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New Company Set To Resurrect the Aptera
Zothecula writes "Ever since it was first unveiled in 2007, many people were captivated with the sleek, futuristic looks of the Aptera. When Aptera Motors went out of business in 2011, not having commercially produced a single vehicle, those same people were understandably disappointed. Now, word comes that a new company may be manufacturing and selling Apteras as soon as next year."
Says the article: "Aptera USA has most of the original company’s prototypes, equipment, patents and designs, so it wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Given that fact, Deringer hopes that Aptera USA could be making cars as early as the first quarter of 2014. He’s currently in the process of hiring engineers, and the company has already put in an order for 1,000 bodies from its Detroit-based supplier." Until there really is a super-charger network from central Texas to California, I wish I could get one of the gas-powered (or gas-electric hybrid) Apteras. Why should Tesla have all the fun?
Why would that be a problem?
I see trikes ridden all the time and they seem to do fine. I bet the aptera engineers know a little more than you.
Oh my. I'm very enthused by this news. I really hope that it rolls. I think they need to stay away from the all-electric pitch and go for the hybrid angle first. I hope also that they are permitted to borrow, perhaps with some government assistance, to get the product launch going.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I was so disheartened when they closed their doors in 2011. Jay Leno bought one of their prototypes it seems looking at his car collection.
So you have to be rich to buy a $30,000 car?
Since when?
http://www.twike.com/
Or buy one from Neiman Marcus?
http://green.autoblog.com/2006/10/06/neiman-marcus-tries-on-some-green-for-the-holidays-christmas-bo/
It's at least better looking than the Aptera.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It's a car. It's buried in TFS somewhere.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
In the US three wheeled vehicles are legally classified as motorcycles. Helmet laws by state. There is another company that makes a motorized tricycle that is working on getting the helmet laws changed.
"The 2g could end up in the US$50,000 to $55,000 price range"
If you are paying 55,000 for a 3 wheeled Honda Fit, you are a rich asshole.
The Chinese-built mass-produced 2e should be less expensive than its American sibling, but Deringer believes that US buyers will want what his version has to offer. “From the initial research that I’ve done, I get a lot of people in Silicon Valley and California and Texas and other places who would like the car hand-made, not Chinese-made, and they want it to match to what their requirements are,” he tells us. “We can do that in the US, it can’t be done in China.”
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
What do you mean run the other direction?
A tadpole trike is a pretty common layout. The most common one I see is on the following website http://www.spyder.brp.com./
The tadpole layout is way more stable than the other direction. This is an engineering decision, not one done for appearance.
The Aptera runs in the same direction as the Spyder.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Yeah, the Canam spyder is about the only new trike I ever see.
I hope they reconsider and decide to pursue the early prototype using batteries with a ultra-high efficiency motor/generator configuration. Without a model such as that in their lineup Aptera will be relegated to urban-toy status and will NEVER be taken seriously as a viable commuter vehicle.
Just wait until you hit a pothole with the dame thing.. Sheesh! Picasso, Calder, or Dali could have made a better design.
That won't be nearly the issues as, say, having a blowout on a control wheel and running off into the steeply graded ditch...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nearly any accident in a motorcycle involves you being thrown from it. A convertible is a car; the only accident where this would be an issue is a rollover, and due to their lower center of gravity, this is less likely than in a regular car. Convertibles also have roll bars and stiffer A-pillars to provide some protection.
Dude, I've driven the 'tad-pole' design for a while. It is WAY more stable than the single wheel forward three wheelers. Stop being a dick.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Now, word comes that a new company may be manufacturing and selling Apteras as soon as next year."
And be out of business the following week. Seriously, I can't really see these things selling in any meaningful quantity. Certainly not enough to keep this company as a going concern. They're weird looking and impractical. Some might like the aesthetics but most won't. (Personally I think it's pretty ugly) Few people could use one as a primary vehicle which puts it into the expensive toy category. It apparently is fuel efficient which is great but it seems to have made a LOT of compromises in other areas to get there. Basically it seems to have sacrificed everything on the altar of fuel economy.
