As the electric vehicle industry becomes increasingly competitive and consumers become more eco-conscious, one California-based company created a car that can run on solar power. NBC News’ Steve Patterson took it for a test drive to find out how it works.
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#NBCNews #SolarPower #ElectricVehicle
Yes and no, hybrid ac/electric and solar* with backup fuel fed systems for strict emergencies are the ticket if we can manage making them economical to produce. If alternate fuel sources become viable we could retire dependency on fossil fuel entirely. Need alternatives to current lubricants as well to complete the process and bring electronics to be fully environmentally friendly.
@matt adams They have already purchased the molds and now don’t have enough skin cooling for medium speed suburban commuting on typical summer days. Possible crisis.
@Art Smith the molds are just for the outer shell. The cooling parts are separate. The problem with the delta vehicle was that they never got around to installing cooling on the motors. Stupid oversight that cost them a black eye on the national news, unfortunately. Regardless, they will have the production cooling system working and capable of handling any extreme conditions.
also, what’s up with all the negativity?! It’s like you all have got a personal vendetta against the company, or potentially a vested interest in shutting down disruptive technologies upsetting the status quo?! 🤔
@matt adams 3-wheels, 2 -seats, over $20K is not disruptive, it’s foolish. Aptera constantly lies and there are new people sucked in constantly. Look at all the Accelerators tricked into donating to fund the burn rate. Aptera said they would deliver these specs in 2021. Now look where they are! Look at the hourly employees that demonstrate no automobile competence. I bet they don’t even service their own vehicles. Why doesn’t Aptera just drive the car a couple hundred miles some afternoon and report the miles/kWh? Why don’t they just park the car for a day and report solar kWh/day? I bet they can’t do either!!
@matt adamsit’s not worth responding to him, he’s been an anti-aptera conspiracy theorist for years now and goes to every video relating to aptera and insults everyone in the comments section, all the while being a narcissist who thinks he’s a genius. He’s not gonna stop so just ignore him and move on
Can’t get something for nothing. Lots of resources have to be used to produce each of these cars. The root of the problem is overpopulation, plain and simple
Fambro and Anthony just might be getting millions for nothing.
4 years of development and it can’t get up a hill 🤔
@shrimptopian There not big there small enough to fit in the wheel hub cap. That’s why you want three wheel drive not two
@shrimptopianthe electric motors just were not water cooled like they should be but that is being remedied
@danwat1234
It’s a sign of incompetence that it happened
@shrimptopian It’s also a scam that the whole development was BS. I have been saying that ever since the incompetence of the cheerleading staff was made public. They are not car people, more like elec bicycle people.
I found a the answer. It’s the demo prototype for investors. In Switzerland heat was not a problem. But in San Diego you really need to hook the cooling system up to the hub motors. With no cooling system it can easy overheat.
Aptera $50,000.00 is too D*** High!
@Jonathan West Up grade was the problem, lol.
@Aussie ideas man*motor temperature. Water cooling was not hooked up to the motors
@Jonathan West Your price numbers are meaningless whether you have a link or not.
@danwat1234 Has Aptera lied again? Fifth prototype and they can’t do the plumbing in four years?
@Aussie ideas man no they haven’t.
So only on sunny days can i travel as farcas sayva horse
You can do 40 miles a day easily on a $300 bicycle, or a $5 bus ticket. No stopping on small gradients, either.
On sunny days you add charge to the 400 mile range battery. Or use a regular extension cord.
@Jonathan West So if it isn’t sunny you can add over the 400 miles with a regular cord? Besides being impossible, how many regular cords have you seen with a NACS plug at one end?
@Aussie ideas manget a J1772 to Tesla adapter
Think the abilty to charge the battery with the sun is smart but this implementation makes no sense if this is the result
@danwat1234 BS (and so lame).
@Aussie ideas man there were pictures do the gamma, the vehicle shown here and the hoses were not connected
@danwat1234 From my memory, the cretin at AOC did a video showing they had moved the plumbing from the top of the motor to the bottom in with the wiring, then put them in the shroud for aerodynamics. He’s now got a lame video out showing the lack of plumbing at the top and using that to say they have none. He shows the shroud as evidence there’s no plumbing anywhere. He knows full well that he is deceiving people; either that, or he is as forgetful as that old cowboy puppet on Sesame Street. I may be wrong, since his video was at least a year ago, so get to it and prove me wrong. I will make my next video about this nonsense, and don’t want to deceive anybody, myself.
@Aussie ideas manthis isn’t the complete product. Literally they just have to finish the cooling system.
@Maxatal You are so gullible. AM claimed this was 80% of what you will be buying as a Delta. If it only needed the hoses, it would be 99%.
