Bike Rack from Aptera Motors?

[Marco Landin]

Are there plans for an Aptera-designed bike rack, attachable to the vehicle for carrying a couple of bicycles?

• This discussion was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by  Marco Landin.

[John Malcom]

Not at this time.

There may be a towing capability for a very small trailer (300 pound load) that could be used for transporting bikes. Depending on the size and configuration of a bike it may be transported in the cargo area. There are pictures of a bike in the back of an Aptera. And of course, I am sure there will be third party accessories which most likely will include a bike rack for Aptera

[Paul Schultz]

If Aptera includes a category 1 hitch then many hitch-based bike racks would be an option. Aptera has indicated they planned on providing the light towing capability as mentioned above. That means an industry-standard hitch receiver that opens up all kinds of possibilities. A cat 1 hitch has a 1-1/4 inch receiver… perfect for a light bike rack. There would be no reason for Aptera to include a 2″ receiver as that would be overkill for the intended use and capacity max.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by  Paul Schultz.

[kerbe2705]

I’ve been very happy since ditching my roof rack and using SeaSucker to carry recumbent… https://www.seasucker.com/

[Ray Holan]

Marco, you might consider the option of one or more folding bikes. There are quite a few on the market now. Brompton is perhaps the best known brand, but is more of a city bike than road bike. An online search for folding bicycles will keep you entertained for hours. Good luck.

[Philip Raymond]

Doing one of the things I do best, bringing attention to the obvious, you could just load your bike(s) in the back hatch cargo area. It looks more than big enough, even for a couple of bikes.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Philip Raymond.

[Ryan Foy]

Is there any intentions to get a rack or function to store a bike in the vehicle?

[Jonah Jorgenson]

You can put a single bike in the storage area depending on its size. Thee are no plans for a bike rack or other device to take a bike along with the vehicle. Such a device, if mounted externally, would significantly degrade the aerodynamics of the vehicle.

However, after purchase you can equip the Aptera as you wish as long as you are OK with the affect of the modification on vehicle performance.

[Curtis Cibinel]

If we get the possible trailer hitch that would allow for bike racks. Alternatively suction based ones could be used. Anything would degrade aerodynamics but that may not be a huge concern depending on the range you are driving with the bikes – even if degraded to the aerodynamics of a normal car (0.3 Cd) the 400 mile aptera would have about 250 miles of range at 55mph; I expect a bike rack would not be that bad.

PS: I think 2-3 bikes could fit in the back safely if stacked with blankets.

• This reply was modified 7 months ago by  Curtis Cibinel. Reason: added speed detail

[Ryan Foy]

I guess I would just like the trunk to lift slightly to place the bike in the back if I had to pick so that it is able to fit if needed.

[kerbe2705]

@Ryan Foy I haul a seven-foot recumbent using Seasucker – I plan to use it on my Aptera, as well. Aptera has posted images of an Alpha prototype with a bike in the storage area. https://www.seasucker.com/

[David MACFADYEN]

I have a SeaSucker board rack . It has worked well on a Chev Spark EV. ( foil board from Toronto to PEI !) I’m hoping that the SeaSucker will work on the Aptera. I’m guessing that a roof with solar panels won’t be as smooth as a roof with no solar panels.

[kerbe2705]

@David MACFADYEN The outer surface of Aptera’s solar panels is absolutely smooth – I believe it’s a polycarbonate material: The solar cells are totally encapsulated beneath it and do not “read” through the surface.

[Steve Sedlmayr]

I’ve been wondering about this for a while and looks like there has not been any progress on it. I don’t really see how a class I hitch would work on a tadpole trike configuration, but a trailer with similar aerodynamics to the Aptera seems to me the most efficient solution. It could attach via a yoke-style hitch mount like the Surly Ted and Bill bike trailers use, either attached to a lengthened axle on the rear wheel, or mounting rods protruding from the chassis just forward of the rear wheel. The yoke could have aero shrouds akin to the wheel pants, and the trailer would essentially be a squashed, two-wheel version of the Aptera body profile that could haul maybe 1,000 pounds. Unfortunately… that’s a pipe dream.