Exactly! How are you supposed to tie a canoe to the roof of that thing, for example?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Companies fail.
For reason.
Respect that...
.. I see them rolling off of the assembly line.
So you have to be rich to buy a $30,000 car?
Since when?
Well, I am technically upper middle class, and there is no way I could afford a $30,000 car, so I would assume I would have to be rich to afford one. However, a lot of the entry level people in my company who make 1/4 of what I make have $30,000 cars, so maybe you have to be rich or below poverty level to have a $30,000 car.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
These things are going to be worse than Corvairs/Volkswagens when they hit the road. Three wheeled vehicles are very unstable, having the poorest handling characteristics of cars and motorcycles.
Have gnu, will travel.
These are the ones I remember.
If you're gonna go with a trike, at least keep it classy
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Aptera are insects that do not have wings. Butterflies are Lepidoptera
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Until there really is a super-charger network from central Texas to California, I wish I could get one of the gas-powered (or gas-electric hybrid) Apteras.
If you're really making the Texas -> California road trip often enough that it's not an outlier, then an electric vehicle is not the right vehicle for you even if Tesla's Supercharger network (which is proprietary to Tesla, BTW) comes to fruition. The good news is that the (in)ability to make outlier trips like that doesn't have much bearing on the utility of EVs for the 3-4 standard deviations of driving that we do.
That 30,000 car costs half what I paid for my last house! I have a $30,000 car, but I bought it used and only paid $10k. Buying any new car is foolish unless you're rich. Cars today last a long time, and as soon as you drive it off the lot it's lost 1/3 of its value. New cars break down too, the last new car I foolishly bought (I was married, she insisted that we buy a new one for dependability) was a 1984 VW Rabbit, which stranded us eighty miles from home a month after we bought it; the alternator went out. New cars are only status symbols, which to me are symbols of foolish waste. Only the rich and/or foolish buy new cars.
When my ten year old car costs more to repair than replace, I'll buy another used car.
While I agree it is financially prudent not to spend more then $25,000 on a car if you are upper middle class many people can and do without serious financial harm. I am also upper middle class and felt that i could get everything I wanted for $23,000 on the road. $30,000 is not too bad especially of the cost of ownership is lower due to lower fuel and maintenance costs. You do not need to be rich to spend $30,000 or even $50,000 on a car, it is just a matter of priorities.
Why carry 1.5 tons of steel and plastic with you, if all you really want to move is yourself?
Because much of the time I don't move just myself and spending an extra $30,000 for the occasions when I do is a rather poor economic choice. I could accomplish much of the same result just by buying a (much cheaper) motorcycle or scooter. Furthermore where I live this thing would be pretty much useless between the months of December and April due to the weather. My pickup truck however is useful year round for any reasonable use I have even if it isn't ideal from a fuel economy standpoint.
What a lame ass piece of junk
She'll make point five beyond the speed of light. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You have to gradually change styles. Coming out with a design that's aesthetically too radical will turn off a lot of consumers. "Radical" implies untested and unproven to some.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Why not import a Twike? Or buy one from Neiman Marcus?
Because it has the same failings - limited utility and poor performance in pursuit of fuel economy. And anything you buy from Needless Markup is going to be outrageously expensive. Plus saying the name "Twike" makes you sound like Elmer Fudd.
It's at least better looking than the Aptera.
Even if I agreed with you (and I don't - the Twike is hideous) that is like saying your boat leaks less than it used to. They're both really quite unattractive.
By classy you mean oil leaking POS. If you want a bike that starts with an H, you want a honda.
Um, how about it's because Tesla makes real cars and not bad sci-fi movie props.
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
You do realize the traditional trike design is an extremely unstable platform?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
You can claim these are the same things, and Libertarian and Republican fat cats will totally agree with you, but they simply aren't. Let me explain.
A government can use empirical data of existing damage and cost externalization to guide taxation - thus picking losers or it can make uninformed decisions based on hypothetical projections - thus attempting to pick winners.
