More About The Aptera

More About The Aptera

I mentioned the Aptera yesterday as an example of a truly futuristic looking car. A reader tells me:

You need to change the label from 'cars' to 'motorcycles'. The Aptera is designed, built and registered as a motorcycle so as to avoid all those nasty federal crash worthiness requirements. No crash stuff means less mass and a lower startup cost since there is no need to submit finished product for destructive testing.

It struck me as I was going through the National Automobile Museum a few weeks back that many of the early cars were surprisingly small and light, and that if you built a car this light today, with modern engines and transmissions, they would probably be capable of exceptional gas mileage. Even using fairly sophisticated materials, they might be reasonably cheap just because there's not much material there. The Aptera is that same approach.

I confess that I am not thrilled at the idea of driving a thousand pound car--even if was made of carbon fiber composite, and was therefore very strong--because of the mass of the existing vehicles on the road. On the other hand, if it was fast and maneuverable enough, you might think of it as an overgrown motorcycle, and figure that you have to pay a lot of attention to the idiots on the road.

Another reader points me to a car from the 1960s that was probably just too advanced in its stylng for its time--and looks like something that George Jetson's kids might have taken to school: the Peel Trident.



UPDATE: Another reader points out that the Aptera website discusses this vehicle safety standards question:

In fact, Aptera is a motorcycle manufacturer registered with DOT and CA DMV. This means, among other things, that we are able to issue VIN's. Our 'world identifier number' is '5WT', so all of our VIN's begin with '5WT'. Knowing the public perception of motorcycle safety, we made the decision to make safety a fundamental part of the design of our vehicles. For example, the Typ-1 roof is designed to EXCEED rollover strength requirements spelled out in FMVSS 216 for passenger vehicles. The doors EXCEED the strength requirement spelled out in FMVSS 214. We decided not just to meet many of the specs for passenger vehicles, which are set above and beyond the requirements for motorcycles, but we chose to exceed them whenever possible.

They aren't required to meet those standards, and they don't say that they meet all of them--just that they try to exceed them "whenever possible."

A friend points me to the Isetta, one of the early post-World War II "microcars."