Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Bullis
The degree to which the undercarriage impacts the performance of this Morelli modified, Akron shape is an important issue, (...)
The wheel train arrangement is intended to be a very small profile, single aerodynamic entity on both sides, with almost completely enclosed wheel wells, but the wheel enclosures are themselves pods that form nearly complete closures with the overall wheel train body for straight line travel.
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Does lifting the main body out of ground effect create such enormous avantages that you can get away with
struts (adding drag and weight);
a 6 wheel drive train (Aptera deleted the 4th wheel to reduce drag) that also needs to articulate to take a corner (complex, more weight);
a retractable canopy and floor (yet more weight);
a rather high CoG (always higher than if the pod was lowered);
and still come out with a high FE ?