Is the Aptera an inner city commuter or a road-trip cruiser.

Going back to the original question, for me while I will use it as my "daily driver" ( whatever that means these days) my main interest is road trips. My road trips are as much as possible on blue hiways, the back roads of the country. And frankly, at the moment this looks like the only ev capable of this. If you just travel the freeways, the infrastructure is good enough, but it will be years before that infrastructure is installed in the boondocks.

After over 5 years with a BEV as my only vehicle, the one thing that seems to matter most for range is simply average speed. Basically the slower you go, the further you go.

The worst range I ever got was floored on the freeway. The best range I ever got was in "bad" traffic on the freeway, going steady 10mph.

That's no surprise, since apparently air drag goes up with the square of speed, but for some reason that's beyond me, POWER required goes up by the CUBE of speed!

HOWEVER, where I drive there's relatively little change in temperature (or elevation*), but when there IS:

- Moderate A/C (78F with recirculate) makes nearly no difference in my car. Apparently higher temps make the battery more efficient. Aptera's published numbers indicate less-efficient A/C though.

- Even with heat off, cold weather temporarily reduces battery capacity. If you don't believe me, get a free phone app like AccuBattery that shows voltage, put your phone in the freezer for a few minutes & see how the voltage plummets. Also, cold air is more dense, & air drag is the primary range factor. SO, even with NO heat, range drops significantly.

* ROUND-TRIP hills make nearly no difference, since you gain nearly as much on the way down as you lost on the way up. HOWEVER, if you can't make it to the top, ONE-WAY hills kill range like crazy!

The High Speed test still has an average speed of 48mph, so it is not entirely applicable to longer road trips. But the low drag of the Aptera means that this estimate should be much closer to real life than most cars. The Aptera should be twice as efficient at high speeds than most EV's but only 10-20% more efficient in town, so I see it more as a road trip cruiser. This is also why Aptera have emphasized the long-range, camping, AWD, and off-road capabilities. The very wide front wheels are also better in the country than city. There are a lot of EV's that are good for short trips around town, but very few that can do road trips. The low mass doesn't help that much for efficiency around town, since most of that kinetic energy is recovered through regen, but the low mass does allow for the 3 wheel design that greatly helps the aerodynamics (important at higher speeds).

EPA's highway mpg estimates are primarily derived from a separate "high speed" test cycle, which has a top speed of 80 mph. The remaining three tests are designed to simulate stop-and-go city driving, high air conditioning use, and driving in cold temperatures.

Aptera's light weight also reduces rolling resistance, which helps it even more at low speed than high, proportionally.

Aptera's hub motors avoid drivetrain friction loss, so they have more efficient regen, which helps much more in the city than highway.

Aptera says that even if it doesn't come with a J1772 socket, it will come with an adapter, just like Tesla does, in order to use all the great many public J1772 chargers. Nearly all of those are 6.6kW, but Aptera says it may come with only 3.3kW capacity, adding about 33 miles every hour in an Aptera. 6.6 adds about 66 miles/hour.

Another question based on my initial quesiton.

A lot is made of the the low drag coefficient. That implies Road Cruiser.

BUT drage coefficient wont apply much in town, around a city at low speed.

Will the "mileage" suffer, and be more like other EV's in town???

@anash The Founders have stated - repeatedly - that the Aptera will be able to be charged like any other electric vehicle and that it will accept 50 kW DC (CCS) charging, 220 V (Level 2) charging and 110 V (Level 1) charging.

People became very flustered when the first Aptera prototype was fitted with a Tesla charge port but, even if Aptera does strike a deal with Tesla, the vehicle will still accept high-speed DC charging.

I would not worry: I sincerely doubt that they intend to produce a vehicle that would be crippled by ultra-slow charging.

The first thing I can tell you is that the 600 mile range is based on the EPA highway schedule, which I think averages around 48 mph, with a peak up to 67 mph. If you are on a road trip with an average speed of 65 mph, you might be looking at an average of something like 148 watt hours instead of 100 per mile. This might be more like a 450 mile range. However, Aptera will charge on 230 volt sources, and probably other available EV charging stations, even though we don't know yet exactly which ones.