Altairnano solved this problem by using an innovative approach to rechargeable battery chemistry by replacing graphite with a patented nano-titanate material as the negative electrode in its NanoSafe batteries. By using nano-titanate materials as the negative electrode material, lithium metal plating does not occur because the electro-chemical properties of the nano-titanate allow the deposition of lithium in the particles at high rates. These electrical properties mean that even at very cold temperatures there is no risk of plating. No undesirable interaction takes place with the electrolyte in the Altairnano batteries, which permits the battery to be charged very rapidly, without the risk of shorting or thermal runaway. In fact, in recent laboratory testing, Altairnano has demonstrated that a NanoSafe cell can be charged to over 80% charge capacity in about one minute. Actual charge rates achieved in specific applications will vary due to the application environment.
Altair has demonstrated the use of their cells in cars and trucks, giving them 5 to 10 minute charges. It's similar to Toshiba's SCiB that was covered here a couple months ago. Of course, even some non-titanate chemistries can charge quite well. Phosphates and stabilized spinel packs can usually take a full charge in 15 to 20 minutes.
A PNL study for the DOE says 84%. Either way, we're not going to approach that number for quite a while. And by the way -- part of the reason electric power is cheaper than gasoline is that electricity production infrastructure and its long tail is significantly cheaper than oil production infrastructure and its long tail. So, you're building cheaper infrastructure instead of more expensive infrastructure. Plus, electrics in general should help drop grid prices. Nighttime charging lets utilities make better use of their existing infrastructure.
Your car has trouble starting in the cold because it uses a lead-acid battery. Lead-acid batteries lose power output *very* fast at low temperatures. Nickel-metal-hydride are a little better, but not much. NiCd, Zebras and the advanced forms of li-ion do excellent in the cold (traditional li-ion are fine in the cold, but you damage them if you charge them during below-freezing temperatures). A123s, for example, are rated for storage at down to -50C and usage at down to -30C.
Most upcoming highway-speed EVs use advanced li-ion.
Hawaii consumes 10.5 billion kWh per year. Hawaii is 29,311,000,000 square meters. Sunlight hits the surface of the planet, if there's no clouds and if at a direct angle to your surface, at around 1,000W/m^2. For a place like Hawaii, a capacity factor of 20% or so seems realistic (capacity factor = percent of maximum power potential that you average over time). Let's go with 20% efficient cells. 29,311,000,000 * 1000 * 0.2 * 0.2 * 24 * 365.24 = 10,277,327,654,400,000 Wh per year. I.e, 10.3 trillion kilowatt hours per year. Hawaii need only cover one thousands of its land with panels to produce all of its energy from solar.
Now, of course, since solar is intermittant, it's not that simple. But the issue isn't land area.
They have, and there are some small geothermal problems. One of the problems presentin Hawaii but not elsewhere, however, is cultural. Among some native Hawaiians, the volcano is still revered. Think of it as though someone discovered a way to generate electricity from Jesus statues involving drilling into them.
You simply don't seem to grasp how much harder it is to get out our remaining oil than it is for them. They have shallow reservoirs of pressurized light sweet crude in massive pockets. We have tiny pockets of hard to get crude scattered all over the place. It's fundamentally more expensive. We simply don't have the kind of reserves that they do. We've already used up our easy stuff.
A lot of the people complaining show no comprehension of the economic crisis and what a bailout is. Let's backup for these people.
First off, we are in a *liquidity crisis*. Basically, few people have both the money to loan and feel they can trust loans they'd give, since they can't trust the insurers who would normally insure the loans due to all of the toxic assets and failures. So, companies that would normally be able to get loans find that they can't now. Loans are critical in the business world. Especially for scaling up operations. Especially for small companies. Especially for high tech companies. Especially for capital-intensive industries, such as automotive. I.e., Tesla motors needs, needs, needs loans, but can't get them.
