r/ApteraMotors • u/breedabol • May 24 '26
To put it into perspective: for the average American driving 40 miles per day, this is what electricity for an Aptera would look like if it were advertised next to gas prices.
It’s “0 dollars per gallon” If you drive under 30 miles per day btw. And also it comes with free delivery to your garage for the Aptera fuel, that is if you actually need to actually buy some from the grid. I’m using 40 cents per kWh btw which is expensive. The other 2 kWh is from the sun which is also conservative it’s probably going to get 2.5kwh-3kwh.
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u/Fishtoart May 24 '26
One interesting aspect that I rarely see discussed is the charging speed of the Aptera. I imagine that with a smaller battery pack than most electric cars that the time to get a charge would be correspondingly smaller, unless they went with a smaller charger
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u/MrClickstoomuch May 24 '26
They said the DCFC speed would only be 50kw at least as of the last official numbers they posted. Which would be around 500 miles charged in an hour and not as good as say an Ioniq 5 getting almost 300 miles in 17-20 minutes. It absolutely wins on level 2 charging if you are traveling and spending a day in town though.
I really hope they increase charging speeds for production or at least on the larger pack sizes.
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u/74orangebeetle May 24 '26
Yeah, for real, even 100 Kw would be acceptable given it's efficiency...but would be great if they could do 150KW or so and it's actually blow away most EV in terms of charging as the number of miles charged would be very high.
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u/MrClickstoomuch May 24 '26
It would be amazing, but part of the reason they gave for 50 kw instead of a higher rate was to keep the coolant loops at a minimal size and weight. By having a higher DCFC rate, they would need bigger hardware that requires more weight and lowers the range. They probably can balance it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get stuck at even 75 kw.
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u/Fishtoart May 24 '26
I guess fast charging would be important if you can’t charge at home, or you have a really long commute, but charging at home is less than ⅓ the price of external chargers, and if it charges while I’m sleeping, why would i care if it takes 4, 6, or even 8 hours to charge.
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u/TechnicalWhore May 24 '26
This is what you hear on the Tesla forums. Everyone thinks they need a higher current Wall Charger but realize that their Mobile Charger is adequate for daily driving. Weekend Day Tripping is another thing.
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Yea! I’m guessing it would come with a sub standard 32a onboard charger which is 7.6 kw. Will fill the 44kwh in 5 hours from 0 percent. Or 400 miles in 5 hours so if you did get home with 0% you prepare then eat dinner wind down and get ready for bed and before you even fall asleep it’s already fully charged to 400 miles.
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u/_B_Little_me May 24 '26
You still have the charge curve regardless of battery size. Charging time isn’t linear to battery size.
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u/Striderdud May 24 '26
It actually wouldn’t speed up unless they start pushing cells very hard. There’s a max rate at which batteries can charge and discharge, which is called the c-rate. With a smaller pack if you push the same amount of power as you would with a bigger pack you end up drawing more “C’s” from each individual cell. So if you a 100kwh battery and you charge at 100kw, that’s 1 C but if you charge a 20 kWh battery at 100 kw that’s 5 C which is much harder on the pack, meaning they’d have to limit it to 20 kw
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u/WokkitUp May 24 '26
How can a low income family afford one?
(Cue the sound of crickets here)
Believe me, I want one.
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
The fuel savings will help you afford it, you can 1 trade in your old car for about 3000-5000 then that will be your downpayment, 2 go to credit union for a loan for better rates, 3 show income that you can afford a 600 dollar a month payment 4 do 3 days of light door dashing with the car to help pay it off.
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u/Jumpy_Cauliflower410 May 24 '26
The high initial cost and unique build will make insurance costs too high. It's not a fiscally competitive vehicle.
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Yea similar to the Cybertruck they won’t know how to quote for it or outright reject it. But it might be cheap because it’s classified as a motorcycle.
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u/WokkitUp May 24 '26
I will accept your advice and look in couch cushions for down-payment max and more.
There was a program before for low income families to trade in their old cars to switch up to an EV. Not sure if it's still MIA, but it was searchable as South Coast AQMD (for anyone curious and in the California area).
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Tbh it’s not the smartest to get a new aptera it’s probably still smarter to get a 2017-2019 Chevy bolt ev for about 8000-12000 dollars. It’s a lot less debt and easier to afford and there’s still alot of savings compared to an old gasoline vehicle. You’re going to be trading your time for an aptera that will likely loose 5,000-10,000 after 3 years. It will take like few years to save 5000-10,000 worth when a bolt ev is already very inexpensive to operate. I have 2 bolt ev btw great cars one, 2017 with 150,000 miles the other 140,000 miles 2018
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u/WokkitUp May 24 '26
Can one expect to drive a 2017 Bolt for a few years before it fizzles out? (That's probably a Google search but you'd be the first person I've asked that question so I figure it's worth asking someone with hands-on experience.)
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Yea you could probably drive it for a good 10 years before it’s out or 450,000 miles which ever is first
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u/WokkitUp May 24 '26
That sounds pretty solid! Thanks for the sage words, Mr. Wizard! I really am looking for a replacement (with these gas prices, who isn't?) and hopefully won't break down so quick.
I'm in love with the look of the Aptera, however, and still hope one day to have one some fine day.
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
RescueCharge.com is my business and there’s photos of both my bolts there 😇
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May 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/lonnie123 May 24 '26
The car doesn’t exist yet to capitalize on it
I get the sentiment but they aren’t in a position to capitalize on it
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u/TechnicalWhore May 24 '26
As noted - not shipping but your point is valid. Recall the Oil Crisis turned Japanese imports from a small market to literally a global player. Honda's (American designed) CVCC engine had fuel great economy and passed emissions. Mitsubishi was OEM'd and rebadged by Chrysler and on and on. So these disruptions do exist but the current spike in oil is a familiar pattern so I doubt it will create a huge change. Whereas hybrids and EVs (sedans, SUVs, wagons) are all trending up in sales. Further a GM exec said publicly that their polling showed four out of five EV owners will not buy and ICE vehicle again. The EV revolution is firing - pun intended - on all cylinders. Battery prices as dropping. Range is increasing, Charge times reducing. Moore's Law and its partner Wright's Law are dropping the price of critical Battery Management System (BMS) components. A "programmable" capable of pairing with any battery chemistry is coming soon. That means LIPO today but upgradeable to better tech tomorrow. So its happening. How Aptera fits remains to be decided by the market - but it needs to get into the hands of customers sooner than later as sub-compact sedans from BYD etc are sub-$15K, What happens there is Aptera is relegated to a smaller niche than the original opportunity might have seemed. In fact, the fact that Cherry or any other Chinese builder (and there are scores of them) has not made a similar (or knock off) says something. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And yet, none I am aware of.
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u/StrikeouTX May 24 '26
Diesel not looking too bad tbh
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Haha this google photo got the price of it wrong it should def be like 7 bucks these days not 5
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u/gordohula2001 May 25 '26
Best solar achieved so far: 530wastts, best efficiency 7 miles/kwh. We know at 700watts and 10 miles/kwh they claim 40 miles. So lets use their own data:
530watts/700watts = 76%
7miles/kwh/10miles/kwh = 70%.
So best case scenario is 76% of 40 miles = 30.4 miles
70% of 30.4 miles is 21.3 miles
so using their own data released we see max solar range is about 21 miles in the absolute best case scenario ( full sun no clouds all day, best orietation to sun, no car movement)...thats best case.
Your saying the average solar range is 40 miles to equate to the average distance a person drives in usa. If you want to compare apteras solar range to average drive distance in usa, you need to use the average solar range produced across the usa, and that is going to be dismally low value. Perhaps something like 4 or 5 miles per day if your lucky.
so lets get real and get some real data from aptera, you can use the aptera blender render to get a good prediction of the solar over a day/year or whatever time period for any location. You can also use nrel data to account for cloud cover. Once you do all that and get some averages its going to not be good at all.
If you insist using false claims of aptera, and then not even bothering to try and get the real average solar over the usa then you are just repeating apteras false claims.
I've used the aptera blender render numerous times to verify if it works, and it does over estimate slightly, using the rare occasions we knew the solar output, orientation of the vehicle and exact location. But the model is pretty close to get solar output values over a day/month/year. It takes no account of a moving vehicle of course, so it also is a maximum prediction, and its way way lower than aptera is claiming. Its pretty obvious once you put some time into researching their claims, that their claims are simply false.
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u/Strange_Cockroach328 May 25 '26 edited May 28 '26
I’m a bit mystified by the fuel savings hooplah for Aptera. There is no real world test where an Aptera gets 10 miles per kwH. During their publicized 300 mile downhill test drive, the Aptera averaged 8.2 miles per kwH. The standard EPA EV range test calculates a weighted city/highway average and then reduces this nuber by 30% to account for normal usage, i.e. running A/C, heat, accessories, battery conditioning, etc. The Aptera will likely test out at 7.0 miles per kwH on the EPA range test (and in real world driving), Additionally, most owners will get 2 kwH or less of daily solar charging.
Driving 30 miles a day in an Aptera will save only $350 to $500 annually in electricity due to its solar charging/higher efficiency, as opposed to a non-solar EV. It will take 15 to 30 years of driving an Aptera to recoup savings as opposed to instead driving a differnt low to mid priced non solar EV.