So the next best thing would be an aero roof rack. People’s admonishments to “just use the back, stupid” don’t really work for my wife and I. Sure, if you’re a roadie with a 10 lb. carbon-frame bike, that works great. My wife is disabled and rides a tadpole e-trike, which weighs 85 lbs., accompanied by my 65 lb. e-bike. Could we ride traditional bikes? I could sure, but e-bikes are more efficient, and again, my wife is disabled and cannot ride an unassisted bike.

The trike might barely fit if I remove the seat and chain, and remove the adjustable boom to which the crankset is mounted. However, the other e-bike and our dog will not fit with the trike in there. So the next option is to buy a brand-new, folding e-trike for about $10,000, as well as a newer, lightweight e-mtb that weighs about 35 lb., for another ~$8,000. We are not wealthy, so would have to save for a while to do that (especially after saving up for an Aptera), so it’s not exactly ideal. So a roof rack really is the easiest solution–put the trike on the aero roof bars, put an aero shroud on it (they sell these for tadpole trikes), and toss the remaining bike in the back.

We ordered the 1,000 mile version, live in the SF Bay Area so there are boat loads of trail options within a 100-mile radius, and we drive less than 10,000 miles a year, so will probably never need to plug in to charge–so I’m really not horribly concerned about range reduction. Our current car is a 2001 TDI Beetle that runs stock on a locally sourced B20 blend that is 80% renewable diesel, so it emits about 70 g/mi, about the same as a Lucid Air Pure AWD. So another option is just to continue to use the Beetle for those trips. However, it sure would be nice to use the Aptera. Even with its CoD slightly diminished by aero roof bars and an aero-shrouded trike, given that we will never plug in to recharge, or at most use level 1 recharging at home from 100% renewables (we have a PV system with storage), it is likely the Aptera’s g/mi would remain far below 70 (which, until the Aptera ships, is at this time best-in-class in NA).

I would love to have an official Aptera roof rack, but my guess is we will have to wait several years for a third-party option.

[James Lee]

Rear hatch has solar panels as well. No sticky there , maybe there is enough surface area after the hatch, but it’s a wrapped section of body. Hopefully it won’t damage the wrap when removing it

[Craig Merrow]

As others have pointed out, there’s plenty of room under the hatch for a bike. I ride a fat bike, and I’m sure it will easily fit; it’s not a big deal to remove the front wheel to make it easier and lighter to place it back there.

[Michael Marsden]

I reckon you can get several bikes into the back, it’s a pretty big space when you work it out.

Attaching a bike rack to the exterior of the vehicle would absolutely ruin the aerodynamics. Not a problem for short / slow driving, but if you wanted to take your bike on a long trip, the battery would feel the pain quite quickly.

[John Voules]

That’s why god made folding bikes. I still have both of my DaHons from 1984. Not sure why anyone would want to ruin the aerodynamics of the vehicle. Electric vehicles also truly aren’t capable of towing anything without a huge range penalty. Anything to be attached to the back of the APTERA should be as aerodynamic as the vehicle itself.

[Michael Marsden]

As it happens I just bought a cheap folding bike a few weeks ago so I can put it into the back of my current car without having to fuss with taking wheels off etc (the hatch on mine is quite a bit smaller than the Aptera’s hatch).

I rode a friend’s Dahon quite a few years ago, maybe 1998-ish. As far as the ride quality went, I preferred it to the Brompton, seemed less twitchy.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 23 hours ago by  Michael Marsden.

[John Voules]

Both of mine are in good shape. One of them is stainless steel. I had a side business, I was purchasing 25 at a time from a distributor when I was working at American Airlines, many of my pilot friends were able to put them on their own light aircraft and their boats. They are a hoot to ride and actually quite quick.

[Steve Sedlmayr]

Apart from a folding enduro e-trike, no folding bike will endure the sort of trail riding we do. I cannot even imagine riding a folding bike on the trail we just rode yesterday, with two-foot ruts washed into a ranching trail by the record rains we’ve had here recently, along with grades sometimes up to as much as 35-40%. We saw a handful of mountain bikers and gravel bikers; I didn’t see a single folding bike with 20″ wheels. Besides which, this is all moot. A folding bike is for urban riding; I can think of no reason to transport a bike in an urban setting to do urban riding–you just ride the bike.

[James Lee]

I don’t want to lift an E-bike up that high and have to slide it sideways over a wrapped section of body

[Bob Kirchner]

My spine agrees with you.

