Aptera Electric Car Is Incredibly Efficient And Green, But ‘Never-Charge’ Solar Panels Are not .The 3-wheel highly efficient Aptera design APTERAAptera was an established electric car maker which never had much success with their early plans, but has roared back with a new attempt and with a new design it’s taking orders for. The vehicle claims to be crazy-efficient and that’s important. More of a gimmick is that it can come covered with solar panels with the idea this makes it “never charge.” It probably doesn’t, and in fact putting solar panels on the car is not at all a green thing to do.Let’s start with the good. The sleek and aerodynamic 3-wheel design results in an Aptera claim that the vehicle uses only 100 watt-hours to travel a mile. Compare that with the already very efficient Tesla Model 3 which takes 250, or larger electric vehicles that can take 300 and even 400 watt-hours to go that far. That’s astonishing efficiency and will be an incredible achievement, though it comes with some compromises.With that efficiency, it means the car would have incredible range on the same batteries put in regular EV sedans. The Aptera claims 250 miles on the sort of small battery found in an older Leaf, and a version that can go almost 1,000 miles on a charge with the a 100kwh battery as might be found in a Tesla model X. That’s actually a wasteful amount of range, since nobody is likely drive more than 600 miles a day without tiring, though it opens the potential for road trips in remote locations not otherwise suitable for EVs. That much battery has another purpose we’ll talk about below.
The Aptera wheels are to the side to keep the body APTERA to get that efficiency and range, you will need to give up surprisingly few things. The vehicle is small and light, and Aptera claims it will (when they finish it) pass all crash tests well. That’s good, though in a crash with a heavy vehicle there is just some physics which is going to put the passengers in a light vehicle at a disadvantage.As noted, it’s for two passengers plus maybe a dog. The 25 cubic feet of cargo room is actually quite good and beats a Tesla with the rear seats up, though loses to cars with the seats down. The Aptera claims similar acceleration to the Tesla, and offers an off-road option which raises it up a bit.
The “never charge” solar panelWith all the great specs above, Aptera promotes even more their solar charging feature. Every car comes with a basic panel that’s roughly 300 watts on the roof. For $900 you can add panels to the hood and rear to raise it to 700 watts. Aptera promotes that in this full configuration, you can gain “up to 48 miles/day” of range with solar charging, or about 10,000 miles/year in San Francisco or 7,500/year in a place like Boston. Since the average driver only goes about 12,000/year in a new car, many drivers, they suggest, could get all their miles from the sun and have a fully solar powered car they never have to plug in. Many potential buyers find that very appealing.It’s much more complex than that for a couple of reasons.

These are ideal numbers, presuming the car is always parked all day in a spot with no shade, and the car never does long drives, andFrom the standpoint of reducing emissions, it is always better to put solar panels on your house or in a solar farm than it is to put them on your car.

While the panels are not a green choice, they can be a convenient choice, especially for people who can’t easily plug their car in to charge. That is to say, people who don’t own a parking spot at home where they can have charging and who don’t have charging where they park during the day for work. For such people today, electric cars are not so practical, as they must hunt down charging or waste time and money at “fast” chargers every so often. If you don’t own your home, or must park on the street, and there’s no charging at your commuter lot, the solar panel won’t fully charge your car, but it will mean fewer inconvenient trips to do charging. With the longer range, owners might find themselves having to charge only every few weeks of short-range driving, particularly in summer. Even people who do have charging at home may find they can skip plugging and unplugging on most days, which is a nice convenience. If you bought the overkill 1000 mile car you could charge that only every 3 weeks without the solar panels, and possibly just every 2 months with them, if not taking long trips.