Tesla had been planning to undergo a massive scaleup to start producing their Model S sedan -- not mass-market prices, but in the much more affordable "luxury car" price range. To do this, they need to produce the car by the tens to hundreds of thousands per year. They had started scaling up, and then the global financial system cratered. They've since started *undoing* some of their expansion, laying off workers and closing offices. Now the Model S plans are on hold, and they're instead having to switch focus to becoming profitable on Roadsters alone. The crisis is throwing them back by years.
In a normal market environment, they likely would easily have gotten the loans that they needed. However, right now, only the government has the ability to make these kinds of loans. The government "bailouts" are loans, designed to fill in the gap for a financial system struggling to right itself. Now, one can argue that some of these loans are going to companies that will never be able to pay them back -- that we're pumping taxpayer money into bad investments that will fail anyways and forefeit on their loans when they collapse. But it's anything but a "giveaway", and it's hard to argue that the only companies that deserve loans are the few that can get them in our current crisis. And in the case of Tesla Motors, I think it'd be hard to make that "not deserving of a loan" argument at all -- especially concerning funds specifically earmarked for the advancement of clean technologies.
Drill everywhere, including here. Increase supply, prices go down. Econ 101.
Drill here and pay $25-$50 a barrel in production extraction costs. Drill in Saudi Arabia and pay under $5 a barrel in extraction costs. Oil is a fungible commodity.
Which do you think the free market would choose?
The US simply cannot drill its way out of this problem. Sure, we can produce all the oil we could ever want through, say, Fischer-Tropsch. But it'll never be economically competitive.
On the other hand yet again, the above calculations also assumed 100% DoD on the battery pack, which essentially nobody does. That is, to say, they assume that if you have a 35kWh battery pack, to get your full range, you consume all 35kWh. It also assumes that charging is 100% efficient, which also isn't true in the opposite direction. However, li-ion charging efficiencies, pack times charger, are generally 92-93%. The DoD is almost certainly lower than that.
Also, FYI, only half of our power is from coal. Of the next three biggest sources, nuclear is near-zero carbon, natural gas is low carbon, and hydro is again near-zero carbon.
It's expected by whom -- anonymous Slashdot posters? Listen to the DOE. Centralized power plants are more efficient and have better pollution controls than cars. Also, it's far easier to clean up a couple hundred power plants than 250 million tailpipes.
With our *current* grid, here are various calculated pollutant changes:
Furthermore, these pollutants will be more displaced away from where people are breathing and end up higher in the atmosphere, unlike car emissions which tend to be at ground-level in crowded areas. Now, picture our grid after carbon cap & trade is in place for a decade or so, and what that'll do to these numbers.
Oh, and I should add that this assumes no change in vehicles for increasing efficiency when switching to EVs. Quite to the contrary, EVs tend to be very streamlined so that they don't need as big of a battery pack to go as far.
Indeed. If you want to learn more about my patent for U-235 fission-heated leg warmers, check out the song the B52s did on it, titled "Hot Pants Explosion".
1-2. I just gave statistics. The Honda Insight, for example, which falls under Honda's 100,000, was introduced in 1999. Honda has only had 200 out-of-warranty battery replacements.
3. That's the MSRP; what do you mean "there's no market"? If that's what the manufacturer charges, that's what it costs. If you were talking used batteries, those are generally under $1k.
4. The market disagrees with you.
5. Last year, just concerning the Toyota Prius alone, Toyota sold 181,221. And they're on track to beat that number this year. This is not a low-volume car.
1. Hybrid batteries are engineered for 10+ years of operation. 2. As an example, Honda reported this summer that of 100,000 hybrids on the road, there have so far been only 200 out-of-warranty battery replacements. On Toyota's second gen Prius, they've had to replace 0.003% of its hybrid batteries out of warranty. 3. The batteries aren't $7k. Or anywhere close to that. Honda batteries are now down to $2k for the Insight, $2.5k for the Accord, and Toyota's Prius battery is $3k. 4. Hybrids have extremely high resale value. What *really* loses value fast are big SUVs. The Hummer H2, for example, costs 50% more than the Prius but loses value 3 times as fast. And that's the blue book; in the recent oil spike, hybrids were selling for well over blue book, while SUVs were selling well below. I assume that this situation has since been remedied. 5. Since this topic was originally EVs: EVs have even greater battery reliability, as their duty cycle is much gentler than that which hybrid batteries go through. 10-year-old RAV4EVs, for example, sell for $60k or so on Ebay. 6. To strike a final nail in this "all batteries must inherently have short lifespans" myth: Jay Leno sometimes drives around in a 1909 Baker Electric on its original batteries. The lifespan of a battery is deeply related to the stability of its chemistry. Some battery charge/discharge reactions aren't very reversible, while some are incredibly reversible.
