They are skirting the “street legal” and safety stuff by making an electric motorcycle instead of a car. Months (years?) ago I read something about how they are planning to tackle helmet laws in court because of this. Accident safety features are heavy, this thing is going to be a death trap on US roads in order to be as light as possible.
Overall I think that’s the right move, but I wouldn’t get in rush hour traffic in this thing.
The body weighs around 360kg, with a 60kwh battery it supposedly weighs around 800kg (the smallest and lightest option is 25kwh), with a drag coefficient of 0.13.
In comparison to some of the most efficient cars - the Hyundai Ioniq 6 is around 1,860kg with a drag coefficient of 0.21. Tesla Model 3 is around 1760kg with a drag coefficient of 0.219.
It’s going to be a whole lot more efficient than the average car just based on these numbers.
Now it depends on how much of the car’s surface will be covered by the solar panel and what’s the panel’s efficiency.
The Honda civics in the 1980’s weighed around 800 or so kg as well. You know one of the reasons they got heavier? Crash ratings and safety features.
So once again I’m calling bs that they will get 45 miles out of this. Even if they got it classified as a motorcycle and scape around the car safety requirements, it still won’t get a real world 45 miles a day from solar charging. Your math will never add up to that.
Or 43 miles in Aptera’s case
I’m not believing they’ll get even close to that in a production vehicle that’s US street legal.
They are skirting the “street legal” and safety stuff by making an electric motorcycle instead of a car. Months (years?) ago I read something about how they are planning to tackle helmet laws in court because of this. Accident safety features are heavy, this thing is going to be a death trap on US roads in order to be as light as possible.
Overall I think that’s the right move, but I wouldn’t get in rush hour traffic in this thing.
The body weighs around 360kg, with a 60kwh battery it supposedly weighs around 800kg (the smallest and lightest option is 25kwh), with a drag coefficient of 0.13.
In comparison to some of the most efficient cars - the Hyundai Ioniq 6 is around 1,860kg with a drag coefficient of 0.21. Tesla Model 3 is around 1760kg with a drag coefficient of 0.219.
It’s going to be a whole lot more efficient than the average car just based on these numbers.
Now it depends on how much of the car’s surface will be covered by the solar panel and what’s the panel’s efficiency.
The Honda civics in the 1980’s weighed around 800 or so kg as well. You know one of the reasons they got heavier? Crash ratings and safety features.
So once again I’m calling bs that they will get 45 miles out of this. Even if they got it classified as a motorcycle and scape around the car safety requirements, it still won’t get a real world 45 miles a day from solar charging. Your math will never add up to that.
I’ll believe that when I see it.