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Old 12-24-2011, 12:38 AM   #11 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by some_other_dave View Post
I think it's pretty funny that you would believe that any serious engineering company would believe what people say on an internet forum about engineering!!

-soD
Unfortunately they ran out of money to be an engineering company, and time to become a car company.

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Old 12-24-2011, 08:49 AM   #12 (permalink)
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just my 2 bits.

I think Aptera's mistake / cause of failure ... was the drastic change in production strategy.

Long ago , they had a small factory setup , tooled , etc ... the original concept was to produce small scale to start ... then later expand to a larger facility ... the small factory they had setup even had already begun to run and had produced a few of the first vehicles ... then new management had the bright idea to scrap the first factory and try to scale up to full size with the first product ... knowing they didn't have the capital or resources to be able to actually fund it ... they put all of their hopes on the idea that a government loan could cover the difference ... knowing full well the government loan required them to not need the loan ... which they did ... so they bluffed ... the bluff started to fall apart it was only a matter of time.

They bit off too much too fast... I think they should have just stuck to the original plan of starting off small scale production with the first factory that was already setup, tooled, and producing vehicles... sell them to the people who were on their waiting list.
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Old 12-24-2011, 06:10 PM   #13 (permalink)
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IamIan -

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.

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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Old 12-25-2011, 02:20 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Sorry so long winded

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Originally Posted by cfg83 View Post
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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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.

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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.
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.
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Old 12-25-2011, 05:24 AM   #15 (permalink)
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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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Old 12-25-2011, 02:05 PM   #16 (permalink)
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Sell the first batch, get some cashflow to improve the design and sell more of that. Then repeat the process.

www.loremo.com made the same mistake of not selling their first design despite a line-up of buyers (including me).
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Old 12-25-2011, 03:43 PM   #17 (permalink)
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Or else do like Mr. Fry- GET IT BUILT (at least for the most part) prior to starting a hype-fest. Well-developed prototype work done first = easier transition to production + people's expectations can be met or exceeded. Unless, of course, your true goal was to grab some investor development millions and run. That's far less work.
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Old 12-25-2011, 03:55 PM   #18 (permalink)
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So what has happened to the vehicles that were actually built ?
I saw that the frames and such had been destroyed, but what about the cars that were already built ?
Is this another EV-1 story ? Were the cars crushed ?
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Old 12-25-2011, 04:35 PM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee View Post
Seems to me Aptera was making too many rookie mistakes to be taken seriously as an "engineering" company.
As I recall ... they were originally ( Accelerated Composites ) ... a rookie composites company ... so at best they were a rookie composites company taking a shot at changing into a rookie car company.

I personally would have considered taking them seriously if they had stuck to the original small scale production factory that was already setup and producing vehicles.

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Originally Posted by Frank Lee View Post
On trikes the heavy end needs to be the same end as the one with two wheels, dah.
It still was ... just not as much as it was before the front wheel drive change from the new management.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by IamIan
...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.
Band-Aid , agreed.

However ... sense the question was about stability , CG is only one component of stability ... band-aid or not , the wider front two wheels is a valid method to improve stability.

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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.
Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Frank Lee View Post
Don't be too in awe of what Aptera did for the body; that was directly lifted from Morelli's work:
Not in Awe at all ... it has nice aerodynamics ... better than my car currently does ... better , than many other vehicles... but not the best ... and still has room for improvement.

- - - - - - -

Separate from bad management choices...

The largest area of disappointment for me in the design was in the final weight for a 3 wheeled carbon fiber 2 person car ... 1,800 pounds... I mean come on ... My 3rd party crash tested Aluminum Body Insight is 1,847 ... 47 Lbs ??? that's it?
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Old 12-25-2011, 05:26 PM   #20 (permalink)
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However ... sense the question was about stability , CG is only one component of stability ... band-aid or not , the wider front two wheels is a valid method to improve stability.
It did not help them at the X Prize did it.

It is not enough for there to be a simple weight bias towards the two-wheel end on a trike. If you don't want oversteer on a tadpole- and you probably don't- you need to look at the load on each tire. When you do that, you can see that you can have more weight "on the front" yet still have more weight on that singular rear contact patch if the weight isn't biased forward ENOUGH.

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