[Steve Sedlmayr]

I hear you on the weight, but there are a couple of reasons why this is easier than you might imagine in my case for my wife’s e-trike, for both our Beetle and hypothetically the Aptera. First off, my two-wheeled e-bike doesn’t go on top of the car. It goes on the back of the car on a Thule T2 Pro XT rack via a class I hitch interface bolted to the undercarriage. So it never comes close to the car, and I only have to lift it a couple of feet. That said, I have managed to put my e-bike on the roof without contacting the car. You would have to be fairly weak or uncoordinated to scratch the car up during this process. My wife, for instance, cannot do that, as they do not have enough upper body strength to lift the whole bike that far, even with the battery removed, and due to their disability, do not possess sufficient proprioception. I am able-bodied, so I can manage it fine. However, I use the rear rack instead most of the time because it’s easier and smarter.

As for the trike, what little the Beetle and Aptera have in common are round, swooping shapes (the Beetle’s swooping shapes are not particularly aerodynamic, unfortunately). Tadpole trikes are equipped with parking brakes. So first off, I remove the batteries, which removes about 16 lbs. Then, I lift the trike a couple of feet, placing its rear tire on the Thule bike rack, and the two front tires on the rear hatch. It stays perfectly still because of the parking brake. Then, I roll the trike up the hatch to the aero bars. Rubber tires will not harm the finish on a car. I suppose that could happen if a pebble was stuck in the tread, but in 15 years of setting up this car with bikes for adventure trips like this with my wife, the trike’s tires have never damaged the finish. From there, it’s just a matter of pushing it up onto the roof rack and empty wheel gutter for the other wheel I have affixed to my aero bars. It’s quite simple. If there were a roof rack on the Aptera, I would do the same thing. I wouldn’t have the rear rack to set the rear wheel on, and I would have to lift the trike a little higher, but otherwise the process would be the same. It’s worth noting that to get a bike into the back of the Aptera, I have to lift it to the same height regardless.

[Paul Evans]

For those contemplating using Sea Suckers to carry stuff on the roof, what’s the chance of damaging the solar cells or lamination?

[James Lee]

@paul. I don’t think it will stick to the solar cells. They aren’t perfectly flat

[kerbe2705]

@Patrick Liebknecht The outer surface of Aptera’s solar panels is utterly smooth – I believe it’s a polycarbonate layer: The cells do NOT “read” through the surface. There’s no reason that a Sea Sucker wouldn’t stick to them: The suction pads adhere easily to curved surfaces.

[Too_much Moderation]

I’d say great enough that I wouldn’t want to risk it…weight/contact patch and lateral forces?

[Steve Sedlmayr]

I was thinking the same thing. They seem strong enough to carry a bike on a normal roof based on their promotional videos. However, I would be worried about damage to the cells when removing the suction cups, not to mention the possibility, since the cells are removeable, of having a cell detach in motion due to a sufficiently large dynamic load being applied, such as in a banking turn on the freeway.

[Steve Sedlmayr]

It seems like people aren’t really getting where me and the OP are coming from. If you have a bunch of 10-20 lb. road bikes or a Brompton that you want to throw in the back of your Aptera and that works for you, great. We are not you. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to any domain. This is why there is a huge market in third party accessories for vehicles. What works for you doesn’t work for everyone. We are not committing some sort of sacrilege by suggesting that we mar the perfect aerodynamics of the Aptera. Once we purchase it, we can do with it as we please. Moreover, it has zero environmental impact in my case, because we will probably never to need to charge our Aptera, as we drive less than 10k miles a year, will rarely if ever drive sufficiently far to require charging, and in the case that we do, we have a PV system with storage installed, so any charging that might be required will be 100% renewable via level 1 charging. It’s also more than a little ironic, and amusing, to be green-policed by people riding unassisted bicycles, which are less efficient than e-bikes, on a forum for a vehicle that uses the same technology as e-bikes–electric motors and lithium batteries–augmented with aerodynamic design features.

