finalizing development of our Beta vehicles and plan to begin production closer to the second half of 2022."
- jillesvangurp 4y ago