The Aptera is slowly making its way to market, and there are some doubts it will ever arrive, which is a shame given it is arguably the most optimized electric car yet considered for production. What makes the Aptera different and desirable is partially why it may not yet be practical. But I think it is the closest thing we have to cars that are expected in the 2040s, even though it is likely that by the 2040s, individual car ownership will likely be obsolete except for the very rich.

What Makes the Aptera Great

The Aptera has one huge killer feature: it can be charged from its solar panels. We have had solar panel-equipped cars in the past, the Fisker Ocean, for instance, but they only had the power to run the HVAC system to keep the car cool. The battery topped off, charging the car using those panels, even if I worked, would take days of sunshine, and you’d likely lose whatever power you got during the day when the car maintained the internal temperature at night. 

Since solar panels of the size Aptera can host don’t generate much power, the Aptera works because it is ultra-light, around 1,800 pounds, and ultra-slippery. For instance, it is about twice as slippery as a Telsa Model 3. This allows it to go about twice the distance on a given amount of energy than the Model 3.

When we are talking about electric vehicles for sustainability, this means that not only will the car generally not require you to plug it in, but when you do, it will use about half the energy of that Telsa 3 to go the same distance.

What Makes the Aptera Too Early

The problem with the Aptera is that its extremely light weight makes it somewhat dangerous to drive. This isn’t due to handling, though—I wonder how it would do in a strong cross-wind—it is because it shares the road with vehicles that are almost all heavier and denser than it is.

When you are in an accident, the lighter car generally has the more significant impact. Energy equals mass times velocity squared, so if two vehicles collide at the same speed, the closing speed is the velocity, and the heavier vehicle will have the most kinetic energy. The frame of the Aptera is carbon fiber, and the body is fiberglass. It should hold up reasonably well. The passengers would be subjected to the force resulting from the weight differential of the two vehicles.

Now this is only head on collisions, however even being hit in the side by a larger gas car could be tragic for the passengers again because of the wight differential. Now this is not much different than driving a Miata or other small sports car. You’d likely do better in an Aptera than any smaller car. Still, the Aptera isn’t positioned as a sports car; it is a daily driver, so it competes with other general-purpose coupes and sedans, and there is distinctly mass.

What Needs To Happen

Now, in rural areas where the risk of collision is relatively small and there is little traffic, the Aptera will share the road with motorcycles and farm equipment and have far fewer chances of being hit. But in urban and Suburban areas, there will be enough traffic to create concerns, and highways would be problematic.

One of two things will make the Aptera more viable, and both are coming. First, autonomous driving, on paper, should dramatically reduce the number of collisions once it gets to critical mass. The other change is that as we move to electric vehicles, all vehicles will be getting lighter, reducing the weight difference between the Aptera and other road-going cars and also substantially reducing the related collision risk.

While a critical mass of next-generation light electric vehicles probably won’t occur until after 2035, autonomous driving is heading to market this decade. If the Aptera gets this capability, it could turn into a very low-cost Robo Taxi, which could allow it to function far better than a more traditional electric car that needs regular recharging at a recharging station.

Wrapping Up: 

The Aptera is truly a car of the future; it just isn’t quite a car of the present yet, and it may be as much as 10 years too early for its chosen market. However, I could argue that Tesla was initially 10 years out from when it would become truly viable, and it survived and eventually flourished despite some huge disadvantages initially, like the lack of any public charging infrastructure.

Like every electric car, the Aptera is best for a certain kind of driver. This would be a driver who can’t quickly charge their car at home, drives in areas with relatively low traffic, and drives more defensively than aggressively. Oh, and that lives with a moderate temperature range and lots of sunshine.

This would also be a far better replacement for street-legal electric go-carts in places like Florida. If the Aptera had autonomous driving, it would be far safer and more practical.

Finally, we need to bring the automotive market closer to the Aptera to maximize efficiency and reduce energy waste. The Aptera is where the EV market should end up; it just isn’t where most of the market is today.