The Aptera was conceived to be the most aerodynamic production EV in the world. When it was still in its first prototypes, the company said its drag coefficient was 0.13, the lowest we have ever heard about for something people may buy in the future. AirShaper shared in a video how its tools helped Aptera make that even better.
The new video looks pretty much like the one Aptera released three months ago, talking about the same topic. The main difference is that we got to speak with Wouter Remmerie, AirShaper’s CEO. The executive told us which the main areas of improvement were: front wheel fenders, nose, belly pan, roof, rear skirt, and tail.
“The shape optimization software came up with new shapes in terms of reduced drag. Our software then sent the optimized 3D shape back to them. Aptera then revised the optimized shapes in combination with other constraints like aesthetics, safety, manufacturability, and so on. The resulting geometry is now what you can see in their latest version of the car!”
According to the AirShaper CEO, the improvements the software made to the design of the Beta prototype could have meant a 15% drag reduction on the Gamma vehicle if they were adopted as suggested. As Remmerie mentioned, not all of them were feasible. The good news is that the possible ones already helped it reduce drag by 7%.
The AirShaper CEO was surprised to see how AirShaper could still improve the aerodynamic performance of a vehicle that “was already very streamlined.” “Much came down to aligning the shape of the front wheel covers to the flow pattern around the main car body (which curves the flow).”
Although the Aptera Gamma is already pretty close to production, Remmerie thinks there is still room for aerodynamic improvement. “I would expect further work to be done on the detailing of the car (bolts & connections, lighting details, indicators, ...)." We’re curious about how low the electric trike's final drag coefficient and drag area will be. Just remember that Aptera also worked pretty hard on the two other pillars of low energy consumption: weight and motor efficiency. We’d love to hear about them as well.
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