The reason for 1000 miles

[peter-jorgensen]

You have a really good point I’ve never thought of.

If you have a week of sun then two weeks of darkness the big battery has enough capacity to “carry” you through the two weeks of darkness to the next week of sun. I think I’d rather have this in a powerwall that my Aptera charges up then I can use to charge my Aptera, but if you’re renting, not really much choice. Maybe a powerwall trailer?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by  Peter Jorgensen.

[curtis-cibinel]

If you rent you often would not be allowed to have a trailer in the parking lot (especially if its full of batteries) and the Aptera likely would never be able to tow it to charge them up. Powerwalls (and non-Tesla competitors) are also stupidly overpriced for the amount of storage they provide.

For renters the use case of a huge battery is somewhat legitimate but hopefully as more level 2/3 charging options become available this will be less critical. If you can plug in for 30-40 minutes reliably every time you get groceries or similar (even at 3.3kw level 2) then the combination of this and solar will reduce the frequency you need to charge at DCFC.

Obviously the 1000 mile will be heavier and less agile than the smaller packs. It really surprises me how aggressive Aptera has been trying to make this halo model economical. Based on the recent announcement of the specific EVE cell in the webinar and layout speculations from Aptera Owners club the following is my calculations on battery sizes and costs. I found the exact EVE cells and reduced the bulk retail price by 15% (Aptera will be buying far more than 5000 cells and wont go through resellers like Alibaba); this should be reasonably close to accurate. It looks like Aptera is making virtually no additional profit by selling bigger packs (additional price barely covers cell costs). This approach is obviously rough values could be either low or high but are probably +-10%.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tuu7avKH2dS_JPk7aiP2av09a1f1WE0OvvNH6fdHpiQ/edit#gid=1285203539

[soaringsam]

I am a recent EV owner/operator and made a 1000 mile drive the very first day of taking ownership of my EV. Thereafter, I have had to DC fast charge only once on a 300 mile round trip and all else has been local around the home base. My initial Aptera order was for 1000 mile battery but the ease and rapidity of charging my current EV on that first long drive allowed me to change to the 400 mile version, mostly to get my Aptera sooner than later 🙂 Another reason for the change is to be more efficient. However, I did not go for the 250 mile version for the very reasons you list for your 1000 mile battery choice. I like to have a reserve for the cold days and unforeseen trips that may take me beyond the minimum range. However, I have been encouraged by recent expansion in rapid charging station availability and given no natural or manmade disaster that knocks out the electric grid, long distance trips in EVs are becoming less and less of a concern.

I am also willing to give a pass to the co-CEOs’ off the cuff thinking out loud on live stream that may have slighted the 1000 mile spec pre-order holders. I am willing to give them credit for the fact that they made the 1000 mile version available as evidence of their understanding of your particular situation. I just hope and pray that they will get the Aptera out on the streets all over the world, sooner than later 🙂

[993cc]

@Hee-Choon Lee:

Just yesterday I set out on a 600 km drive (second day of a 1300 km drive, not in an EV ). That 600 km drive suddenly turned into an 800 km drive when I found out I had left this laptop in the motel.

I, too, will want to have an EV with a bit of range in reserve!

[Greek]

I don’t see it mentioned here….not having to recharge your batteries as often also has a nice benefit of longer battery life. Urban apartment dwellers who may park outdoors and would not have to charge for weeks at a time (maybe months) is an awesome convenience. Hard to understand why people would criticize why a person would want a vehicle that they might think isn’t needed. Individuals should truly concern themselves for what is best for themselves and their situation.

[paul-carlucci]

I’m ok with the 250 mile range battery but picked 400 because I want to reduce the number of battery cycles and get a longer lifetime out of the pack.

[joshua-rosen]

For people with no access to home charging I would think that you would want to choose the most efficient variant which is definitely not the 1000 mile version which is hundreds of pounds heavier unless they make the DC charging rate for 1000 mile version higher than it will be for the lower range versions. If you are counting on the sun for your power then you’ll want to get every femtometer per photon that you can get, and if you have to use DC chargers likewise you want to minimize your time at chargers. Assuming that the DC charging will be limited to 60KW then charging a 100KWh battery will take several hours, it would be better to limit your charging sessions to 200miles/300Km, which should be doable in 20-30 minutes, and get a smaller battery.

For people with home charging the equation is different and the optimal choice will depend on your use pattern. I’ve ordered the 600 mile version because almost all of my mileage is Saturday day trips which never exceed 450 miles and I want the freedom to not have to plan our stops around Superchargers. For people who take less frequent road trips the 400 mile variant would be the sweet spot, and indeed they said that 60% of there orders are for the 400 mile version. With 400 miles all of your local driving is on home electricity and most day trips also, for longer trips it will charge fast enough so that you can add 100 miles at a quick stop.

