Sorry so long winded
Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
That sounds like a pretty good synopsis. They should have delivered their first batch to the early adopters, aka "true believers". I think these folks would have been friendly towards working out the bugs *together*. Real world experience would have put Aptera on the map and been ready for Phase II.
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Thanks,
In my mind , not just the first batch ... but they should have just produced and improved out of the first small scale factory for at least the first few years of vehicle deliveries ... It was already tooled up and and had started producing Apteras ... Aptera is a niche vehicle ... niche about as big as Lamborghini or smaller ... Lamborghini took about 40 years to reach a yearly production capacity of about 3,000 vehicles... if it turned out Aptera had a large enough demand with a large enough back log of orders ... than consider scale up options... until the the demand warrants it ... a few hundred a year for a brand new car company was a good place to start ... spending money to dismantle the functional factory to gamble it all on such a long short of mass production was stupid risky ... at least that's they way it seemed to me anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
Question: What was the stability problem that caused them to re-do the drivetrain. I am not talking about the opening door problem at X-Prize. Was the stability problem present in the Aptera *before* the new CEO took over and forced a complete redesign of the Aptera?!?!?! From my limited-info POV that sounds like the only issue that could have plagued the original design.
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I'm not 100% certain which specific thing you are referring to ... But as I recall ...
The original production intent was rear motor & rear wheel drive ... new management insisted on a complete redesign of internal mechanics and weight distribution for front wheel drive ... The engineers were not satisfied with the first / initial front wheel re-design ... which then latter resulted in some other adjustments to a wider 2 front wheels , etc ... were you referring / thinking about something different about stability?
If it was this sequence of events you were thinking of ... I think it's a mixed bag ...
In a BEV where you can place the mass of the batteries anywhere you like , including low to the ground ... in a 3 wheel design the vehicle has a different center of mass geometry ... usually favoring a more forward location of significant vehicle mass ... but as a BEV the batteries can still redistribute the center of mass considerably because of the amount of battery mass ... the 20kwh A123 battery pack they said they where using ( due to energy density of A123s best batteries ) the cells alone to make the pack would weigh at least 330 pounds + connections + Enclosure + thermal Management , etc ... safe to assume at least a minimum of 400 pounds of the vehicles total 1,800 pounds was batteries ... which is over 20% of the total vehicle weight that has a great deal of location versatility... but it is a greater amount of mass and % of vehicle mass than the electric motor was ... which by forcing front wheel drive displaced the batteries from the most forward position and required the greatest component of vehicle weight to be redistributed away from it's ideal center of gravity location... which it seemed the Aptera design team dealt with the less than ideal situation by spreading the front wheel base wider than original production intent... which is a perfectly valid method of adding additional stability, with or without ideal center of gravity.