I work in this space. Took one look at Launch and instantly recognise the type of company they are (aftersales/paper pushing) and that this will probably fail due to lack of actual engineering experience with DfM, control software, etc.
I am a big booster of both solar power and electric vehicles, but boy, Aptera’s trying to thread a needle I just don’t think we’ve got the technology to thread yet. The efficiency of solar panels isn’t high enough to consistently generate enough power to propel a vehicle made of currently practical materials that meets modern automotive safety standards far enough fast enough to be useful, and I suspect they’re going to have to get esoteric enough in the materials, electronics, and manufacturing that the price is going to be prohibitive at the scale of the market willing to make the sacrifices the vehicle will require.
I don’t know if it’s theoretically possible to do what they want to do at some point - I don’t know if enough energy is present in the sunlight that falls on the space available on a normal car to power something that meets what the average person would consider their mobility needs - but I just can’t see it with the current state of the art, unless I’ve missed some big shifts in the last few years.
I’d love to be wrong, I prefer to be an optimist, but my inner engineer is just sadly shaking his head no.
This is clearly not a winning idea if you're a spreadsheet-loving engineer that can run the numbers, and is interested enough in clean tech to do so. But that's 5% of the population, tops.
To the 95% of people without the inclination or knowledge to check the figures, this looks great! It's a car with zero fuel costs, it's EV charging for people who don't have off-street parking, it's a fix for EVs sitting in workplace car parks at times of peak solar output, and it's most of the benefits of covering car parks in solar panels.
Solar panel efficiency has increased and they have made an extremely slippery vehicle. 4kWh/day and 10 miles per kWh gives 40 miles per day of driving range, enough for many people without ever plugging in.
That's over-optimistic and you will probably only get that in a small handful of places in the world like the southwestern US or the Middle East and even then only for part of the year.
The hot, sunny, never-cloudy parts of the world also tend to be the ones where driving long distances is most necessary.
From some parts of SF to SJ is about 42 miles. Thats a very long distance that you’re likely to get completely on solar. For that long of a commute you probably need a bigger battery but you could easily have most of your costs met for free with minimal top ups. And that’s a very long daily commute.
Also temperature doesn’t matter too much. You just need sun. I bet it’s enough for most of California year round with minor exceptions that you need to use infrastructure charging.
Solar panel efficiency hasn’t gone up that much. It’s not like solar panel cars were just barely not worth it - the economics weren’t close to making sense.
10 miles/kWh is also insanely efficient, unbelievably so (well over 2x your average EV), and I don’t see where they back that claim up.
Charging is easy in dense cities. The problem is more that property managers are reluctant to get with the beat. Some legal intervention might be needed (e.g. make it a legal requirement to have at least 1/3 the amount of chargers as residents, in preparation for an electric car future) and let the unwilling property managers shut down.
In a world where sedans have been replaced by SUVs, I don't see how the market would react positively to this. But then again, Lime scooters are paradoxically also a thing. I guess maybe it's a matter of marketing?
There are many cities in the US where renting a scooter to travel a couple miles is as fast as (often faster than) waiting for and riding in a car, and costs perhaps a third as much. But I can't speak for whether this solar car is anything other than hype; those are different matters.
The Aptera is the exact same height as the Toyota Camry, the #5 best-selling vehicle in the United States.
Other top-selling sedans:
#11 is the Honda Civic
#12 is the Toyota Corolla
#20 is the Honda Accord
#24 is the Hyundai Elantra
To counter your point, I'd say that sedans and cars are not at all "dead," and that the Aptera's primary buyer doesn't really care that the rest of the world is driving SUVs. This is an ideal California commuter appliance where you can park it on the street and never charge it for $28k. You pay basically nothing on maintenance on fuel which is huge, and unlike other EVs you don't even need to have any home charging.
I also don't think they need huge volume to be viable considering this partnership. They're building something that's a lot more similar to a Slingshot than it is to a full car.
Electric scooters are a walking enhancer in an urban area. Now you can go 20kph in a city and easily park your vehicle. They're also super cheap to own and operate (or borrow one when needed). That's a totally different animal than a $40k subcompact trike car that requires an actual paid parking spot
This vehicle is $28k with the 250 mile range option.
I think it's a pretty interesting California commuter appliance. A vehicle you can get under $30k that requires no fuel or charging at all.
Ideally it would have been a four seat vehicle but I still think it's going to be a very interesting proposition as a purely economical vehicle option for the purposes of driving to work.
So there's a company in China, Launch, to which you can outsource making cars. Like Flextronics for electronics. So you can have a "fabless" car company.
The economics of that are interesting. Launch just makes cars. They don't take the market risk of having to sell them to consumers.
As for Aptera, "We are committed to commencing production and delivery as soon as possible. However, the exact timing remains uncertain and is dependent on several key factors..." So it's a Kickstarter for cars. At this point you have to ask whether the product is the car or the next financing round.