What about the screen software? Not started.
What about solar? They reckon the one’s they made weren’t good enough; they are not making the one’s they claim are good enough.
What about the body? Ditched it for CPC, and none made yet.
What about the motors? Detuned them, but none in sight on anything.
You are dead right about it being incomplete.
Reversed Alien technology at its worst.
This car will never see the light of day because of the fossil fuel companies this newscast will erase messages that go against the fossil fuels and everything that they’re telling you about this car is a lie because it will never hit the public it will never hit the streets because the fossil fuels control this type of media they control CNN MSNBC and fox so this is a stupid ignorance story that will go nowhere because they don’t want it to go nowhere😅😅😅
The fossil fuel guys are falling off their chairs laughing at this one. It’s a keeper.
Wrong! 25 years ago there were Solar car races. Across Australia.
@Menti Capti The EV1 could be said to be mass produced -1,117 were made. The telling factor is that it had no solar, so is irrelevant either way. The person said it ‘could be’ the first; that’s not saying it is. Be specific and you won’t be wrong.
@Jonathan West You speak of charge distance, not speed, and 40 miles per day in summer is roughly 2.5 mph, not 25. Out by a factor of ten, but you are believing the lie that it’s 40 in the first place.
@Aussie ideas man They weren’t mass-produced, they were all hand assembled, everything was bolted on by hand and hand fitted. Whether something is mass-produced isn’t determined by how many were made, but rather the way they were made.
@Menti Capti Neat, but useless for everyone.
@Menti Capti This Google response makes it unclear –
“All EV1s were essentially hand-built using a unique “craft station” process in the small Lansing Craft Centre plant that had previously built the Buick Reatta.” What does ‘essentially’ mean? Is the craft station in an old assembly line using some assembly line methods? What other hand-crafted cars have done this? It’s unable to say, one way or another. Let’s meet in the middle and say it was a unique process that nobody had defined.
Answer: NO!… The future for automobiles is “single point energy”; zero fuel cost: see “The Lost Century and how to reclaim it”… Solar, wind, nuclear, oil, coal, gas, hydro electric: OBSOLETE (for over 100 yrs.) Not kidding; truth!……………………………………..you’ll see…………………!!
THIS IS GREAT! There have obviously been major improvements to solar technology over the past few decades, and improvements will continue, but solar vehicles themselves must be part of a new class of transportation, not forced to perform at the same level as internal combustion vehicles – roads must be modified, entire communities redesigned, etc. These were the same types of adaptations that were made after the horse and carriage/wagon was replaced by the first steam-powered, electric-powered and internal combustion vehicles. Society must get out of its own way if we are to survive and thrive.
You keep stopping to cool and you will have to get out of the way of the traffic behind you.
Yes
chippin’ away… remember, the first cars were crude and unreliable, and could travel at about 10-15 mph. Most of the technology that has made cars what they are today didn’t exist when they first began to emerge.
Been chipping since 2005. Let them chip some more before you get something you can’t use.
3 wheels?…forget that..
@Art Smith I owned a Piaggio MP3 for a couple of years. Never had a problem like you envisage, and my trike never stopped unless I flicked the off switch.
@Aussie ideas man The narrow width of that has nothing to do with Aptera avoiding dangerous road debris obstacles while staying in its lane at higher speeds.
@Art Smith Who was talking about Aptera? Some guy just said 3 wheels.
@Aussie ideas man tiresome incompetence. The video is about the 3-wheel trike over 7ft wide. It cannot avoid road debris and stay in its lane.
@Art Smith Now you are talking about Aptera, but the original guy wasn’t; he just generalized. I agree with your comment – it just wasn’t his comment.
This is proving how old some of us are when this is available to all we will be in our 80’s
The calendar proves how old we are.
@Aussie ideas man ikr
@Wilberforce K r
I’ll save you all time……no. You can argue all you want but be warned, I have a degree in this field.
@Aussie ideas man Ah, so you’re an aptera fan boy eh? Enough said.
@BidenHatesAmerica I try to be impartial and call it as I see it for all.
@BidenHatesAmerica You have said way too little. Your appeal to authority is devoid of substance. I would buy one if they weren’t fake. I would take notice of you , but on YT – you could be just as fake. I deal in facts, not claims by Aptera or even you.
@BidenHatesAmerica Aussie is a weird duck. He argues with the senseless fan boys, and qualified professionals in areas of Aptera technology (or lack of technology.)
@Art Smith Yeah…he’s a completely different breed of human for sure. It’s like he’s trying to compensate for his lack of understanding in the worst possible way.
I’m not entirely sure about being the first mass-market vehicle with solar cells being equipped onto a vehicle.
