The Aptera Luna has a number of features that make it extremely efficient. These include:
These features all mean that it won’t take as much power to get it up to speed and a lot less energy to keep it at a decent cruising speed.
The solar panels on the car will, the company claim, produce 700W of energy year round. When not in motion that energy will go into the battery. That’s why, looking at the Aptera website, the company claim that you might only have to charge it three times a year in Scotland, even if doing nearly 30 miles a day. In Spain this might be only be 1.46 times a year on a similar mileage!
With nearly 707 litres of boot space, this is nearly 100 litres more space than the VW Golf, though that car does have rear passenger seats unlike the Luna.
One of the reasons that the major automotive giants have been caught off guard by the EV revolution is that they are let’s face it, a bit unimaginative. The VW Golf used to be a petrolhead’s wet dream of a car with its power and fun. Now it’s about as flabby and middle of the road as the same overweight, middle class gent who used to have so much fun in it in his 20s!
The Tesla range are a little different though they might be described as a typical saloon you might not otherwise notice with a computer screen in them that can make fart noises.
This is why the Aptera Luna is so cool. It is something you might have drawn at school in the 1980s when thinking of the new Millennium. Sadly it doesn’t fly but it does look like it should! Though you can’t carry your kids in the back, with minimal demands on the electricity grid, this is the sort of EV your kids will be happy with simply because it hardly needs any fossil fuel powered energy to run.
Sadly, similar to all mainstream EVs they aren’t cheap to buy, though the top end, 1000 mile range, all wheel drive car with full solar array will cost similar to a baseline Tesla Model Y. The baseline model will sell for less than £20,000 - for a car that isn’t thirsty on fuel and looks that funky, not a bad price as EVs go.