Ingress and egress ... an idea

The height of the belly of the Aptera is supposed to be something like 9-inches and the lip one slides into to sit is a bit higher. Obviously guides like hand-holds give folks a way to get in the vehicle. If you've ever jumped into any small car you know that the ease with which one enters and exits is a key factor in customer satisfaction.

Two things. First, is a good exercise for video would be a display of one of the prototypes in which people are invited to sit in the Aptera. Get people of all sizes, even some heavier folks to plop down in the drivers seat with cameras trained on the exercise.

Second, and this is an engineering or possibly even software option. If you look at the Aptera, you have three wheels, the front-to-back rear wheel's suspension geometry is counter to that of the side to side front axle geometry. It would seem this would give the operator the possibility to raise or lower the entry height based on braking the front wheel and moving the rear wheel forward two the ten inches.

The Aptera body would rise (and fall) based on the resulting change in wheelbase while parked.

That three-wheel design advantage has not been mentioned as I can see but it could, for instance, be used to also lower the overall height of the body for easier loading and may even have some benefit in off-roading or even rear tire repair/replacement depending whether the real wheel being powered in this operation is the method or whether an active control in the rear suspension geometry.

I'm suspecting that simplicity of locking the fronts and rolling the rear forward up to five or ten inches might be most elegant engineering solution for this feature as it may be accomplished with the inherent torque vectoring.

Not to mention adjusting entry height of the car to each individual driver/passenger would be cool ... especially if it could be accomplished with a few hundred lines of code.

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spacepilot

Jul 24, 2021

Hey Len, while this Citation jet is faster, she is like a high-strung thoroughbred. My favorite was the Boeing 777, she was a real sweetheart.

neomaxcom

Jul 25, 2021

Replying to

@spacepilot We don't know how all this vehicle to grid interaction will sort out but one can imagine a venture in a city like New York where an apartment developer targets new grads for his 50 unit building that includes the cars as part of what you're renting.

We all know that most cars just sit there and do nothing 95 percent of the time. This is the time that the Aptera turns into solar energy and as in your scenario, is dumped and sold to the grid after a week of sitting.

Of course the grid's use of batteries in cars is more for electric load leveling but the problem for most apartment dwellers in cities is parking and power access.

So, say our 50-unit building only has parking (with grid connections) for 25 vehicles which are generally available for use on a first-come basis for tenants. Most of the time most of the vehicles will be there sitting, and if they're Aptera's, soaking up energy from the sun meaning that the landlord is selling power, not only from a rooftop array, but the vehicles in the parking lot.

The apartment owner could also have a mix of EVs including, say a couple of Cybertrucks, two or three Model 3's, and possibly other brands of EV with grid connect capability.

Heck, the generation of juice from two-way grid-connected EVs would waiting for dealer sale on a new car lot would probably pay the floor-plan interest providing at least on reason in favor of EVs for dealers. (They hate them now because they don't require the maintenance of an ICE vehicle.)

A more realistic opportunity might be enhanced parking lots that are wired bi-directionally for EVs with the contract stipulation that the lot owner can use and benefit from the top fifteen percent of electric storage of the cars parked in the lot.

While speculating on the future in this manner is pure speculation, the over-riding fact is that we invent the future by imagining the future. Oh there is so much opportunity.