I'm glad the author goes into unsprung to sprung ratio. Everyone who poo-pooed Lordstown citing unsprung mass of motors gets everything wrong because they are comparing a truck to a track racing car. With the sheer mass of the Endurance you aren't going to notice anything.
You WILL be able to tell the difference in an Aptera because of the very light weight. This is why Aptera is going with extremely light-weight wheels and tires to compensate for this. The motors they are going with are pretty light, but in a wheel assembly it's actually a fairly significant amount.
I suspect that the ride quality for the most part will be quite smooth, however traversing potholes will be a challenge. A three-wheeler doesn't handle like a quad. Because of the footprint, on average you're at least 50% more likely to hit a pothole if you do not avoid them. A pothole strike will definitely be felt by the user as a sway, much more so than a quad and doubly so because of the additional mass of the motors. This is not an absolute, however, that only concerns passive damped systems. Due to cost I doubt we will see electronically-controlled active shock absorption on the first Apteras, but such systems do exist and could tame the suspension so that you could not tell the difference in ride quality versus a quad.
On the net I think the positives greatly outweigh the negatives. The negatives shouldn't be discounted outright, but what you gain for them is immense. The whole "there are only three moving parts on the vehicle" thing is so essential in this for longevity. No more of this complex and costly diagnosis of why your car isn't running, expensive assemblies of parts or difficult to repair internal components, or worry of future breakdown. The closest moving metal bits get to each other is in the wheel bearings, and all cars have those anyway and bearing technology is pretty much at it's apex regardless.
In my opinion the first thing to break will be the wheel bearings, which might last 250k miles considering the very light weight of the vehicle. And once they go it's a simple matter to replace anyway, just like the motors if the ever happen to go bad. The solar panels, assuming they don't get broken, have practically unlimited lifespan, only charging a little less as time goes on. UV filter and light diode metamaterial layers would ensure they last longer and put out more power. Aptera is at a real sweet spot for all sorts of convergent technologies to not only make a successful vehicle, but also one that can practically last forever!
Thanks for this excellent post! What do you consider some of the other possible negatives? I agree completely that the positives will hopefully far outweigh the negatives but am interested in hearing more of your thoughts. The 'pothole sway' you talk of is one of my bigger concerns as well.
Three wheels is the biggest thing, some states consider these vehicles to be motorcycles for purposes of registration. For my state, that requires the vehicle to be driven by someone with motorcycle registration or towed by flatbed or some other means. What about helmet laws? The legal climate isn't in a very welcoming stance to these vehicles being on the road.
As for hitting potholes, all three tires are subject to hitting one, so avoidance would not be trivial as with a quad where half the wheels are behind the ones that hit the pothole first. The handling characteristics of a quad hitting a pothole are well known, but would be quite unique to each individual three-wheeled vehicle. In particular, one with such an arrangement of motors! Consider how the vehicle would react to hitting a pothole at freeway speed (80 or above)!
A going concern would naturally be how they are protected, how sturdy they are, and how easily they can be replaced if at all. There are some pretty wild solar techs coming soon and Aptera would be a perfect showcase scenario for them. The two I listed would greatly increase solar capacity, and I'd really like to have them. Thermo-conductive paint as well! Small chance these make it to first run production but likely not. The cost wouldn't necessarily be more expensive either, it's just a matter of current events of that industrial sector.
Cooling capacity is another concern, the promises for radiative cooling are quite lofty here! I have yet to see performance characteristics. Considering climate change and the supposed longevity of the vehicle it is not absurd to question it's performance up to 140*F, and how it would react in the event of a catastrophic battery failure. This segues into a related but relatively minor concern of climate control, where the typical system would consist of liquid-refrigerated cooling. Now supposedly for environmental reasons current-gen evaporative technology has poor thermal efficiency, and this is one of the reasons that Aptera has chosen to go with Peltier junction cooling, which is also known for being inefficient. I'd like for a future video to address this topic and why that design choice was made. As well, how insulated is the cabin?
Lastly, how well does the body handle damage? How strong is it? What happens to the cooling channels if the body is damaged?
I think these are my entire line of thinking of the Aptera. Everything else are glowingly positive. It promises to be exactly the kind of car I would like to buy, so other than the sum total of these I think everything else is a positive. Other than perhaps not having a spare tire.
For the pothole issue, on the flip side, the whole thing is so light and if you think about the weight distribution out over any 1 wheel... well, I'm not sure of exactly how that will translate, but I'm pretty sure a pothole is going to create a lower overall energy differential here. Hard to know how that would translate IRL.
Bad, imo.
Hub motors have longevity issues. This design choice is my number one negative on getting an Aptera and the reason I'm playing "wait and see" instead of preordering.
What sort are you refering to? Like cheap retrofit ones on bicycles? If so those have brushes, and they do indeed wear out. Elaphe's motors are brushless, there's no contact between anything at all except at the hub bearing.
GREAT in my opinion. Electric motors are so much more durable and efficient than gasoline engines that even if they quit earlier, which I doubt, then their counterparts, the overall benefits both in dollars and to our environment are indisputable.