First off, I can't recommend strongly enough that you view the YouTube video of Chris hitting the shell with a hammer. It has over double the required roof and door crush strength for cars. It has not just an ordinary crumple zone, but an innovative crumple/deflection zone designed to help the vehicle ride up in an accident. It has full in-seatbelt curtain airbags. This is a vehicle that should blow most cars out of the water when it comes to safety. Secondly, as for handling, you need to read more about three wheelers; here's a primer. One wheel in front and two wheels back is notoriously unsafe and unstable, but two wheels forward and one wheel in back, with the CG just behind the front wheels, handles almost identically to a four wheel car, except that it has a faster response time. Basically, when you brake or steer, the CG slides up between the two front wheels, and thus has the same amount of resistance to flipping laterally that a four wheeler has. Also, they are naturally prone to understeer (like four wheelers), not oversteer (like tadpole three wheelers). About the only thing you wouldn't want to do in a tadpole three wheeler is something like a J-turn.
There are many reasons for going with three wheels. Yes, a big one is that it has a lot less certification that has to be done. But if they're voluntarily doing crash and crush tests, who cares? The other benefits are numerous; here's just a few. The ideal aerodynamic shape to enclose as much volume as possible with as little drag as possible is a stereotypical teardrop (or truncated teardrop); this means wider in the front than in the rear (hence, two wheels forward, one backward). Three wheels means you can elimiante an entire wheel. And all of the drivetrain/braking/cabling/wiring requirements that go along with it. Which reduces weight, purchase costs, and maintenance. And cutting weight means increasing range, and so on down the line.
That article is over a year old. If you took information that out of date about the Aptera, you'd come out with its price being $20,000.
Think City is already shipping in Norway, I don't think the Aptera is shipping yet.
Correct. Aptera's target date is this December.
Plus, I'd suggest anyone interested take a good look at the pictures, the Think City looks like a small car, the Aptera... well, unconventional is probably the best word I got without getting nasty.
It's a "love it or hate it" car. About half the people I've seen comment on it think it's one of the most beautiful cars they've ever laid eyes on, and most of the rest think it's an abomination to the eyes. I've found a couple of neutral people, but not many. As for me, I find aerodynamic forms aesthetically pleasing and non-functional style elements (such as oversized grilles, spoilers, etc) dumb looking, so I think the Aptera is a beautiful bird indeed.
To people who go looking for Aptera pics, however: make sure you're looking at the Typ-1, Mk1 (or the Typ-2, as it may be now), and not the Mk0. The Mk0 was an early test vehicle. The Mk0 has dark side windows that are shaped like pine-cone scales against a "bent" A-pillar; small, bland inset headlights; an angular termination of the rear wheel skirt; and a rear end that tapers practically to a point (no tail lights, no license plate). Its wheel struts look bent when viewed from the front. It doesn't look nearly as nice as the Mk1 and beyond.
Th!nk is only about six months ahead of Aptera, production-schedule-wise. And it's complete nonsense to claim that Aptera only has "a proof of concept car", as any cursory reading of the information collected over on the Aptera Forum will convey.
Efficiency is defined by energy out over energy in, or power out over power in as the case may be. Power is the product of engine speed and torque. So, yes, with a CVT, you can pick the engine speed that's most efficient for given power output requirements, trading engine speed for torque. However, that's the most efficient speed *for the given power requirements*. That doesn't mean that the current power requirements are the most optimal for the engine.
