6.04.2008

Aptera - The 300 MPG Car Of The Future


The Aptera looks like a car straight out of the pages of a 1960's Popular Mechanics magazine article about the car of the future. They're claiming that it can achieve 300 mpg! That's about what I get on one tank. You can buy an all electric version (~$27,000) which costs about $1-$2 in electricity per nightly charge, or the electric-hybrid (~$30,000).

And there are cup holders. Sweet.

So, where's the woo? Boy, I wish I could find the website that calculated the maximum a car could go based on the energy content within one gallon of gasoline...but it escapes me. I would have loved to thrust this in their noses!

Click here to see the NBC news segment.

Awesome. Frankly, all it's missing is wings...then we could have the promised plane in every garage.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's probably possible. It's very aerodynamic and looks pretty light. 300 mpg might be a liberal number, but all cars seem to have a higher mpg than they actually get.

There was a competition a while ago to see how far you can go on a gallon of gas, one entry made the equivalent of 8000 mpg.

The skepTick said...

You don't happen to have a link for that 8000mpg number, do you? I'm interested in how they pulled it off.

Thx,
skepTick

Grant said...

Sweet looking car, but yes, you are right to be sceptical about the 300mpg claim; but then Aptera didn't quite claim that either.

From Wikipedia "the claimed long-range fuel efficiency of the hybrid model of 130 mpg (US) at 55 mph (1.8 L/100 km at 90 km/h) would make it one of the most fuel-efficient cars in the world. Aptera Motors cites 300 miles per US gallon (0.78 L/100 km) when plugged in every 120 miles (190 km)"

So yeah, you get 300mpg when it is mostly running on batteries & plugged in when the batteries go flat! Which is a whole new definition of using x litres per km. In fact using that definition, I can claim to get at least 100km per 0 litres on my bicycle, (consuming only a couple of litres of sports drink).

On the world record, I don't know about these new fangled gallons & miles stuff, but the record (for a non-production/non-road legal car) is over 5000km on a litre of hydrogen. http://www.paccar.ethz.ch/news/index

limo hire perth said...

I am kinda expecting Luke Skywalker to jump into the car and race it. How ironic because when the time comes for these cars to be sold, the traffic will be too much that you will not be able to take advantage of its speed.