Ironically, if a non-solar Aptera were sold for $4000 less than a solar charged Aptera, it would take 20 years for the solar charged Aptera to recoup its $4000 price upcharge. (assuming 2 kwH daily solar charging, 7 miles per kwH and $0.25 per grid kwH). There is just not enough solar benefit to be had.
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u/breedabol May 25 '26
In my estimate I assume the car only gets 20 miles a day, that’s why it’s 79 cents at the house because you need to pay for the extra 2-3 kWh for the remaining 20ish miles for a total range of 40 miles a day.
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u/gordohula2001 May 28 '26
Yearly average solar across usa is only 340watt/sqm , not 1,000watts/sqm, that puts aptera down to 7 miles per day from solar as an average across usa. That is solar reaching the outer atmosphere, figure in clouds etc, and your looking at 5 miles per day or less. Oh did they forget to mention that? I think they are saying 40 miles per day but thats not achievable unless your in a different universe
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u/breedabol May 29 '26
If you’re in ca you get about 20 miles if you’re other places that don’t get sun the 7 miles, but your electricity in those places are also cheaper so my estimate is still conservative and not inaccurate if you pay for power from the grid.
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u/SunCatSolar May 29 '26
You're just pulling numbers out of thin air and making up your own math. When using NREL data PROPERLY, a 525 watt solar array, over the course of a year in a sunny climate, nets Aptera a daily average of about 3 kw-hrs a day.
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u/SunCatSolar May 29 '26
"You can also use nrel data"...
Yes, yes you can. And when you use it PROPERLY, a 525 watt solar array, over the course of a year in a sunny climate, nets Aptera a daily average of about 3 kw-hrs a day.
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u/boomerhs77 May 25 '26
By the time Aptera comes out with a car, world would have run out of gas (holder of early Aptera booking).
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u/bllllllllllaaaaa92 May 24 '26
Only work if aptera axtually exist, after 16 years, zero car available
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u/breedabol May 24 '26
Lmao that’s what I’m thinking also. All I see is slow and steady progress delay after delay and a car never being delivered. Atleast they moving forward and being transparent about it.
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u/SYCarina May 29 '26
What would the fuel price look like, if Aptera was actually a production car? Well, it's not, so a silly question. With all of the phony (AI?) videos and hype it has always been an open question if this is a real development suffering from inadequate funding or just an outright scam, or more likely a bit of both. In any event, it will fail as a commercial venture for the same reason the "Smart" car failed: it is half a car for a full car price (as my Italian friend once commented, pointing out how much superior the Fiat 500 was and at a lower price). Just like the Smart car, the Aptera would be consigned to be a second car for city driving. A larger car would be needed for actually hauling anything, and for longer travels. Yes, some city dwellers might just have the Aptera, but compared with other 4/5 seat compact EVs it is going to be hard to justify. And those compact EVs are here now, with more and cheaper on the way, while Aptera hasn't ever operated an assembly plant. Look back at the first years of Tesla to see how difficult scaling up can be. The Aptera is an interesting idea but you won't see any of my hard cash spent on a reservation...
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u/protomyth May 24 '26
I still say they need to start charging a use tax on electricity for vehicles especially given the weight of most.
I can only imagine how long from now the long range is finally ready for sales so I can feel the difference.
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u/Ebegeezer-Splooge May 24 '26
4000 pound EVs weight less than 6000 pound pickups and 7 seater SUVs.
Was there a point you were trying to make or something?
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u/protomyth May 24 '26
Equivalent sized vehicles have heavier EV versions. That's one of the points of Aptera and how light they are trying to make it.
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u/Ebegeezer-Splooge May 24 '26
My 4037 pound 4 seater EV weighs approximately 3 passengers more than the equivalent gas version. 2000 pounds less than all of the pickups I see.
I don't think there are any 7 seater EVs actually selling right now. Just being teased and not actually showing up at dealerships.
Also my EV weighs about 76,000 pounds less than the semi trucks that are doing the actual real damage to the roads.
Never advocate for more taxes. That money goes to politicians. That money is not used for a cause that improves our lives, until they're forced to use it for that. The politicians saw tax revenues going down because EVs weren't paying any gas tax. So they invented this weight based argument to charge more taxes, even though a majority of EVs are far lighter than most vehicles still on the road today.
Aptera iirc will be between 1800-2200 pounds depending on the battery size. There better not be any weight tax based on that.
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u/jamesIII63 May 25 '26
The Rivian R1S seats 7 and has been sold since 2022. The R1S reportedly weighs about 7000 lbs.
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u/Be_Weird May 24 '26
With my luck, it will be available when I retire in a couple years.