Fisker, Hyundai, and Mercedes already offer a select fee of vehicles with an optional solar roof.
It is that it can realistically be only solar charged. Not a gimmick that adds a mile of range a day.
A technicality; but their solar is only to boost running ancillaries, and not claimed to add range.
Also Toyota. And that’s just the ones that can go up hill!
40 miles a day from the sun, 0 – 60 in 4 seconds. Up to 1,000 miles on a charge. (The initial version, the launch edition will get 400 miles on a charge.)
It can be plugged into fast chargers when necessary, or it can be charged from a home 110 outlet. Since it’s so aerodynamic, it has a smaller battery, it’ll charge faster than other EVs.
@Aussie ideas man Fortunately, all roads are downhill in my area, in all directions. 🙂 Yes, it overheated during the NBC test drive. it’s a prototype vehicle without a complete cooling system. The company plans to complete the cooling system before doing additional media events.
@John T We’ll see if they do another media event without ‘completing’ the cooling – whatever that means? Sounds like more snake oil. This is my opinion, based on what I have seen over the past two years; the battery heat generated is always more than the skin cooling system can cope with, unless it is almost freezing cold, like in Switzerland. This renders the silly trike unfit for purpose in most places. It is not a matter of an incomplete system, but of an unworkable system, no matter how much completion you give it. The motors also have too little avenue for cooling, since they are shrouded in pants that keep brake and wheel bearing heat in along with them.
@Aussie ideas man let’s see. The company will certainly be anxious to show that all is well pretty quickly.
@John T They have made excuses already. Raj Randeep has spread the news to the gullible fools. I will type out what I think of ‘skin cooling’ (though I have made two video’s about it) on my last video in the comments, then I will copy and paste it here.
@John T Why didn’t they connect the cooling and redo demo the next day? Or any day? Still haven’t demonstrated the correction.
The ride looks janky.
Super smooth when it stops to cool down.
First company to acquire tesla’s network. It will launch with tesla port.
For its fake prototypes.
@Aussie ideas man a fake company doesn’t spend most of it’s money on blocks of steel then pay overtime for them to be machined 24/7 since they were able acquire them.
The blocks of steel are the dies to press the carbon fiber structural and body panels.
As soon as they are able to start pressing parts they won’t be limited to prototypes.
@Michael McMillan “a fake company doesn’t spend most of it’s money on blocks of steel” This one does. The last time they went bust they had made 17 prototypes in various stages; that’s a lot of spending, but you have to spend money to make money. If they had 17 sketches, nobody would invest. As for the cost of those blocks versus the money they raised from poor thinkers like you, it was a good deal. They purported those blocks to cost in the tens of millions, yet never proved their real price, as usual. I think that would be no more than two million tops, and they sucked in way more from the great unwashed, such as yourself.
“then pay overtime for them to be machined 24/7 since they were able acquire them.” Once a machine starts, it’s only an electricity bill and a couple of replacement cutting bits after that.
“The blocks of steel are the dies to press the carbon fiber structural and body panels.” Irrelevant. The paste that is used doesn’t have the structural strength of conventional CF sheet. It is way weaker than the composite body of the Gamma, yet they still advertise it as if it was the composite. Ask yourself why they added the steel roll cage and the steel chassis (sort of) for the Delta? But the irrelevance is that it doesn’t matter how strong the body is when it stops every five minutes.
“As soon as they are able to start pressing parts they won’t be limited to prototypes.” That’s a silly presumption. They can’t have a saleable product until they meet crash test requirements, and if they can’t, they are sunk. They can’t even make the product unless they have the inventory of at least hundreds of parts that comprise the rest of the silly trike. Will you be buying just the pressed parts? Have you seen what else they have at Carlsbad? It’s just junk ready for auction.
@Michael McMillan Another possibility is they are holding on by a string trying to maintain some illusion of progress in order to keep raising money. Maybe they simply hope to be bought. The whole act is a sales promotion for the whole company. I think we established that the Accelerator donations were never offered equity.
NBC news, huh? Well, see you later!
Shooting the messenger.
Zuh? That’s quite the arbitrary conclusion, there. Not to say my comment wasn’t cryptic.
@Ryan Seacrest I stand by what I said. I see it as a focus on the credibility of NBS (or lack of by inference) while no admission that Aptera lost credibility by overheating on a hill, and the lying Chris Anthony losing more credibility by stating he’s the first driver to take an Aptera up a hill. It has been 4 years, and that one was in Switzerland, of all places. lol. Happy do delve deeper into the nuances.
Whatever you wanna do.
@Ryan Seacrest I don’t want to talk with you; it’s pointless.
