THE APTERA SOLAR EV LOOKS DONE AND READY FOR PRODUCTION IN NEW VIDEOS

Even though the company has been pretty quiet for the last year, Aptera is still committed to putting its solar EV into production.

Aptera has mostly been quiet for the last few months, but the company recently received its first production body, which was shipped from Italy, where it is manufactured by the CPC Group.

This means that while production has not yet started, the company’s unique three-wheeled solar electric vehicle is one step closer to entering production and fulfilling some of its over 40,000 reservations—first customer deliveries were postponed until 2024, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they got pushed back again due to lack of capital.

The company’s California headquarters was recently visited by Wouter Remmerie, the founder of AirShaper, the aerodynamic simulation and analysis tool that essentially acts as a virtual wind tunnel. This tool was used to refine the Aptera three-wheeler’s shape to make it as slippery as possible without having to use an actual wind tunnel—this is considerably cheaper and quicker, and you can only run the finished design through the wind tunnel for validation.

AirShaper posted a video on its YouTube channel that features a walkaround of one of the working prototypes, with comments from Aptera CEO and co-founder Chris Anthony.

The Aptera boss explains the three-wheeler’s body was designed more like a helicopter or airplane fuselage than a traditional car, which is why it has such a low coefficient of drag estimated to be somewhere between 0.13 and 0.15. For reference, the most aerodynamic production car, the Mercedes-Benz EQS, has a drag coefficient of 0.202, and the Volkswagen XL1 streamliner just dips under the 0.20 mark.

More On Aptera

• Aptera Solar EV Will Work With Openpilot, An Open-Source Driver Assistance System
• Sandy Munro Weighs In On The Aptera, Says It's Better Than He Was Hoping For

2024-04-19T19:22:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd