Definitely considered using a donor chasis, but there are too many compromises there, I will use a donor car for things like fittings, suspension and glass, but I want a spaceframe chassis as a blank canvas. My dad built custom fiberglass cars for years; I'd like to think I can pull off just one.
As for the ride height, I need to make the wheels smaller and I'm seriously considering an airbag suspension to lower it when at highway speeds. How does the Aptera manage sitting so high?
EDIT: For some reason I thought you were talking about a Honda Revo when I wrote this, then I realized you were talking about the Revolution I posted. To be honest, my wife didn't really like the design, and I want this to be a family car. But you are right, it definitely has a lot of the characteristics we look for. It's CD is the same as the first gen Insight. It even already has a full body pan!!! I think they avoided skirts because they were trying to get mainstream car manufacturers to accept it. There are a lot of good ideas in their industry report about making cars more efficient:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38774531/Hypercar-Report