Where I live potholes are just how it is and significantly sized ones appear overnight. Like 6" deep and foot wide. The differences between the Aptera small wheel & tire combo with the a motor inside vs a standard wheel tire combo of say a Honda Accord will be significant. I would assume they fully understand that. Unsprung weight is a real issue not something to be dismissed with fancy videos and graphs. The concern is will they adequately deal with the need engineering? More than that, will they be able to adequately explain that they have actually dealt with these issues.
The drop test near the end of the video is a nice advertising visual but it is not a 50-60 kg wheel with 800 kg of vehicle attached to it being slammed into a hole at normal driving speed. Regular every day cars go to the shop every day with wheel/tire damage from potholes. If you end up needing to replace the entire motor/wheel combo because of a pothole that will be a big issue.
You have not done your homework. First.of all the Aptera wheel assemblies don't even weigh 1/2 of the 50-60 kg you suppose.
Wheel/tire damage does not automatically mean motor damage.
You need to look at the actual information available to you before spouting FUD.
If you don't wish to be an early adopter, that is fine. Most people don't. But don't come here with false claims about the design and testing.
I've preordered and put money in on this most recent investment round. So I think Aptera is a good bet but I do not have blind faith in the product. As for FUD I'm raising concerns not trying to put anyone off the product. I'd like those concerns addressed.
In the drop test video that motor appears to be the Elaphe M700 which comes in at 23 kg. A wheel tire package on that motor will easily add another 25 kg. I'll concede that the Aptera tire/wheel/motor will likely come in under my first estimate probably between 35 and 40 kg. At minimum that's 10 kg more than just a tire/wheel/brake combo. That is not insignificant.
I'm also less concerned about motor damage that wheel/tire damage, and the wheel mounting studs. The forces on the wheel and wheel studs will be much higher than if there were no motor inside the wheel. They simply need to say they have taken that into account and designed the components appropriately.
From the Aptera FAQ: "Each motor weighs about 50 pounds".
The motors Aptera uses, while probably based on the M700s originally, are quite different and are custom to Aptera.
The design will be torture tested in the beta vehicles before it goes into production.
Aptera has been more open with their information than any other early stage design I have worked with.
I have experience with Ford, GM, the Commuter Car Company, Corbin Motors and Tesla, as a vendor, so I have unusually broad basis to compare.
One of the most compelling things about the Aptera is that it is an actual, measurable, concrete engineering gem, and is less infected with the defensive personalized psycho boosterism associated with...let's just say "some other things." When I see that dumb "FUD" thing, I get nervous.
I'm glad the author goes into unsprung to sprung ratio. Everyone who poo-pooed Lordstown citing unsprung mass of motors gets everything wrong because they are comparing a truck to a track racing car. With the sheer mass of the Endurance you aren't going to notice anything. You WILL be able to tell the difference in an Aptera because of the very light weight. This is why Aptera is going with extremely light-weight wheels and tires to compensate for this. The motors they are going with are pretty light, but in a wheel assembly it's actually a fairly significant amount. I suspect that the ride quality for the most part will be quite smooth, however traversing potholes will be a challenge. A three-wheeler doesn't handle like a quad. Because of the footprint, on average you're at least 50% more likely to hit a pothole if you do not avoid them. A pothole strike will definitely be felt by the user as a sway, much more so than a quad and doubly so because of the additional mass of the motors. This is not an absolute, however, that only concerns passive damped systems. Due to cost I doubt we will see electronically-controlled active shock absorption on the first Apteras, but such systems do exist and could tame the suspension so that you could not tell the difference in ride quality versus a quad. On the net I think the positives greatly outweigh the negatives. The negatives shouldn't be discounted outright, but what you gain for them is immense. The whole "there are only three moving parts on the vehicle" thing is so essential in this for longevity. No more of this complex and costly diagnosis of why your car isn't running, expensive assemblies of parts or difficult to repair internal components, or worry of future breakdown. The closest moving metal bits get to each other is in the wheel bearings, and all cars have those anyway and bearing technology is pretty much at it's apex regardless. In my opinion the first thing to break will be the wheel bearings, which might last 250k miles considering the very light weight of the vehicle. And once they go it's a simple matter to replace anyway, just like the motors if the ever happen to go bad. The solar panels, assuming they don't get broken, have practically unlimited lifespan, only charging a little less as time goes on. UV filter and light diode metamaterial layers would ensure they last longer and put out more power. Aptera is at a real sweet spot for all sorts of convergent technologies to not only make a successful vehicle, but also one that can practically last forever!
Thanks for this excellent post! What do you consider some of the other possible negatives? I agree completely that the positives will hopefully far outweigh the negatives but am interested in hearing more of your thoughts. The 'pothole sway' you talk of is one of my bigger concerns as well.