But yes, I think the poster's point was a good one, that in a series hybrid, you can run an engine at near optimum performance -- not by merely picking an optimal speed, but an optimal speed * torque as well.
It's not. "Minutes" isn't a problem at all for ER-EVs. Gas turbines integrate quite nicely. They take the time that they need to to start up and can run for a dozen minutes or two, then they shut off. DesignLine busses use Capstone microturbines for this very purpose. The Capstones use an air suspension so that the shaft encounters nearly no friction. As a consequence, they have very long lifespans.
Exactly. My spouse and I are getting an Aptera Typ-1e, and it'll be responsible for 95+% of our driving. We're going to keep my old Saturn around for those rare occasions where I need do so something unusual like pick up four people in Muscatine. We may end up using it so rarely that we may ultimately not bother putting it on our insurance policy, and instead just add a rider if we ever need to use it.
Speaking of insurance, I talked to someone with an NmG (a more primitive electric three wheeler), and with the NmG as his primary vehicle, his annual insurance is only $252. For an adult male in southern California with full comprehensive coverage from State Farm.;). Gotta love "motorcycle" insurance rates! If the Aptera is built well, there should be almost no maintenance to go along with the dirt cheap insurance rates and the dirt-cheap electricity costs (at my rates, $1 for 120 miles)
Slashdot Mirror
With this, the time it takes to charge a battery is non-trivial. Its not comparable to the five minutes it takes to fill your gas tank.
Oh really?
Altairnano solved this problem by using an innovative approach to rechargeable battery chemistry by replacing graphite with a patented nano-titanate material as the negative electrode in its NanoSafe batteries. By using nano-titanate materials as the negative electrode material, lithium metal plating does not occur because the electro-chemical properties of the nano-titanate allow the deposition of lithium in the particles at high rates. These electrical properties mean that even at very cold temperatures there is no risk of plating. No undesirable interaction takes place with the electrolyte in the Altairnano batteries, which permits the battery to be charged very rapidly, without the risk of shorting or thermal runaway. In fact, in recent laboratory testing, Altairnano has demonstrated that a NanoSafe cell can be charged to over 80% charge capacity in about one minute. Actual charge rates achieved in specific applications will vary due to the application environment.
Altair has demonstrated the use of their cells in cars and trucks, giving them 5 to 10 minute charges. It's similar to Toshiba's SCiB that was covered here a couple months ago. Of course, even some non-titanate chemistries can charge quite well. Phosphates and stabilized spinel packs can usually take a full charge in 15 to 20 minutes.
Charge time isn't an issue on Oahu. Oahu has the US's first rapid charging network. Here's the current map, and here's where they're building more.
Here's some prices on fast chargers (at least 1999 prices), in case you're interested:
60kW Aerovironment PosiCharge: $40,000
120kW Aerovironment PosiCharge: $80,000
35kW Norvick Minit Charger: $35,000
250kW Norvick Minit Charger: $125,000
So, the bigger ones are about the same price as gas station per-pump.
Specifically, wind and tidal energy are NEVER going to be close to cost effective.
Wind already is in some places. So, whoops to that idea.
CIGS, too, should be able to best coal prices as it scales up. EGS may be able to as well.
A PNL study for the DOE says 84%. Either way, we're not going to approach that number for quite a while. And by the way -- part of the reason electric power is cheaper than gasoline is that electricity production infrastructure and its long tail is significantly cheaper than oil production infrastructure and its long tail. So, you're building cheaper infrastructure instead of more expensive infrastructure. Plus, electrics in general should help drop grid prices. Nighttime charging lets utilities make better use of their existing infrastructure.
Common misconception.
Your car has trouble starting in the cold because it uses a lead-acid battery. Lead-acid batteries lose power output *very* fast at low temperatures. Nickel-metal-hydride are a little better, but not much. NiCd, Zebras and the advanced forms of li-ion do excellent in the cold (traditional li-ion are fine in the cold, but you damage them if you charge them during below-freezing temperatures). A123s, for example, are rated for storage at down to -50C and usage at down to -30C.
Most upcoming highway-speed EVs use advanced li-ion.
