Most vehicles have metal bodies which reflect police radar very nicely (at lease it's nice for the cops). But the Aptera body is made of composites which are invisible to radar. Even the wheels and motors have a composite shell around them which goes close to the ground.
What does this do for speed tickets?
This could be interesting.
One could employ an RF echo-sorb covering, but that would not be good for the solar panels and would hike the price by a few more thousand. OTOH, if the outer shell is made of an inverse refraction matrix meta-material it could behave like an RF lens which causes the radar to veer around the vehicle and re-converge on the other end in a manner similar to the wind-tunnel tests. But that would raise the price by a few million. This could also be used to project the Aptera to another location so the radar would see it somewhere else in its scope or it would need to point elsewhere to find it. Such implementation would greatly improve the Low Probability of Detection and Interception (LpD, LpI) of Apterae. And with the Government purchasing programme gearing up for the acquisition of Electric Vehicles, why, this could become the F-35 of EVs! An endless boondoggle and money pit. (Great for investors tho!) So be ready for the next round coming up later on in the year. ;-)
Whilst we're at it, Aptera Motors could also include the ICOP (Invisibility Cloak Option Package) (Yes, this film actually exists!) by employing this material on the outside too:
In recent years of research and development, these materials are no longer good only for Harry Potter in fiction. After all, why not? ...but I digress. 😂
Police lidar is in the infrared, so visible reflectivity is not always a good proxy. (One of my day jobs is building mobile solar-powered lidar systems for NASA) While rounded aerodynamic shapes are better than slab-sided designs, they still present at least one perpendicular face to a radar from any angle. Stealth designs try to limit perpendicular angles to expected radar vectors (usually from the sides or below).
So what would be the most stealthy design? A composite body? Lots of carbon mixed in with the resin? Painted flat black? Of course, radar waves can still enter the windows, and reflect back out, but there are treatments for this and for edge reflection.
Now the Aptera is starting to resemble the stealth fighter jets. But why not! It already has the sleek body for it!
And besides, many traffic-policing agencies have switched or are switching from radar to lidar-based "guns" - and a laser can bounce off of anything...
The Aptera will have a somewhat reduced radar signature, but lasers reflect just fine off of composites. Radars can measure the speed of a baseball or bird 50-100ft away, so the Aptera will be detected at least several hundred feet away. Most radars can detect a vehicle much farther away than a cop can identify the car. Most people don't notice a cop and slow down until they are quite close, so the reduced radar signature won't have much practical effect.
Page 28 addresses this. https://radartest.com/DriversGuideToRadar_Ch2_draft_reduced.pdf
I think they aim their radar guns, at least, at a vehicles metal license plate. so they should have “from the rear”
Is it much different than a Corvette???
I will have to remember to ask my neighbor a retired police officer