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Old 12-25-2011, 06:24 AM   #15 (permalink)
Frank Lee
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Seems to me Aptera was making too many rookie mistakes to be taken seriously as an "engineering" company. On trikes the heavy end needs to be the same end as the one with two wheels, dah.

Quote:
...which is a perfectly valid method of adding additional stability, with or without ideal center of gravity.
Track width widening is only a band-aid at best for poor longitudinal CG placement; it does nothing to xfer tire load from back to front. Also I saw no apparent reason to jack it up in the air like a lifted mud truck as both vertical CG and suspension arm angles suffered because of that.

How high is that driver's seat vs. the one in your car? I just measured three cars and the lowest part of the seat is about 15" in all of them vs. from this pic, knowing grocery bags are 17" tall, Aptera's could be 24" up.



How do those A-arm angles compare to the ones in your car? Not gonna slide under my car to get a pic, but for good handling the lower arm will be about horizontal, if not lower on the inner pivots than outer. Imagine pushing horizontally against a lever hinged at both ends. If the end you are pushing on is lower than the end being pushed, your end will want to go down and the other up. Now read about "jacking" if you aren't familiar with it.



Don't be too in awe of what Aptera did for the body; that was directly lifted from Morelli's work:



So, somebody was sitting around over beers and decided to adapt the lowest drag body form possible for street use. Great idea, if only they'd picked a development team with some experience.
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Last edited by Frank Lee; 12-25-2011 at 05:00 PM..
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