FINALLY a Solar Powered Car that NEVER needs to charge!

there's a cool little loophole in physics where with the right weight and the right aerodynamics you could have an electric vehicle with 1 000 miles of range that never needs to be plugged in probably one of the coolest EVS that I've ever seen it's the one glitch in physics that they don't want you to know about let's get started [Music] behind me is the three wheeled solar-powered aptera Auto cycle not quite a motorcycle and not quite a regular vehicle either today we have this vehicle which is an alpha production unit and we have this one which is a beta production unit which has the full suspension ready to go on this test track here in California this is a first look at the aptera so we'll get the outside Aesthetics from the alpha and how everything works from the inside with the beta let's take a look at Alpha first the very first thing you'll notice about this car is that it only has three wheels two in the front one in the back and it's also covered in solar panels the solar panels can provide an additional 40 miles worth of range every single day which is rather convenient since the average commute for someone here in the USA is only 30 miles so in reality you could own a vehicle that never needs to be plugged in ever as long as the sun is shining which should be good for another few billion years even though there are solar panels on the top that allow it to be charged up with the sun it can be plugged into a regular 110 outlet to get 150 miles of range replenishment overnight or it can charge up using any DC fast charging Network including Teslas one of the ways the aptera is so efficient is each of the three wheels has a motor inside of it now we can see that better on this version right here they're actually Hub Motors you have the three ac lines running up inside of the Hub as well as coolant lines those are the black ones up top to keep everything cool epterra knew I was coming so we have everything here on display which is great each of the motors has their own inverter you can see the DC lines going back and there's a battery which sits underneath the driver compartment right here most of the weight of the aptera is going to be here in the front for efficiency I do think though that the rear wheel is pretty fascinating coming over here to the back side you can see see that it's a single side swing arm kind of like what you would see on a motorcycle coming over here to the inside driver's seat door spin up to the top we'll be driving here in a second we have seven feet worth of storage space back here which is 32 cubic feet worth of storage in the rear there is no front trunk at the moment and then you can see the passenger door also folds up like a wing pretty cozy it's always a little nerve-wracking when they let you take a prototype vehicle out on my own for a test drive let's take this crazy so I'm about six feet tall and I'm a little cozy but I'm told that this is an alpha prototype meaning it's one of their first ones and the final version is going to be I have a little more Headroom and a little more space inside of the cabin this is a fun little car you would think that since it only has three wheels it would feel unstable or rocky but I can't tell the difference between this and a four-wheel drive car if we listen to the acceleration [Music] foreign and it's hard to know for sure which of these features will translate into the final production model this is just a prototype but it is super fun now as far as the solar panels go that's probably one of the more interesting aspects of this vehicle besides the three wheels there are solar panels in here on the dashboard as well as on the hood as well as solar panel package that can cover the entire rear hatch thing on the back of the car you can get one with the rear window you would just have less solar panels replenishing the battery this [ __ ] but replenishing the battery as you're driving I think if I got one of these though I would opt for the complete solar package because just the option of never plugging in is mind-blowingly awesome a gridless vehicle doesn't get much better than that a little bit of stats for nerds this thing has a drag coefficient of 0.13 for reference my rivian has a drag coefficient of three and I think a Honda Accord is like a 3.8 so this thing slices through air like butter which is what makes it so efficient this thing has half the battery of a Tesla but the same range and if we're comparing it to the least Efficient Electric Vehicle of all time the Hummer EV this has one fourth the battery pack but still the same range you might have noticed that there's a split window design and that's because of these super efficient aerodynamics the way the wheels are made most of the dirty air is between the Hub motor and the body of the vehicle and this split window design is a way to decrease the dirty air passing through that channel the opening is quite a bit smaller than a regular window but still wide enough that you can go through a drive-through and get your food on the inside while still being super efficient no one was expecting the app Terra to be especially spacious since this is a pre-production unit we can't expect to hear a few more creaks and rattles than we would normally in a production vehicle I bet those will be ironed out by the time we go into production you might be asking if you can take this on the freeway and the answer is yes not only is it aerodynamic forward but it's also aerodynamic left to right so Crosswinds wouldn't affect it as much as well as it has a top speed of 110 miles an hour so handling the freeway would be just fine as a 0 to 60 of 4 seconds there is a two wheel drive version and a three-wheel Drive version this one's just two wheel for the moment we'll get in the three wheel in a second there is a 170 horsepower when combining all three motors and this will be one of the most iconic eye-catching vehicles on the road without a doubt not defying physics just utilizing physics I still can't get over how much futuristic UFO Vibe this thing has going on but now we've had fun in the pre-production alpha let's move over to the beta which has the more production ready suspension and the power all right launching [Music] oh that was cool okay this one this one is way more fun and like I can't get over how stable it is I thought that having one wheel in the back would make it feel like there was less stability like it would shake and rock and but this is incredible the driving experience I've ever had super solid super grippy and so much power this thing weighs like 2 100 pounds which I'm coming from like a 7 000 pound rivian three motors acceleration Motors in every Tire oh this is great one cool thing I mean besides that this is just a blast to drive so much fun one really cool thing that appetera is doing is they're making these easy to repair every single component will have a QR code that corresponds with a video on how to replace it and aptera will send customers replacement parts directly which is awesome foreign very different than the Legacy auto manufacturers that exists right now and it's nice that they I don't know trust their customers to be able to fix their own stuff after having Built My Own electric military Humvee I'm not going to say it's easy but it's much less complicated than say like a blown head gasket where there's thousands of parts that you have to take apart to replace here an electric vehicle most of the components are modular anyway so as long as you're not messing directly with copper conductive components you can replace things on your own man this is fun yes yes that's pretty amazing [Applause] all in all I think it's a pretty fun vehicle obviously the solar panels are going to work a little bit better in places where it's sunny Florida California Hawaii places up in Alaska where they don't get a lot of sun it's not going to be as efficient right now the base model of the app tear is going to start at 25 000 and aptera is hoping to start shipping in 2024. personally I think they should add an option instead of putting solar panels and a hatch on the back they should just leave it open like this and have a tiny little truck bed that would be my personal suggestion let me know what you think down in the comments would you get one of these would you get the solar package let me know in the comments thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you around

Channel: JerryRigEverything

Views: 1,450,963

Keywords: aptera, aptera motors, solar car, solar powered car, tesla, EV, electric vehicle, 1000 mile EV, Long range Electric Vehicle, electric cars

Id: c-pboYgSF2Q

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023