Hawaii consumes 10.5 billion kWh per year. Hawaii is 29,311,000,000 square meters. Sunlight hits the surface of the planet, if there's no clouds and if at a direct angle to your surface, at around 1,000W/m^2. For a place like Hawaii, a capacity factor of 20% or so seems realistic (capacity factor = percent of maximum power potential that you average over time). Let's go with 20% efficient cells. 29,311,000,000 * 1000 * 0.2 * 0.2 * 24 * 365.24 = 10,277,327,654,400,000 Wh per year. I.e, 10.3 trillion kilowatt hours per year. Hawaii need only cover one thousands of its land with panels to produce all of its energy from solar.
Now, of course, since solar is intermittant, it's not that simple. But the issue isn't land area.
They have, and there are some small geothermal problems. One of the problems presentin Hawaii but not elsewhere, however, is cultural. Among some native Hawaiians, the volcano is still revered. Think of it as though someone discovered a way to generate electricity from Jesus statues involving drilling into them.
You simply don't seem to grasp how much harder it is to get out our remaining oil than it is for them. They have shallow reservoirs of pressurized light sweet crude in massive pockets. We have tiny pockets of hard to get crude scattered all over the place. It's fundamentally more expensive. We simply don't have the kind of reserves that they do. We've already used up our easy stuff.
A lot of the people complaining show no comprehension of the economic crisis and what a bailout is. Let's backup for these people.
First off, we are in a *liquidity crisis*. Basically, few people have both the money to loan and feel they can trust loans they'd give, since they can't trust the insurers who would normally insure the loans due to all of the toxic assets and failures. So, companies that would normally be able to get loans find that they can't now. Loans are critical in the business world. Especially for scaling up operations. Especially for small companies. Especially for high tech companies. Especially for capital-intensive industries, such as automotive. I.e., Tesla motors needs, needs, needs loans, but can't get them.
Tesla had been planning to undergo a massive scaleup to start producing their Model S sedan -- not mass-market prices, but in the much more affordable "luxury car" price range. To do this, they need to produce the car by the tens to hundreds of thousands per year. They had started scaling up, and then the global financial system cratered. They've since started *undoing* some of their expansion, laying off workers and closing offices. Now the Model S plans are on hold, and they're instead having to switch focus to becoming profitable on Roadsters alone. The crisis is throwing them back by years.
In a normal market environment, they likely would easily have gotten the loans that they needed. However, right now, only the government has the ability to make these kinds of loans. The government "bailouts" are loans, designed to fill in the gap for a financial system struggling to right itself. Now, one can argue that some of these loans are going to companies that will never be able to pay them back -- that we're pumping taxpayer money into bad investments that will fail anyways and forefeit on their loans when they collapse. But it's anything but a "giveaway", and it's hard to argue that the only companies that deserve loans are the few that can get them in our current crisis. And in the case of Tesla Motors, I think it'd be hard to make that "not deserving of a loan" argument at all -- especially concerning funds specifically earmarked for the advancement of clean technologies.
Drill everywhere, including here. Increase supply, prices go down. Econ 101.
Drill here and pay $25-$50 a barrel in production extraction costs.
Drill in Saudi Arabia and pay under $5 a barrel in extraction costs.
Oil is a fungible commodity.
Which do you think the free market would choose?
The US simply cannot drill its way out of this problem. Sure, we can produce all the oil we could ever want through, say, Fischer-Tropsch. But it'll never be economically competitive.
On the other hand yet again, the above calculations also assumed 100% DoD on the battery pack, which essentially nobody does. That is, to say, they assume that if you have a 35kWh battery pack, to get your full range, you consume all 35kWh. It also assumes that charging is 100% efficient, which also isn't true in the opposite direction. However, li-ion charging efficiencies, pack times charger, are generally 92-93%. The DoD is almost certainly lower than that.
Also, FYI, only half of our power is from coal. Of the next three biggest sources, nuclear is near-zero carbon, natural gas is low carbon, and hydro is again near-zero carbon.