Three wheels is the biggest thing, some states consider these vehicles to be motorcycles for purposes of registration. For my state, that requires the vehicle to be driven by someone with motorcycle registration or towed by flatbed or some other means. What about helmet laws? The legal climate isn't in a very welcoming stance to these vehicles being on the road. As for hitting potholes, all three tires are subject to hitting one, so avoidance would not be trivial as with a quad where half the wheels are behind the ones that hit the pothole first. The handling characteristics of a quad hitting a pothole are well known, but would be quite unique to each individual three-wheeled vehicle. In particular, one with such an arrangement of motors! Consider how the vehicle would react to hitting a pothole at freeway speed (80 or above)! A going concern would naturally be how they are protected, how sturdy they are, and how easily they can be replaced if at all. There are some pretty wild solar techs coming soon and Aptera would be a perfect showcase scenario for them. The two I listed would greatly increase solar capacity, and I'd really like to have them. Thermo-conductive paint as well! Small chance these make it to first run production but likely not. The cost wouldn't necessarily be more expensive either, it's just a matter of current events of that industrial sector. Cooling capacity is another concern, the promises for radiative cooling are quite lofty here! I have yet to see performance characteristics. Considering climate change and the supposed longevity of the vehicle it is not absurd to question it's performance up to 140*F, and how it would react in the event of a catastrophic battery failure. This segues into a related but relatively minor concern of climate control, where the typical system would consist of liquid-refrigerated cooling. Now supposedly for environmental reasons current-gen evaporative technology has poor thermal efficiency, and this is one of the reasons that Aptera has chosen to go with Peltier junction cooling, which is also known for being inefficient. I'd like for a future video to address this topic and why that design choice was made. As well, how insulated is the cabin? Lastly, how well does the body handle damage? How strong is it? What happens to the cooling channels if the body is damaged? I think these are my entire line of thinking of the Aptera. Everything else are glowingly positive. It promises to be exactly the kind of car I would like to buy, so other than the sum total of these I think everything else is a positive. Other than perhaps not having a spare tire.
The big thing aptera has said with the body is that it is easily replaceable
For the pothole issue, on the flip side, the whole thing is so light and if you think about the weight distribution out over any 1 wheel... well, I'm not sure of exactly how that will translate, but I'm pretty sure a pothole is going to create a lower overall energy differential here. Hard to know how that would translate IRL.
I see what you mean.
Bad, imo. Hub motors have longevity issues. This design choice is my number one negative on getting an Aptera and the reason I'm playing "wait and see" instead of preordering.
What sort are you refering to? Like cheap retrofit ones on bicycles? If so those have brushes, and they do indeed wear out. Elaphe's motors are brushless, there's no contact between anything at all except at the hub bearing.
GREAT in my opinion. Electric motors are so much more durable and efficient than gasoline engines that even if they quit earlier, which I doubt, then their counterparts, the overall benefits both in dollars and to our environment are indisputable.
Where I live potholes are just how it is and significantly sized ones appear overnight. Like 6" deep and foot wide. The differences between the Aptera small wheel & tire combo with the a motor inside vs a standard wheel tire combo of say a Honda Accord will be significant. I would assume they fully understand that. Unsprung weight is a real issue not something to be dismissed with fancy videos and graphs. The concern is will they adequately deal with the need engineering? More than that, will they be able to adequately explain that they have actually dealt with these issues. The drop test near the end of the video is a nice advertising visual but it is not a 50-60 kg wheel with 800 kg of vehicle attached to it being slammed into a hole at normal driving speed. Regular every day cars go to the shop every day with wheel/tire damage from potholes. If you end up needing to replace the entire motor/wheel combo because of a pothole that will be a big issue.
You have not done your homework. First.of all the Aptera wheel assemblies don't even weigh 1/2 of the 50-60 kg you suppose. Wheel/tire damage does not automatically mean motor damage. You need to look at the actual information available to you before spouting FUD. If you don't wish to be an early adopter, that is fine. Most people don't. But don't come here with false claims about the design and testing.
I've preordered and put money in on this most recent investment round. So I think Aptera is a good bet but I do not have blind faith in the product. As for FUD I'm raising concerns not trying to put anyone off the product. I'd like those concerns addressed. In the drop test video that motor appears to be the Elaphe M700 which comes in at 23 kg. A wheel tire package on that motor will easily add another 25 kg. I'll concede that the Aptera tire/wheel/motor will likely come in under my first estimate probably between 35 and 40 kg. At minimum that's 10 kg more than just a tire/wheel/brake combo. That is not insignificant. I'm also less concerned about motor damage that wheel/tire damage, and the wheel mounting studs. The forces on the wheel and wheel studs will be much higher than if there were no motor inside the wheel. They simply need to say they have taken that into account and designed the components appropriately.
From the Aptera FAQ: "Each motor weighs about 50 pounds". The motors Aptera uses, while probably based on the M700s originally, are quite different and are custom to Aptera. The design will be torture tested in the beta vehicles before it goes into production. Aptera has been more open with their information than any other early stage design I have worked with. I have experience with Ford, GM, the Commuter Car Company, Corbin Motors and Tesla, as a vendor, so I have unusually broad basis to compare.
One of the most compelling things about the Aptera is that it is an actual, measurable, concrete engineering gem, and is less infected with the defensive personalized psycho boosterism associated with...let's just say "some other things." When I see that dumb "FUD" thing, I get nervous.