Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
What is the most efficient vehicle design that is still practical? For most people that is a car that seats at least 4 with some room for luggage. The smaller it gets the boxier it needs to be.
2 seat commuter cars have never been anything but a small minority of sales. Even in Europe were fuel is very expensive relative to the USA people are still buying practical cars not one or two seater commuter pods like the Aptera.
Last month you could buy a new Chevy Bolt for $23,000 before any local tax incentives. That is a car that seats 5 and goes 259 miles on a charge. The price was very similar in March and Chevy sold 3249 Bolts. That is not a car reserved only for the upper 5% and yet it doesn't sell.
Toyota sold 40K RAV4s in March.
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The thing about a very aerodynamic vehicle is that it doesn't have to be a small two seater. You can take the an aerodynamic shape and increase it's size to whatever the customer needs. Aerodynamics are better with smaller vehicles, but the main things are the shape and the crossectional area. This is why a station wagon with the same interior space is more aerodynamic than a CUV with a similar shape.
Of course that leads to the problem of length due to the need for a long aerodynamic tail. A four seat Aptera like vehicle would be quite long. But there's got to be a way of making the tail retract for slow driving and/or parking, I would think.