Also, it may have too much China content to be sold in the US. They may have to pay off Trump to get past that.
Is this so Aptera can pass the buck when it flops again (“it’s Launch’s fault, we swear”)?
This really doesn’t answer any questions. $44 million (and worthless paper stock warrants) is also immensely low for new vehicle tooling as a whole.
(I'll point out that an article about Slate's frugality[1] still shows some massive costs involved here. They scored a $200 million assembly line component originally from GM for $12 million. Uh, if that kind of seven/eight-figure investment is required for a single component of an assembly line, how far does this $44 million go for Aptera?)
I'd love if the roof and the hood of my plugin hybrid could have solar panels built in. I drive it very rarely and short distance. lf it could be topped up over few days, before next grocery or restaurant trip, I'd be delighted. I know there's not much energy to be gathered but it would suffice me. Instead I have glass roof for no reason, as if there was anything interesting straight up. Car manufacturers somewhat lost the plot.
> I'd love if the roof and the hood of my plugin hybrid could have solar panels built in. I drive it very rarely and short distance.
An old neighbor of mine had a Prius with a factory-installed small solar panel, definitely 50W or less, that IIRC was connected to the 12V battery. So one of the benefits would be in counteracting draw from various always-on computers in modern vehicles.
Why though? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have solar panels at your home where the power can be routed to batteries/ home power/ sell to the grid and configured optimally?
There are some reasons like the added bom cost to the car.
I guess it’s a nice option to have in the market but if what you’re going for is minimal carbon emissions impact it would be best to put those solar panels on house roof I think.
Cost, weight, complexity, another thing to break, historically it hasn’t made sense and it’s not clear things have changed enough for it to make sense now.
Not everyone has a garage or driveway. Where I live, I couldn't plug in at my house. I also don't need a car every day (in fact, right now we don't have one). Being able to charge on the street would reduce the need to find charging spots all the time.
From someone with a boat and solar panels: cheap solar panels needs cooling, so space between the panels and the stuff they are stuck one. This reduces aerodynamics a lot, which isn't an issue with something going 8 knots max, but I have a friend with a trimaran whose solar panels reduce his max speed of 20 knot to 18 (38kmh -> 33.5), which is why he decided to remove them from his amas and have movable solar panel instead (he put them when he beach or stay at a mooring). My next boat will be a tri too, I just have to find half a million somewhere.
On the "charging-from-the-sun" side of the equation, they recently had an independent German test organization measure the daily charge rate, and it exceeded the 4.0kWh/day goal. The test was conducted at their Southern California headquarters during July, however, so your mileage may (literally) vary.
So dumb. Build bike lanes and use ebikes, many of which already go 30mph+. The only hurdle is a weatherproof cover so you have heating and cooling and stay dry which together with an ebike would be way cheaper than this.
And as a bonus it will help with the obesity problem plaguing this planet which kills thousands yearly.
I mean getting wet/hot is a pretty big disadvantage of e-bikes compared to cars in many situations. But anyway this is a crazy niche product. Don't worry it's not going to have any effect on e-bikes whatsoever.
> getting wet/hot is a pretty big disadvantage of e-bikes compared to cars
I use an ebike as primary transportation 365 days a year in Vermont, and you'd be surprised how infrequently you have a day that is actually miserable to be out on a bike, even in a place with very cold winters and a lot of rain. By dressing properly (gloves/scarf when it's cold, rain jacket if the weather is not cooperating), you can eliminate 95% of the annoyances. Something I've learned as a year round cyclist is that most of the rain you experience from inside a car is actually not that heavy when you're out in it. There are maybe 10 days a year where I just have to suck it up (below 0F, heavy rain), and then I usually just skip a trip, take the bus if I can, or deal with it. I get stuck biking in real rain maybe 3x a year, and tbh I think it's probably good for people to encounter occasional friction like that.
And so taking on all of the disadvantages of depreciation, insurance, traffic, inspections, parking, gas prices, parking bans, worrying if that car alarm in the middle of the night is mine, is actually a much worse deal to me than putting up with a few uncomfortable trips per year.
I’d be worried about the safety of driving a bike in wet weather. You’d have to make sure the brakes and tires are really rated for that kind of weather or you’re going to be in for a bad time.
In Europe, the Fiat Topolino and his siblings are an increasingly common sight (while still being rare).
Relatively cheap, can be charged with a regular 230V socket, tops out at 45kmph. Not as compact as a bike for obvious reasons, but still a substantially smaller footprint than any modern car - and comes with proper weather protection.
My mum will buy one to work (home nurse) while keeping her big car around for larger travel. Especially with gas prices, I think you will see those more and more.
