Nathan Scandella (personal)

A Novel Idea

Here's another company hoping to make changes to the status quo in automotive technology. While I'm not sure how many Teslas and Apteras can be supported in a horrible economy, I'm glad to see that people are still generating new ideas, and pushing them to market.

One particularly interesting thing to note about the timelines on Aptera's models ... the 2e, which is their all-electric model, is set to debut in 2009 (that's this year!). The 2h, which is their gas-electric hybrid model, is set to debut in 2010. Now, in this economic climate, maybe those dates get pushed back a bit. But, the key is that they're releasing their electric version first!

This is something I've been harping on for a while. Although I'd rather see people driving Priuses than Escalades, the concept of a hybrid (especially the type Prius employs) engine offends my sensibilities as an engineer. One of the most universal strategies for keeping down price, and reliability up, is to keep engineering designs simple. By definition, a hybrid car is more complex than either a standard internal combustion engine vehicle, or an all-electric vehicle. It has two power systems, and a more complex transmission to make them work together.

Companies like GM have been moaning for years about how long it takes to develop greener technologies. Balony. They are dragging their feet. They've made their job harder. They sold off the patents they developed during the EV1 project (another all-electric car that made it to market before hybrids), they picked less mature Lithium-Ion batteries for the Volt prototype, and they have also made the Volt a hybrid (albeit a different/better design than the Prius).

If folks think we need hybrids because we have to crawl before we can walk, they're wrong. That's not the correct analogy. Hopefully, companies like Aptera can prove my point (again!).

Posted at 03:39PM Jan 22, 2009 by Nathan in Environment  |  Comments[0]