Notice that one of these two processes is easily manipulable by nearly anyone - when you aren't using empirical data, it's all just handwaving and shouting and the loudest sociopath wins. Tax breaks for Solyndra and Fiskar? Please. Those companies never had a chance in the market regardless of taxation because they had no customers or business plan. Giving them money was a political handout even though the clueless, technically ignorant politicians doing it had no way to know that.
But when Congressman Whitenose can look up and actually see smokestacks belching filth into the sky, and his staffers can analyze real data showing who is driving up healthcare costs in the Congressman's district, he doesn't have to guess at a mythical future, he can examine the past and present and know the truth.
So picking losers is not the same as picking winners. It's the difference between creating harmful market distortions and creating a fair market - not a totally free laissez faire market (where Murder Incorporated always wins) but a FAIR market, where cost displacement onto taxpayers by favored entities is not permitted.
Semantic quibblers and corporatist meme-shoppers will always claim that taxing known bad actors is the same as funding hypothetically good actors. Don't fall for it. You could also claim that Achilles can never outrace the tortoise, because the Greek continually has to cover half the ground and then half of that et cetera ad infinitum. But Achilles kicks the tortoise's armor plated ass in the real world. Future prediction is fundamentally different from acting on empirical data, and government should always favor the latter.
Campana T-Rex is another, and a powerful vehicle too. Last I looked, it sports a 1200cc engine.
"Lame" - Galaxar
You're daft. That design is very stable. Regular trike styling has a habit of flipping over while turning. Just go look up the Reliant Robin. If anything, this design is far more intelligent than your usual trike. The drive train means that only rear force is going to be applied, and not from an angle. The back will slide out before it flips over. You want to see an inverted (someone else said "tadpole") trike at speed? Look up the T-Rex Motorcycle. It's a drift machine and looks like crazy fun. So please take your "trying to be artsy" presumption and stick it. You'd make a terrible engineer.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
I think the Aptera is all kinds of cool, but I can't see enough people shelling out the bucks for it to make it viable. Teslas are luxury vehicles sold to people with money to burn. I don't see those folks getting excited about an ultra-light 3-wheeler.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Blasphemy! Jane Fonda is more patriotic than you are.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Honda 600n was sold in the USA starting in 1970.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I don't consider myself wealthy by any means, but I buy new. As long as you intend to own it for a while, it is a good thing. My truck comes with a pretty long warranty, though I have not had anything break on a car in like 10 years. The worst repair is the tires, and those just wear out over time. The battery also tends to go in about 3 years. Maybe I am wasteful, but I bought the truck for Boy Scouts, and it has been invaluable for storage space and for towing the troop trailer, a used truck just wouldn't tow as well as the longer it is driven, the less towing capacity as the cylinders wear in.
I have tried towing with a 10 year old truck, and it wasn't anywhere near the same, backing the trailer in, the truck had to actually work to move everything. My truck towing the same trailer can practically idle pushing the trailer. I also tend to only lose 2 mpg to towing, where an older truck would lose much more just in age. I can deal with my 15.4 mpg normal and 14 mpg towing.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It depends where you live. Upper middle class in Maryland is around $90k
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
fyi, upper-middle class in the US is more in the range of $200,000 - $400,000 per year...
Oh, well then I am not upper middle class at all, then. Since I make less than half of that I guess I am lower middle class. No wonder I can't afford a $30,000 car.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Its called credit.
Oh, sure I could buy one on credit. No doubt that even though I have essentially zero disposable income, they would still be more than happy to finance a $30,000 car for me. But that would be just plain foolish of me to do.
If you can't afford to buy the car outright, then you should not buy it. If you can afford to buy it outright, then by all means buy it, on credit, and put the cash you would have spent into a mutual fund or something.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
One thing they both have in common: neither is actually available for sale
You mean nationalism, not patriotism.
I love my country and know we can do better than a leaky POS. If I continue to act this way it is my hope they will reform their ways.