“I think your the first person to drive this on a hill” lol
So it hasn’t been tested much ?
The motors were air-cooled the water cooling hoses were not connected to it but will be soon!
It is a prototype that focuses on appearance. They are going to hookup the cooling and fix that issue.
@danwat1234just curious how do you know this?
@iKontactaptera owners club YouTube channel
Copied from my latest video because rattlesnake raj blocks me (like so many cretins) –
I was gobsmacked by the nonsense in the AM cartoon video that was supposed to explain skin cooling – so much so that I made a video about how silly it was. Next, the cretin from AOC visits wingnut (Daniel) at the factory and posts an explanation by him using a test bed as an example. The explanation differed from the cartoon; it was patently a useless test bed, and I made another video explaining why. Next wingnut is giving added info to the cretin at FCL to convince the great unwashed that it is practically foolproof. I made another video, and Danny boy is no longer with AM (along with about 50 others). Now I will go back to square one and just say what is wrong with skin cooling.
The system relies on air flowing under the belly pan and the coolness transferring to the battery pack under the seat via coolant channels, but the air is ineffective due to many reasons.
1. The belly pan has to be thick so that road debris does not puncture it, and that works against it needing to be thin to transfer cool effectively.
2. The pan has to be flat so that enough of the surface area is in very close proximity to the lower plate that has the coolant channels, but it has to be curved to get that low drag. They kept the curve, meaning only the perimeter is close enough to the lower plate, and the movement away (bowl-shaped) puts them too far apart to transfer cool effectively.
3. The pan is far too small in area to provide enough cool for batteries over probably 5 or 10 kWh. This is because it is well under the area of a radiator, which increases area by the use of the many paper-thin cores, which all touch the cooling channels for maximum effect.
4. The coolant has little time or space to cool the batteries; it is pumped over them for the heat collection phase, so it’s the very bottom of the batteries that have half a chance, while the largest areas (the battery cylinders) can’t get much, and are up against other hot cylinders. Over and under, but never between them is ineffective.
5. The idiotic claim that air drawn through the wiper gap can join the coolant flow when parked doesn’t deserve explaining, but I have done it prior to today.
6. It’s not that relevant to the reasons, but the attempt to not provide DC charging was because this wiper gap method was a joke, and they knew it. Only the knowledge that they never intended to produce one allowed them to backflip when the thickheads revolted.
The only reason why it had trouble with the hill was that the electric motors water cooling hoses were not hooked up. Production vehicle will be ready for heat wave mountain driving
Can anyone confirm what the actual battery size used was? Not Aptera wishful propaganda, the real battery size kWh. If it was a smaller temporary battery that could partially explain the problem but then they have to explain why they don’t yet have the 42 kWh battery.
@Art Smith something smaller than 40 KWh the public doesn’t know
@danwat1234 It’s enough to sink them.
@Aussie ideas man battery was not issue with hill. Battery has a lot of mass that takes a lot longer to heat up than 1 hill. Production will be 40ish.
@danwat1234 Early 2021 they said they would start production late 2021. Now late 2023 they don’t have batteries, solar, cooling, etc. They lied that much in 2021, it’s all lies!!
@danwat1234 “battery was not issue with hill.” Show me anywhere in this thread me saying it was? I really get tired of morons who read between the lines. Too much of it in two years from Aptera disciples. I teach – they never learn, but they continue to hang on every stupid word from their CEO gods.
“Battery has a lot of mass that takes a lot longer to heat up than 1 hill.” All irrelevant. The point is it stopped – it doesn’t matter how good the battery is – not how cool or hot; not how big or small; not how heavy or light; not anything about it – the silly trike couldn’t move. It’s called perspective.
“Production will be 40ish.” No idea what you mean there. 40 a day? So what? Or 40 kWh? Still meaningless. It’s a silly trike that lives in car parks and goes once around the block if it’s flat and the weather is cold.
YES
Did that already…
Electric cars are a scam.
Too heavy and oversized batteries. What if they burn? Even the smallest tesla weighs 1,600 kg than a 1,100 kg Toyota Yaris, or a 910 kg Suzuki Every. Takes longer to charge than to fill up literally any car.
We need to abandon roads in favor of electric trains connected to power lines.
Or alternative modes of transit like bicycles. Not sport ones.
This electric car weighs about 1800 pounds.
@danwat1234 816 kg. I’m a metric user.
Suzuki Bolan(a minivan) is 550kg.
If Aptera can hit those price targets for the different mile range versions, they may be on to something, an EV that you, in theory, won’t have to charge as much (if ever), meaning it’s cheaper to operate than some other EVs and makes ICE vehicles life even harder