I don’t know if it’s theoretically possible to do what they want to do at some point - I don’t know if enough energy is present in the sunlight that falls on the space available on a normal car to power something that meets what the average person would consider their mobility needs - but I just can’t see it with the current state of the art, unless I’ve missed some big shifts in the last few years.
I’d love to be wrong, I prefer to be an optimist, but my inner engineer is just sadly shaking his head no.
Batteries exist. Solar panels add weight and design constraints. Why is this a thing? What am I missing?
To the 95% of people without the inclination or knowledge to check the figures, this looks great! It's a car with zero fuel costs, it's EV charging for people who don't have off-street parking, it's a fix for EVs sitting in workplace car parks at times of peak solar output, and it's most of the benefits of covering car parks in solar panels.
That's over-optimistic and you will probably only get that in a small handful of places in the world like the southwestern US or the Middle East and even then only for part of the year.
The hot, sunny, never-cloudy parts of the world also tend to be the ones where driving long distances is most necessary.
Also temperature doesn’t matter too much. You just need sun. I bet it’s enough for most of California year round with minor exceptions that you need to use infrastructure charging.
10 miles/kWh is also insanely efficient, unbelievably so (well over 2x your average EV), and I don’t see where they back that claim up.
That’s one reason electric cars are a bit of a luxury item right now.
Other top-selling sedans:
#11 is the Honda Civic
#12 is the Toyota Corolla
#20 is the Honda Accord
#24 is the Hyundai Elantra
To counter your point, I'd say that sedans and cars are not at all "dead," and that the Aptera's primary buyer doesn't really care that the rest of the world is driving SUVs. This is an ideal California commuter appliance where you can park it on the street and never charge it for $28k. You pay basically nothing on maintenance on fuel which is huge, and unlike other EVs you don't even need to have any home charging.
I also don't think they need huge volume to be viable considering this partnership. They're building something that's a lot more similar to a Slingshot than it is to a full car.
I think it's a pretty interesting California commuter appliance. A vehicle you can get under $30k that requires no fuel or charging at all.
Ideally it would have been a four seat vehicle but I still think it's going to be a very interesting proposition as a purely economical vehicle option for the purposes of driving to work.
The economics of that are interesting. Launch just makes cars. They don't take the market risk of having to sell them to consumers.
As for Aptera, "We are committed to commencing production and delivery as soon as possible. However, the exact timing remains uncertain and is dependent on several key factors..." So it's a Kickstarter for cars. At this point you have to ask whether the product is the car or the next financing round.
Also, it may have too much China content to be sold in the US. They may have to pay off Trump to get past that.
This really doesn’t answer any questions. $44 million (and worthless paper stock warrants) is also immensely low for new vehicle tooling as a whole.
(I'll point out that an article about Slate's frugality[1] still shows some massive costs involved here. They scored a $200 million assembly line component originally from GM for $12 million. Uh, if that kind of seven/eight-figure investment is required for a single component of an assembly line, how far does this $44 million go for Aptera?)
[1] https://www.autoline.tv/automotive-insight/slate-a-mastercla...
An old neighbor of mine had a Prius with a factory-installed small solar panel, definitely 50W or less, that IIRC was connected to the 12V battery. So one of the benefits would be in counteracting draw from various always-on computers in modern vehicles.
I guess it’s a nice option to have in the market but if what you’re going for is minimal carbon emissions impact it would be best to put those solar panels on house roof I think.
To make it work when you live in a place where you park on the street and can't run wires to the car?
And now they won't to power the entire car with energy from solar cells on the car? I have my doubts.
Also, enough energy for some range ≠ enough power to drive constantly.
And as a bonus it will help with the obesity problem plaguing this planet which kills thousands yearly.
I use an ebike as primary transportation 365 days a year in Vermont, and you'd be surprised how infrequently you have a day that is actually miserable to be out on a bike, even in a place with very cold winters and a lot of rain. By dressing properly (gloves/scarf when it's cold, rain jacket if the weather is not cooperating), you can eliminate 95% of the annoyances. Something I've learned as a year round cyclist is that most of the rain you experience from inside a car is actually not that heavy when you're out in it. There are maybe 10 days a year where I just have to suck it up (below 0F, heavy rain), and then I usually just skip a trip, take the bus if I can, or deal with it. I get stuck biking in real rain maybe 3x a year, and tbh I think it's probably good for people to encounter occasional friction like that.
And so taking on all of the disadvantages of depreciation, insurance, traffic, inspections, parking, gas prices, parking bans, worrying if that car alarm in the middle of the night is mine, is actually a much worse deal to me than putting up with a few uncomfortable trips per year.
Relatively cheap, can be charged with a regular 230V socket, tops out at 45kmph. Not as compact as a bike for obvious reasons, but still a substantially smaller footprint than any modern car - and comes with proper weather protection.
This finally answers questions that have hounded the company for years about their plan for scaling and fulfilling the thousands of reservations.