It's expected by whom -- anonymous Slashdot posters? Listen to the DOE. Centralized power plants are more efficient and have better pollution controls than cars. Also, it's far easier to clean up a couple hundred power plants than 250 million tailpipes.
With our *current* grid, here are various calculated pollutant changes:
CO2: -27%
PM10: +18%
SOx: No change
NOx: -31%
VOCs: -93%
CO: -98%
Furthermore, these pollutants will be more displaced away from where people are breathing and end up higher in the atmosphere, unlike car emissions which tend to be at ground-level in crowded areas. Now, picture our grid after carbon cap & trade is in place for a decade or so, and what that'll do to these numbers.
Oh, and I should add that this assumes no change in vehicles for increasing efficiency when switching to EVs. Quite to the contrary, EVs tend to be very streamlined so that they don't need as big of a battery pack to go as far.
Indeed. If you want to learn more about my patent for U-235 fission-heated leg warmers, check out the song the B52s did on it, titled "Hot Pants Explosion".
Why do you hate to admit it?
I'm sure at first he was elated, but eventually he grew concerned. He proved his genes were grade A, but what of when tables turn?
"As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys."
Easy solution: Ship him to Singapore and sell his a** to Nike. "Stitch 'em tight!"
Besides, any funds raised will be put toward the charitable cause of buying Myhrvold and extra vowel for his last name, so it's not all bad.
No, GGP is not.
1-2. I just gave statistics. The Honda Insight, for example, which falls under Honda's 100,000, was introduced in 1999. Honda has only had 200 out-of-warranty battery replacements.
3. That's the MSRP; what do you mean "there's no market"? If that's what the manufacturer charges, that's what it costs. If you were talking used batteries, those are generally under $1k.
4. The market disagrees with you.
5. Last year, just concerning the Toyota Prius alone, Toyota sold 181,221. And they're on track to beat that number this year. This is not a low-volume car.
Amazing myth density there.
1. Hybrid batteries are engineered for 10+ years of operation.
2. As an example, Honda reported this summer that of 100,000 hybrids on the road, there have so far been only 200 out-of-warranty battery replacements. On Toyota's second gen Prius, they've had to replace 0.003% of its hybrid batteries out of warranty.
3. The batteries aren't $7k. Or anywhere close to that. Honda batteries are now down to $2k for the Insight, $2.5k for the Accord, and Toyota's Prius battery is $3k.
4. Hybrids have extremely high resale value. What *really* loses value fast are big SUVs. The Hummer H2, for example, costs 50% more than the Prius but loses value 3 times as fast. And that's the blue book; in the recent oil spike, hybrids were selling for well over blue book, while SUVs were selling well below. I assume that this situation has since been remedied.
5. Since this topic was originally EVs: EVs have even greater battery reliability, as their duty cycle is much gentler than that which hybrid batteries go through. 10-year-old RAV4EVs, for example, sell for $60k or so on Ebay.
6. To strike a final nail in this "all batteries must inherently have short lifespans" myth: Jay Leno sometimes drives around in a 1909 Baker Electric on its original batteries. The lifespan of a battery is deeply related to the stability of its chemistry. Some battery charge/discharge reactions aren't very reversible, while some are incredibly reversible.
The energy density issue is very misleading.
First off, I can't recommend strongly enough that you view the YouTube video of Chris hitting the shell with a hammer. It has over double the required roof and door crush strength for cars. It has not just an ordinary crumple zone, but an innovative crumple/deflection zone designed to help the vehicle ride up in an accident. It has full in-seatbelt curtain airbags. This is a vehicle that should blow most cars out of the water when it comes to safety. Secondly, as for handling, you need to read more about three wheelers; here's a primer. One wheel in front and two wheels back is notoriously unsafe and unstable, but two wheels forward and one wheel in back, with the CG just behind the front wheels, handles almost identically to a four wheel car, except that it has a faster response time. Basically, when you brake or steer, the CG slides up between the two front wheels, and thus has the same amount of resistance to flipping laterally that a four wheeler has. Also, they are naturally prone to understeer (like four wheelers), not oversteer (like tadpole three wheelers). About the only thing you wouldn't want to do in a tadpole three wheeler is something like a J-turn.