The place for the 1000 mile version is for people who want to cross charging deserts. I was looking at the Tesla Supercharger Map the other day to see where they still have charging deserts and unsurprisingly they are in actual deserts. You can cross Nevada on the Interstates easily but you can’t go across the central part of the state, they have no Superchargers there and the distances are vast. The 1000 mile Aptera is the only EV that could possibly make a trip like that.

[jonah-jorgenson]

Your own thoughts and criteria here I guess.

I think that when someone reserves a particular variant of the Aptera, regardless of which one it is, they have thought through their own use case, and have selected the one that fits best based on their own list of criteria.

Nothing wrong with selecting a 1,000 mile variant if their criteria and use case say that is the way to go. No reason to disparage that selection, or suggest it is not rational or valid.

Nice to see you feel crossing a desert is a valid use case. 😁

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by  Jonah Jorgenson.

[joshua-rosen]

I haven’t disparaged anyone, I have no objection to anyone ordering the 1000 mile version. I’m just pointing out some criteria that they might not have considered. Everyone has to make the decision for themselves but they should consider all of the tradeoffs. There are real downsides to bigger batteries, weight, charging time, cost and space. The 1000 mile battery in particular is going to eat cargo space in addition to adding hundreds of pounds of weight. If you live in a place where there are no chargers then those tradeoffs are well worth it, it can be the difference between being able to road trip the car and not, but if you live some place where charging is readily available then it’s my opinion that there is very little upside and the downsides are large.

What the thousand mile battery won’t do for you that the smaller batteries won’t is make driving in January any more convenient. At best the OP is likely to get in winter is 10 miles per day of energy, that’s only 300 miles per month, in summer they are only claiming 20 miles per day in non-sunny climates, that’s still only 600 miles per month. If you let the 1000 mile car sit stationary for the entire winter it could fully charge it’s battery but if you drive it at all it’s never going be able to utilize anything more than a fraction of the battery.

[seth]

100kwh aptera makes far more sense than a 100kwh truck to me. I personally only want to stop for views, not charging on weekend roadtrips. There’s a lot more chargers near me than there were 2 years ago, but they went from usually empty to almost always full now since chargers haven’t kept up with the number of evs. I prefer to prepare for worst case scenario including not having a full charge in natural disaster when I need to make a quick getaway. Other thing is claimed efficiency/ range vs real world range especially with heavy winds or snow/mud.

[Mike-Mars]

I’ve talked with many people who have clearly good use-cases for the 1000 mile unit (since if DC charging is needed, 20%-80% of 1000 is 600 miles, and in a hard winter that 600 miles becomes more like 300), but also others whose logic seems to be “because it’s bigger and I have the money”. There are downsides as well as upsides to having a large battery, to make a proper decision you need to actually have been informed of both.

[john-trotter]

Everyone’s use case is their own. The beauty of what Aptera plans, is that there will be a choice. Eventually.

[kerbe2705]

@francois kilchoer I’d be interested to know if, when the Dutch travel through Switzerland, they bring their own chocolate from home – or do they stop to eat Swiss chocolate? 😉

[Markus]

Not Francois here, but also from Switzerland. According to my own biased observations the Dutch not only bring everything with them but also believe that the world’s best chocolate was Dutch, which of course is not true. 😁

Very similar reasonings as Francois’ in his opening post led me to order the 400 mile version instead of the 250 mile. I also took into account battery degradation over the years, range decrease due to cold weather in winter, and the hope that the Aptera will never have to stop sun-charging becasause the battery already would be fully charged. In my case the 600 or 1000 mile versions would cost me significntly more at the end of the decade, charging often from the grid in wintertime is still much cheaper than adding that much of (today still) expensive battery capacity.

[fkilc]

Thanks Markus for putting into words what I wanted to say…🙂

My own biased observations mirror yours !

[craig-merrow]

There are a lot of good reasons for choosing the different range configurations that Aptera offers, and it all boils down to your lifestyle. I spec’d the 600 mile battery for mine, but I can see good reasons for opting for they other battery pack sizes.

[993cc]

One of my reasons for reserving the 600 mile version rather than the 400 (in addition to range in extreme cold, etc.) is that my vehicle use can be very erratic.

600 miles allows me to keep the vehicle charged to enable a 300 mile trip on a moment’s notice, while also leaving some headroom for not wasting the solar intake if the vehicle stays parked for a sunny week in mid summer.

[S Patterson]

…because it doesn’t have DC fast charging…

[wingsounds13]

Because you “know” that they will _never_ have DC Fast Charging? Where did you get this special insider information?

[Mike-Mars]

Yep.

It’s only the initial vehicles which won’t have fast charging, by the time it comes to 250/600/1000, it should be there.