If you see an Aptera Motors car cruising down the road, you may think it’s something straight out of "The Jetsons."
Aptera Co-CEO Chris Anthony said the slick three-wheel, two-seater car was designed to glide through the air for maximum efficiency.
"It looks much more like a fish than a box," he said. "And that's because our first principle is make it super aerodynamic, make it lightweight.”
The Carlsbad-based company was founded seven years ago with a simple concept: how to eke the most energy per mile out of a car.
"How would you get 100 mpg for 200 mpg?" Anthony said.
That concept became the Aptera, a car that's meant to glide through the air like a fish through water. The car gets the equivalent of 350 mpg. And now, after several prototypes, the car is ready for mass production.
“We have almost 50,000 orders for the Aptera," Anthony said. "So we're working to get the vehicle in production by the end of this year and deliver as many of those orders as we can as quickly as we can.”
The company's headquarters in Carlsbad is capable of producing between 80 and 100 cars a day once production ramps up, he said. But first, the car still needs to undergo crash and durability tests to ensure it's fully street-ready. Anthony hopes that by the end of the year, it'll be rolling off the production line.
As a three-wheel, two-seater car, the Aptera is not meant to be a family car. The target demographic is active professionals.
“You can put a couple of mountain bikes back there, surfboards," Anthony said. "You can actually camp in the back of the car. So it's a really usable shape for everyday driving, but it should feel like your normal EV when you get inside.”
The car gets up to 400 miles per charge, and with a solar panel roof and dashboard, he said, the average driver may never need to charge for everyday city driving.
“So every time it's out in the sun catches those photons, it turns them into electrons and charges your high voltage battery pack," Anthony said. "So you can drive, drive, drive anytime it's out in the sun.”
The Aptera is expected to cost $40,000 once it's released. For an electric vehicle, the Aptera is not the cheapest currently available on the market. A new Chevrolet Bolt EV starts at around $28,595. But it is comparable to an entry-level Tesla, with one big advantage.
“It's technically classified as a motorcycle in California, which is great because we'll be the only electric vehicle that gets free HOV access," Anthony said. "So, you can drive in the high occupancy vehicle lane. And you get to pay motorcycle insurance instead of car insurance, which is significantly cheaper.”
Aptera is also working on a cheaper model with a shorter range. That is expected to come out next year.