There are many reasons for going with three wheels. Yes, a big one is that it has a lot less certification that has to be done. But if they're voluntarily doing crash and crush tests, who cares? The other benefits are numerous; here's just a few. The ideal aerodynamic shape to enclose as much volume as possible with as little drag as possible is a stereotypical teardrop (or truncated teardrop); this means wider in the front than in the rear (hence, two wheels forward, one backward). Three wheels means you can elimiante an entire wheel. And all of the drivetrain/braking/cabling/wiring requirements that go along with it. Which reduces weight, purchase costs, and maintenance. And cutting weight means increasing range, and so on down the line.
Not according to this
That article is over a year old. If you took information that out of date about the Aptera, you'd come out with its price being $20,000.
Think City is already shipping in Norway, I don't think the Aptera is shipping yet.
Correct. Aptera's target date is this December.
Plus, I'd suggest anyone interested take a good look at the pictures, the Think City looks like a small car, the Aptera... well, unconventional is probably the best word I got without getting nasty.
It's a "love it or hate it" car. About half the people I've seen comment on it think it's one of the most beautiful cars they've ever laid eyes on, and most of the rest think it's an abomination to the eyes. I've found a couple of neutral people, but not many. As for me, I find aerodynamic forms aesthetically pleasing and non-functional style elements (such as oversized grilles, spoilers, etc) dumb looking, so I think the Aptera is a beautiful bird indeed.
To people who go looking for Aptera pics, however: make sure you're looking at the Typ-1, Mk1 (or the Typ-2, as it may be now), and not the Mk0. The Mk0 was an early test vehicle. The Mk0 has dark side windows that are shaped like pine-cone scales against a "bent" A-pillar; small, bland inset headlights; an angular termination of the rear wheel skirt; and a rear end that tapers practically to a point (no tail lights, no license plate). Its wheel struts look bent when viewed from the front. It doesn't look nearly as nice as the Mk1 and beyond.
Th!nk is only about six months ahead of Aptera, production-schedule-wise. And it's complete nonsense to claim that Aptera only has "a proof of concept car", as any cursory reading of the information collected over on the Aptera Forum will convey.
Your roof is designed to crumple?
There's a difference between crumpling where designed to (which the Aptera does as well) and crumpling anywhere.
Efficiency is defined by energy out over energy in, or power out over power in as the case may be. Power is the product of engine speed and torque. So, yes, with a CVT, you can pick the engine speed that's most efficient for given power output requirements, trading engine speed for torque. However, that's the most efficient speed *for the given power requirements*. That doesn't mean that the current power requirements are the most optimal for the engine.
But yes, I think the poster's point was a good one, that in a series hybrid, you can run an engine at near optimum performance -- not by merely picking an optimal speed, but an optimal speed * torque as well.
It's not. "Minutes" isn't a problem at all for ER-EVs. Gas turbines integrate quite nicely. They take the time that they need to to start up and can run for a dozen minutes or two, then they shut off. DesignLine busses use Capstone microturbines for this very purpose. The Capstones use an air suspension so that the shaft encounters nearly no friction. As a consequence, they have very long lifespans.
Exactly. My spouse and I are getting an Aptera Typ-1e, and it'll be responsible for 95+% of our driving. We're going to keep my old Saturn around for those rare occasions where I need do so something unusual like pick up four people in Muscatine. We may end up using it so rarely that we may ultimately not bother putting it on our insurance policy, and instead just add a rider if we ever need to use it.
Speaking of insurance, I talked to someone with an NmG (a more primitive electric three wheeler), and with the NmG as his primary vehicle, his annual insurance is only $252. For an adult male in southern California with full comprehensive coverage from State Farm. ;). Gotta love "motorcycle" insurance rates! If the Aptera is built well, there should be almost no maintenance to go along with the dirt cheap insurance rates and the dirt-cheap electricity costs (at my rates, $1 for 120 miles)