AutoblogGreen

"KarenRei, I need some education since I am not familiar with the Aptera."

No problem. :) And stop by the forum at any point -- apteraforum.com

"Yes, I've seen photos, but I'm very curious about the suspension and crash testing results."

Rear suspension is pretty standard and may or may not (undisclosed at this time) be adjustable by the StreetDeck nav/entertainment console (Aptera's been mum on this, but StreetDeck supports it, and there's a lowres photo on their site taken from in an Aptera of the suspension control screen). Front suspension uses "suspension arms" (the arms you see sticking out in the front) to absorb shocks.

Physical crash testing has to wait on their main line to start up; a week ago, the company gave its first estimate and said that test drives and factory tours would begin in 30-60 days, which means that one would expect the line will be operational then. However, the entire design process of this car from the very beginning was digital (largely how they were able to streamline it so much), and they've been using top of the line computer crash simulation programs to hit the car from every angle in all kinds of speeds.

As for crash safety: it has a 45 inch (almost four foot) frontal crumple/deflection zone -- very long. Not only that, but the deflection part is important; it's designed to ride up in a crash, something that is aided by the vehicle's light weight, extending the deceleration time even further. The roof and door crush strengths are double the federal requirement for cars. The skin is composite with some sort of grid/diamond reinforcement in the panels (inside of a panel was shown on a recent walkthrough). The car uses the most advanced type of airbags on the market -- in-seatbelt airbags, which are used in small planes and are starting to make their way into some luxury cars. Instead of exploding toward you, they explode upward from your lap, between you and the dash, and cushion your whole body.

"Having ridden a trike I am familiar with a three wheeler's stability, or lack of it. Granted a two wheel front and single rear drive wheel is more stable, but still not as good as a four wheel setup, in my opinion."

I'd recommend you read a review of driving vehicles in this configuration and how they compare to normal four-wheel cars (the configuration, by the way, is commonly called "tadpole"; the more traditional, one wheel forward design is commonly called "delta"). It's an excerpt from a 1982 Road and Track article.

http://blog.autospeed.com/2007/11/13/three-wheel-cars/

The basic conclusion:

"As it turns out, there was a strong distinction between 4-wheel cars and single-front-wheel cars — but not single-rear-wheel cars. Although the sample was admittedly small, the inescapable conclusion is that all single-front wheel 3-wheelers will oversteer at their limit of adhesion. Conversely, all single-rear-wheel cars had strong understeer at the limit. And in neither case could the opposite effect be created, in spite of all the chassis tuning.

Conventional 4-wheelers have a constantly increasing steer angle as speed or g-forces increase. The same is true (to a potentially greater degree) with single-rear 3-wheelers. But the steering on single-front 3-wheelers levels off and then decreases with increasing g’s, requiring counter-steering to avoid a spin. "

Basically, the tadpole three wheelers behaved as good or better in avoiding spins in comparison to four wheelers, while delta three wheelers did very poorly. Tadpole three wheelers did even better in recovering after a turn than four wheelers because of their lower polar moment of inertia (the average distance to a wheel is lower in a three wheeler than in a four wheeler). As a consequence, the yaw response time in four wheelers ranged from 0.15 to 0.30 seconds, while it ranged from 0.10 to 0.20 in three wheelers.

"Are they using the articulated wheel suspension where the tires tilt in on turns like a two wheeler?"

No, not as far as I know, although I haven't found a pic or video of the inside of a front wheel pod yet. Rollover stability comes from the wide, seven foot front wheelbase* and keeping the batteries low in the vehicle (lowering CG), not tilting. Also, if you hadn't noticed, the whole vehicle is an inverted wing (look at it from the side**), which means that the faster you're going, the more downforce you get. Lastly, testing rollover stability is an area where computer simulations shine, and again, the Aptera's design was heavily reliant on simulations.

* This took a long time to determine accurately, because Aptera never announced the dimensions! One resourceful person on the forum recognized where a photo of the Aptera sitting on tiles was taken and went over to measure the tiles; the width was then a simple matter of counting tiles between the wheels and multiplying by the tile width. It's almost exactly seven feet.

** Some samples:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25239861%40N03/2401836607/
http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bios/askusimages/airflow.gif

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"Which is a fancy way of saying 'Ugly'"
Yes, but I have full confidence in advertiser's ability to change people's perception of ugly.

"today's technology isn't going to get you 50 mpg without a reduction in performance unless you are willing to sacrifice passanger capacity."
I have to disagree, see the Tesla, Fisker, and Mustang ev conversions on this site for evidence.
The only remaining issue is cost, but this will change once tooling reasearch and design costs are amortized.
Fuel costs are more difficult to extrapolate but market futures suggest they will continue to rise, even without likely carbon taxes and ev vehicle tax incentives.

Battery dominant vehicle are even better suited to performance than ICE vehicles because:
Electric motors have greater volumetric and gravimetric power density than ICE engines, I see no reason why this would change.
As performance increases, electric vehicles become more efficient relative to ICE vehicles due to improved brake regeneration.
A serial hybrid only needs to provide average power with an ICE, and given brake regeneration and reasonable aero it is difficult to use much more average power no matter how large the maximum power availability.
It will happen, it is happening.

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'Yes, but how much would that add to the price of the car?'

Chad, do you think Ford sells their vehicles at cost?

No, Ford will have to step up their game. If that means reducing profit margins so be it. But really it shouldn't cost anything extra.
You need a transmission, so put the best one you can get.
You need power steering, you need gear oil, you need an engine.

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I drive a VW beetle on occasion, I can tell you the 0-60 is around 17 seconds, and I NEVER have any trouble getting on the highway. If the hwy is full of cars, I can guarantee you don't need to go fast as traffic will be slow, if there aren't as many cars, then there would be no problem getting on in the first place, road rage aside.
If you follow the VW beetle scene, Hot VW magazine has been able to take a regular 1600 engine that normally get about 21-24 mpg and routinely get 36-38 by simply modifying it. This is a 30 years plus technology. Now if they can do it with such an old engine design, I'm very sure that they can make a car get 50+mpg with newer technology.

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Richard, I second your statement. I own a 1971 Mercedes 220 diesel. 60hp, 3000#, 0-60 in 28 sec (Mercedes claim).

I have driven this car in or through the DC metro area, Detroit metro area and Chicago metro area. I drove it from Va to Id and then to Mi. Never once did I have a problem getting onto a highway, anywhere.

People always throw out the "you'd never be able to merge" bit as a red herring. My daily driver has the hp/weight ratio of a new Toyota Corolla (another of those cars that "can't get on a highway safely") and I routinely merge early to get around the Lexus/BMW/Mercedes/SUV/etc who was on the ramp in front of me and is loafing onto the highway. It's the driver who doesn't know how to merge.

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The #1 commenter reminds me of a very prominent scientist of the 19th century who published a paper on why heavier than air flight was 'impossible'.

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