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Dec 18, 2020
How good is the cabin heating and AC . Is it just a electric heater or does it use a heat pump and heat exchanger
How good is the cabin heating and AC . Is it just a electric heater or does it use a heat pump and heat exchanger
- For less than your Bolt cost, in a 600-mile Aptera in the winter you could crank an inefficient resistance heater even before you get in, wear a T-shirt & shorts, drive as fast as you can, & probably still go farther!
- Aptera has an even smaller, easier-to-heat cabin than my 500e, whose resistance heat only takes about 1kW at freezing (after 5 minutes of 8kW to warm it up).
...and there's fluid flowing through the Aptera skin, that's heated by the motor/battery/PV
At present the haven't been able to source a heat pump with a reasonable lead time, so unless this changes, it will be AC and resistance heat for the first models.
I live in Canada in southern B. C. and currently drive a Bolt. In the winter with that type of heating it really effects the range and also does not heat that well. Our winters are a lot milder than most of Canada very close to Northern Oregon and Washington. To us this is the biggest issue with most Ev 's now that range is getting addressed with many now over the 300 Mi range. Being able to drive a long distance is not fun if you have to freeze to do it
@dankor A big difference between the Aptera and all other EVs including the Bolt is that Apter's body is not made of metal. Rather it is composed of a molded composite of highly insulating hollow honeycomb fiber materials, epoxy resin filled. In addition to having a much higher strength to weight ration than steel or aluminum, it apparently keeps the heat (or the "cool") in much better than traditional metal body materials.
So significantly less energy will be required to keep it comfortable. It least that's what I heard.
It was designed to work well "down to -20F and up to 120F". (I've been out XC skiing in -40, but they didn't say how well Aptera would do at that extreme. I know very few cars would start at that extreme.) They are planning to perform extreme temperature tests in the next several months once they get prototypes 2 and 3 completed.
@Harry Parker ...and don't forget the layer of foam between the inner and outer shells!
with the body of the Aptera is made from a honeycomb fiber material, any body wonder how it would get repaired if it was involved in an accident??
I think there are a few large body pieces, perhaps they can be replaced as needed for repair? Or perhaps it could be patched for minor incidents? Either way, I suspect it'll be quite expensive to repair and might just total the vehicle for many impacts.
@Derick Perkins @Lit_2 - They've explicitly said you'd likely have to replace the body pieces if they get damaged. But at the same time the likelyhood of you having to do so is much lower than a normal vehicle as the Aptera can shrug off sledgehammer blows and should "bounce back" from all but the worst hits.
@Rhynri would be interesting to see the damage resistance to a 5 mph side impact such as what happens when backing out of a parking spot. If the shell cracks the car is totaled due to the micro channels in the cars skin.