Aptera held a webinar on June 14 that was packed with good news. The first is that it already has 25,000 orders for its solar trike. According to the company’s executives, this is what forced them to find a bigger manufacturing space. The second is that we’ll see the first Gamma prototype in four weeks, or by mid-July.
Although the Gamma is practically a pre-production vehicle, the company is still working on pinning the production design that the Delta vehicles will present. Chris Anthony said they expect to do that by the end of the year. This is where the first not-so-good news comes from the Aptera CEO: production should only start by 2023.
Despite that, we should expect the production Aptera to be pretty similar to the Gamma prototype we’ll see in four weeks. Anyone who is not so much into details will actually think the Gamma is exactly like all the previous prototypes we have seen so far, regardless of being Alpha or Beta. That’s because the company is just working on improving aerodynamics in a design that was already very efficient in that regard.
If you look closely, you’ll see the first renderings of the Gamma prototype present rear-view mirrors, which will be necessary for some states. The Aptera will also only be legal to drive with helmets in a few places: those that equate it to motorcycles.
The first battery packs to arrive will be the 41-kWh units for a range of more than 400 miles. To be more precise, the battery pack has a total of 45 kWh, but the usable capacity is 41 kWh. Anthony said the next ones to be delivered would be the 250-mile, 600-mile, and 1,000-mile units. Considering that the Aptera trike achieves 10 mi/kWh, the battery pack capacity will be around 25 kWh, 60 kWh, and 100 kWh.
The Aptera CEO shared another interesting piece of information on the webinar: Aptera will use EVE Energy cells. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because the company is the manufacturing partner for StoreDot, the Israeli startup that promised the Extreme Fast Charge (XFC) cells. It would not surprise us if Aptera were among the first companies to use the new technology.
Steve Fambro, the company’s other CEO, also shared how proud he is of the automotive-grade solar cells the Aptera will get. They were designed to last 20 years, meaning that Aptera owners may get all that time of solar generation if they live in sunny places. Referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Fambro stressed how no dictator could steal the sun from people. For Jason Hill, Aptera’s chief of design, the sun is the company’s superpower.
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