Boy, would I like this to work. I must say that, *on vehicle, solar charging* seems to me a *marketing strategy*, *not a useful design feature*.
Here in central NC we get, at very best, 1000 watts per square meter, that is not all day long, maybe 6 hours of peak sun. We don't get that daily by any stretch of the imagination. Reality is always less, and way less factoring the clouds that go with 50" of rain a year. That is for a surface that is not substantially turned away from the sun or shaded in any way. Then the efficiency of the collector might be 20%, or 200 watts per hour at best. I didn't see much info about the solar aperture of the Aptera, but a square meter might not be out of line. So, at 10kWh per 10 miles, I see the Aptera getting 10 miles worth of power in 5 hours of really good sunlight. A full days worth where I live. They are claiming: *1,000 miles on a single charge *(I love this!) *40 miles of solar powered driving per day * Not so sure this is possible. I could take 20 hours of the best solar charging to get enough power for 40 miles. Those array elements look fanciful for getting 20% efficiency. But, they look like more than a square meter. I am going to call it a wash. There is going to be thousands of $ in that solar apparatus. I would call that needless complication for marketing purposes. Give me anything else, softer seats, a good stereo, good air flow perhaps from fans, and let me plug it in the wall to get charged. Mike On Tue, Sep 5, 2023 at 10:40 AM David Heacock via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > It is interesting to note in all this discussion of charging that Aptera, > long before the OEMs decided to go with the Tesla plug, actually submitted > a petition for adoption of the Tesla plug nationwide. Of course, most > people thought that was a stupid idea and figured it would never happen. > However, Aptera did decide to use the plug for their vehicles when they > come to production. > > In an effort to increase the range of EVs most companies adopted the plan > of just installing a bigger battery pack which increased weight and most > likely decreased overall efficiency. The result is naturally longer > charging times and efforts to increase the capacity of the charging units > themselves. Aptera has taken a different approach by building a very > efficient design so that a smaller battery pack is needed to actually get a > greater range. And go figure, the smaller battery pack takes less time to > charge. While most OEMs are looking at maybe 3-5 miles per kWh, Aptera is > shooting for 10 miles per kWh. > > Since the average driving range per day is less than 40 or 50 miles the > question becomes why would most people even need to stop and fast charge > when they can simply plug in at home at night when the electric rates may > be much lower and have a fully charged EV the next morning. Obviously there > are people who don’t have access to chargers in apartments and such but > might have access to 115 volt outlets at work or at an apartment complex. > I leased a 2013 Nissan Leaf for three years and for the first two years I > simply plugged it into a 115 outlet in my garage. Of course I was retired > at the time and didn’t drive much per day but again a lot of people don’t > drive all that far to work and back. But what about not needing to charge > at all for most of the time using solar? Well Aptera is trying to solve > that problem also with solar on the vehicle itself so that when the vehicle > is parked at work you can actually add range for your trip home. If Aptera > can realize a range of 10 miles per kWh then it will not take much solar to > provide maybe 20 miles or so per day which is probably more than enough for > most commutes. There are some here that say that is not possible but again, > at one point not so long ago, adoption of the Tesla plug was a stupid idea > as was Amazon. > > To be honest I am a supporter of Aptera and have an order in for one. > Might not happen, but then again……. > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20230905/2f498e55/attachment.htm > > > _______________________________________________ > Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org > No other addresses in TO and CC fields > HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ > > -- Michael E. Ross (919) 585-6737 Land (919) 901-2805 Cell and Text (919) 576-0824 <https://www.google.com/voice/b/0?pli=1#phones> Tablet, Google Phone and Text -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20230905/5023a3ed/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
