A few days ago, Aptera released a monthly update. Most importantly, the company has established its own factory, which is an important sign that the company is really moving towards production. Aptera also unveiled the next (and third) stage of the car’s prototypes, the Gamma, which is close enough to production. An interesting fact is that Aptera is trying to use a Tesla charger connector instead of CCS, which would be another step for the company, much like Tesla.
New Factory
Unlike Tesla, a larger and more established company, Aptera had to do what Tesla did in its first factory: to use the existing building. In the case of Tesla, the NUMMI building was large and empty, but it took a lot of work to prepare it to build the Model Si. In the case of the aptera, they had to take a building full of offices and demolish the offices. did a lot of work in terms of both demolition and floor preparation.
Production equipment is on order and Aptera intends to start expanding production by the end of 2022. After the expansion, the large factory will focus on the final installation, and some of the smaller spaces that the company has leased or purchased will focus on the installation of subassemblies. such as battery packs or transmitters.
Sub-assemblies and cars in the production process will be transported by Red Viking in small autonomous vehicles and will become a more flexible assembly line instead of fixed lines, which will require a lot of money to replace in the future. In addition, when things go wrong, small carts can derail and, if necessary, take the car for special work, and then re-enter the queue when the car is ready to continue production.
The big problem the company said it was just licking was preparing the floor to allow these autonomous carts to go anywhere.
Charging, Tesla Connector
Filling is where the biggest news is. Aptera’s biggest concern is that the charging infrastructure in the United States is really lacking, and that won’t change much in the near future. Aptera not only thinks about charging stations, but also the way the network itself and utilities think about energy. It will be difficult to add vehicles.
The company is also very dissatisfied with the CCS and J1772 connectors. “It wasn’t pretty at all,” said Chris Anthony, one of the company’s CEOs, about the J1772 connector. He says the Tesla connector was more beautiful, while DC fast charging was more challenging and weird with CCS and CHAdeMO. Steve Fambro agreed, saying they were not satisfied with these communication standards.
Corollary: Aptera thinks the United States should accept the Tesla connector, which tells it what to do. But I would like to briefly dwell on what other outlets said, because they did not say whether they would use the Tesla connector or not. They just think it’s better. Since the construction of the infrastructure covers the CCS, it can cause practical problems that they actually do.
Other Technical Updates
As we already know, Aptera buys hub motors from Elaphe. Along with Aptera, Elaphe is also preparing and preparing for mass production to meet its overall production needs. So there are all the factories in Europe that are being built and expanded to deliver these important parts to Aptera. But the most important thing is that this process is not only theoretical, but ongoing.
Given the company’s ambitious goal (100 miles per 1,000 kWh), Elaphe is still working on changing the latest Aptera engine design for maximum efficiency.
Work is also underway on battery modules and packages based on 2170 elements with liquid cooling. The first cars on the road will have a capacity of 41 kW / h (will provide a range of about 400 miles), and then 250 kW-hours. Then 600 miles and 1000 miles of cars will be put into production. EVE Energy is working with the company to create the cells that work best for Aptera’s car.
The development of the chassis also continues to move forward. Teams test cars with torture and try to break them. They hit the car on the curbs so hard that they tore the tire off the tire and did not want the car or the sky itself to bend under such stresses.
Wheel covers (wings on the front wheels) have been a major criticism of the company in their videos. They are large, give the car a wide, wide posture, and they are kind of loose and whimsical in the air, swaying and swaying on the street. The company has demonstrated a video with the latest improved design that simulates different speeds and vibration frequencies. Now it will not vibrate until it is more than 200 miles per hour. The maximum speed of the car is 110 miles per hour, which will not be a problem in the real world.
As we all know, wiring in Aptera should be very simple compared to most cars. The company stays in this philosophy and works with a company built to make the most efficient trailers possible. They demonstrated a video of a low-voltage test stand they used to program firmware on various controllers.
There will be no car keys. It will have an RFID key card, bluetooth and a “tap” login method.
Solar panels are a bigger problem than many people think. The sun sitting still at home or at work is one thing, but the one that has to deal with the vibrations and other harshness of working in a car is something else entirely. Aptera is still very secretive about this (as I was during my visit there in November) because this is something the company has been doing a lot of research on.
Gamma Development Tool
The shape of the car continued to change. The shape of the wings / wheel covers has been changed to make the car work better. The same thing was done with real wheel skirts, which created less drag on the wheel. The rear of the car is also less thickened to further reduce friction. Although the car is larger for passengers, it has a lower sliding capacity than the Aptera Alpha design.
The first Gamma cars have not been developed, but the design is ready to create this second or final version of the car, but we will see it in a month.
The interior has also been redesigned. The controversial choice of tire (yoke) is accompanied by a number of other changes. The center console will be a module and you will be able to choose different things for different parts of the console. The interior design process uses VR for testing, allowing people to see what it looks like before it is built, which helps to avoid space and other problems, as seen in Alpha design.
Aptera gave more details as to why he chose the yoke wheel. One reason was that they wanted to be futuristic, but they think that accepting the yoke has better ergonomics than the others we see. It also ensures better and safer operation of the vision system (cameras instead of mirrors).
Will Aptera offer anything for people with Oculus / Meta headphones? They didn’t say, but I’d like to see it.
Finally, we’ll see four extra solar panels on the hood and others we don’t know about elsewhere in the car. Thus, the available solar energy is increasing!
More Talked, But You Should Watch The Video
A number of other topics were discussed in the update, especially in the question and answer section of the presentation. I can’t cover all of this here, but I’ll post the video below.
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Selected image: Aptera’s Factory What It Will Look Like With Ordered Equipment. Photo by Aptera.
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