We are not knocking the Aptera–it is a brilliant example of intelligent engineering that dovetails with our concern to do our part for climate change. That’s why I have replaced 95% of my car trips with e-bike rides for 6 years now, which I will continue to do after we get our Aptera, and it’s also why we want an Aptera, for those remaining trips we have to do by car. What I am saying is, I want/need some accessories to make the Aptera even more utilitarian than it already is, so I can completely remove our Beetle from the equation. To keep it out of landfill and minimize environmental impact, we will probably keep our Beetle indefinitely as a back-up vehicle. Since it runs on a renewable B20 biodiesel blend, it gets better emissions than every other EV currently on the market due to the mix of non-renewables in the US energy grid. However, the Aptera is a game changer in that regard. Apart from emissions at manufacture, for us, and for many people, the Aptera will be truly zero emissions. So obviously, if I need an accessory to switch as many trips as possible to the Aptera to meet my family’s needs, I would want to do that.

On balance, the loss in aerodynamics, which would be much less in my scenario than I think people imagine, is a moot issue, since it would be recharged 100% renewably anyway, compared to the decrease in actual emissions from replacing biodiesel Beetle trips with solar-powered Aptera trips. The aerodynamics of the Aptera is impressive and one of its main selling points, but at the end of the day what matters more is CO2e, not CoD. What I am min-maxing is emissions, not coefficient of drag. CoD really only becomes a factor if either a) you are driving more than an average of 40 miles per day; and/or b) live in a zone with insufficient solar radiation to recharge from the solar panels; and/or c) are regularly driving on road-trips that use more than half of the battery capacity you ordered your Aptera with. In those cases, you might need to recharge regularly; and if you don’t have a PV system from which to recharge, as I do, this will mean your Aptera is emitting above zero. In my case, it makes more sense to utilize the Aptera fully with accessories, even if that means ruining its pristine CoD, to replace low-emitting trips with zero-emitting trips.

There are alternatives, but some of them are quite expensive, like buying two more expensive e-bikes. We aren’t millionaires, we can’t afford to buy infinite e-bikes on a whim. That’s why we have two old e-bikes, one that is 15 years old and one that is 6 years old. And the other solutions mean a reduction in affordance as a user.

I appreciate that Aptera has to limit options at launch in order to succeed as a company. However, I have an intense dislike for the Apple-style culture of one-size-fits-all-and-if-you-don’t-like-it-you’re-a-Phillistine, either from the support end or the fanboy end of things. That’s why I have an Android phone over an iPhone, and despite all the great things about MacOS, and all the problems with Windows and the hassles with Linux, why I prefer using Windows and Linux in my PCs. To be fair, both HP Velotechnik and Riese & Muller, the manufacturers of our e-bikes, take the same Apple-like attitude, but I modded those bikes the way I wanted to anyway, because I own them. If no accessory is made available by Aptera or the market, I will modify the Aptera as I see fit, because I own it. It is my property, period. However, it would be a lot more convenient if Aptera or a third party provided a solution, whether that is a roof rack, a trailer and/or a hitch receiver of some kind. To be clear, Aptera has not made this argument yet, the Apple-style curationism is all coming from the community so far. I can understand why Aptera might prefer that people not use the Aptera in such a way. However, Aptera also supports right-to-repair, which is a decidedly anti-Apple, pro-DIY, almost punk stance, which is one of the reasons I find them compelling as a company and want to support their company. Given that culture at Aptera however, I don’t think it’s strange that people like myself and the OP would want modify the Aptera to be even more effective at meeting our own needs.

What me and the OP are looking for is not suggestions about what would work for you, but what would work for our own needs. If those other ways of using the Aptera work for you, that’s great, but they don’t really address the OP’s post.

[Gordon Niessen]

Aptera has said they are going to be supportive of 3rd-Party companies providing accessories. So you can probably get details from them that you need to have an adapter built to fit the Aptera. Then you can sell it to a manufacturer or sell it yourself.

[Steve Sedlmayr]

Gordon, thanks for the heads up. I guess those of us wanting a roof rack should just contact Aptera directly.

[Michael Marsden]

> a) you are driving more than an average of 40 miles per day;

What we are getting at is that the 40 miles/day + 400 mile range becomes more like 13 miles/day + 130 miles range if you have bikes on the back or roof, and drive at highway speeds for long distances.

If you are only driving locally, or slow speeds (under 50ish) when the bikes are on, then it doesn’t matter.

Nobody is stopping you either way. Just be aware of the practical implications and decide for yourself.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 1 hour ago by  Michael Marsden.
• This reply was modified 6 days, 1 hour ago by  Michael Marsden.