Seating in tandem in vehicles
 

I never understood why tandem seating in high fuel economy cars isn't more prevalent. The smaller frontal area would help fuel economy. There have been some of these vehicles over the years but they seem to fade away and disappear.

The FUV has it, but I wonder the same thing since the Aptera doesn't. Heck, I saw a sailplane on TV that had side-by-side seating.

That said, it does allow the taper to begin sooner, so that may offset some of the inefficiency of side-by-side. There's no way someone could sit behind the driver in the Aptera due to lack of head clearance. The vehicle would have to be longer to accommodate the slick shape.

All your glass homebuilt aircraft are side x side so apparently not much of a drag penalty

Unless the vehicle could remain as short as a motorcycle, and perpendicular parking could be done too, I wouldn't really hold my breath for tandem-seating to become so common.

The traditional shotgun seat?

If the second occupant (typically a spouse) has any input in the decision, it will be a tandem side-by-side.

With the FUV, conversation is possible because both are beneath an elongated dome, which has excellent acoustics. An inside mirror allows for eye contact.

:thumbup:

Flip side is every two seater sailplane I've flown was a tandem.

I guess the answer lies in the Smart Car. It fits everywhere and looks small.

Ironically going tandem has two benefits if mage long enough. Not only does it have less frontal area but longer less pronounced curves are also more aerodynamic.

But apparently few people would buy a tandem Aptera that's as long as a 15 passenger van.

Here is the deal in my area, if a vehicle doesn't occupy the full with of the road as in it's narrow like a motorcycle, larger vehicles tend to bully them over and even run them off the road - seen it several times.

In my old small Porsche 911 I've had people try to do the same thing to me.

Many full sized pickup truck and SUV drivers drive with their tires on or over the bicycle lane stripe because they feel compelled to take up the entire width of the road. If they spot a vehicle not taking up the full width they often take action to take that territory from the narrower vehicle.

I wish that I was just making this up, but sadly I'm not.

tandems
 

For all the really fine tandem designs offered over the decades, none seemed to ever fire the public's interest, regardless of how great they might have been.
GM, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen all tried.
James Bede's 100-mpg Lightstar never caught on. Aptera.
In the 1950s, if you bought a Cadillac, they'd give you a Messerschmitt 3-wheeler for 'free.' I've only seen one of those on the road, and only because my Air Force roommate's girlfriend's brother had one.
I started to mockup a 3-wheeled tandem 'mini-hypercar' and soon abandoned the project after experiencing how traffic treated me when riding the motorcycle the car would have been based on.
It was one thing to lay a bike down on Ventura Boulevard commuting to high school in the late sixties, something else just to be run over by a local good-ole'-boy in a pickup, just 'cause I happened to be on the same road.
There is no right to life in Texas.