Turning radius

[Paul Kirchner]

Hello, new member here. Live in Oakland, Ca. I did a search but couldn’t find anything. Anyone know or hazard a guess as to the turning radius?

[Curtis Cibinel]

It’s all on the structure of the front. The pods could turn about 60 degrees without hitting the body and provide their own thrust. I suspect it should be better than basically anything that doesn’t have 4 wheel steering

[Dean McManis]

The only comment that I recently heard about regarding the turning radius was from Aptera’s website update: “Roush, recognized global leader in engineering, prototyping, testing and manufacturing, is driving new advances in Aptera Motors’ solar electric vehicle (sEV) as the company nears completion of its Beta development phase. Among the enhancements to the ultra-efficient design include improvements to turning radius, geometry, door seals and latches.” So whatever the turning radius was, it’s better now.

[Paul Kirchner]

Probably not related to turning radius but to other unknown reasons, I noticed on the Jay Leno spot, his turns were always very large, often going into the next lane before straightening out. I’m thinking maybe they were a function of the video production needing certain things to happen. But it got me wondering.

[Titus Meusel]

Have taken this out of some Aptera video. Won’t say how big it is though.

Aptera_Concept_00011.jpg 74 KB Image File — Click to view

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[Len Nowak]

Yes. in the early days I heard.. “ Similar to a same size car”. IMHO with Roush’s help and the betas coming I’d wait to ask after they hit the road. Production intent model is what counts. We don’t even know if the three Alphas had torque vector, which may factor in to that turning radius FWD vs AWD ¯\_(~̃ ͜ʖ°̃)_/¯ But ….what do I know….

[Ronald Travisano]

My Sienna mini van is about 19′. Feels very tight. I can pull a U turn on some side streets in one shot, it’s amazing. I hope, with the hub drive and all, they can get this turn really tight as it can very helpful.

[R Daniel Hood]

Just estimating based on the website graphic:

ApteraTurningRadius.jpg 28 KB Image File — Click to view

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[Ray Holan]

Hope it is better than 23 ft. My Hyundai Ioniq hybrid’s turning radius is 17.5 ft.

[Curtis Cibinel]

23 feet is still quite reasonable. most cars are ~30+ feet. Really surprised how tight the ioniq and current fortwo are.

[Ray Holan]

Turning circle is another relevant specification. My Hyundai Ioniq hybrid’s turning circle is listed as 34.8 ft. Turning circle not to be confused with turning radius. For comparison, the turning radius of a Jeep Cherokee is 18.6 to 19.0 based on tire choice.

[Joshua Caldwell]

I’ve gone from a Ford Fiesta with 17.8 feet to a Honda Accord with 19.8 feet to a Cadillac DeVille with 22.0 feet. As I’ve aged, the rides have gotten nicer, but the parking lot experience has gotten annoying. With the estimated Aptera being 23.8 feet 🙁

Curtis, I don’t know how you got the figure that most cars have at least a 30 ft radius.

[Curtis Cibinel]

I found a big chart but must have missed that it was turning circle not radius. Your right 23 kinda sucks. When you consider it doesn’t need to transmit physical rotation from the body to the wheels you’d think it could be extremely tight. Hopefully we will get something official eventually as that graphic might just be for illustration and not scaled correctly.

[David Marlow]

Possibly the radius could be reduced by applying some torque vectoring when the steering hits a limit.

[Riley …]

It is also possible to dramatically reduce turning radius by replacing wheel pants with smaller fenders and modifying the steering to give it more angle. Note practical but an idea.

[Paul Schultz]

From what I have gathered torque vectoring provides turning assistance when a vehicle is in motion at or above a threshold speed. I don’t believe it will help for low velocity (like slow parking lot maneuvers or stationary) turning.

Paul

[OZ (It’s OZ, Just OZ)]

Paul,

Arcimoto has just added torque vectoring to its 3 wheeled FUV. One of their main reasons for doing so was to improve low end speed problems with turning the heavy front end, especially when parking. Videos from reviewers have confirmed that it makes an amazing difference.

[Tim Dean]

Torque vectoring will definitely tighten the radius by slowing the inside wheel. On 3 wheel drive Apteras, the inside wheel can be reversed while the outside wheel is equally forwarded and the tail wheel spun to reduce friction. Messy but effective tank turn. Mind the glass…

[Efrain Goody]

That’s a different issue though. Archimoto’s problem was that it was physically difficult to turn the heavy front end. Their torque vectoring at low speeds acts basically like power steering. For Aptera, the problem is in the geometry itself. Longer vehicles inherently have bigger turning radii, and larger wheels (or large wheel covers in this case) also exacerbate this issue, as it is difficult to design for them. As it is, the Aptera’s wheels are pushed out sideways basically to the limit, and moving them forwards would just increase the length issue.

[Gordon Niessen]

My old 2001 Prius was 15.4′ I do like being able to make a U-turn on a city street without having to do a three point turn. In Europe they are really going to need a tight radius.

[Francis Giroux]

I remember the video that turning radius picture was taken from. It was showing that the turning radius was improved over that of the Alpha. Notice there are two circles in that picture. One is about 39.4 feet diameter or 19.8 feet radius while the other (Alpha) is about 46.6 feet diameter or 23.3 feet radius. If you want other evidence that the turning radius will be good go watch the video of the skid pad g-force testing where Beta is squealing the tires in a tight turn in a parking lot.

https://youtu.be/V88RhwLEb3I at 11 seconds into the video.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Francis Giroux.

[Sam Thaya]

I would like to see a video of the Aptera doing a U-turn at an intersection onto a two-lane street. Anyone have any ideas on if that is possible with all these radius numbers being thrown around in this thread?

[John Malcom]

I would suggest waiting until a gamma or delta vehicle is ready. Until that point there will be many configurations of Aptera Betas for specific testing which will not be representative of the production configuration of the vehicle. the Alphas don’t have power steering, the revised suspension, or production size batteries. The steering system Yoke, power, and any surprises is not finalized as well.

The net of all of this is that old turning radius diagrams or data are no longer valid and no production turning information will be available for a while.

[Peter Jorgensen]

So same as a honda accord at 19.8 feet. Can a Honda Accord do it?

[Jerry Freter]

Not easily – It’s a little more than the width of the road. I can u-turn around a central island into the second lane in the other direction, but not into any of the inner lane (against that island).

[Ray Holan]

Awaiting updated information on the turning radius and turning circle of a production intent Aptera. I’m in a suburban location where maneuvering in parking lots will be a daily occurrence.

[Zac Courtney]

Hi All!

I’m wondering, has anyone come across what Aptera’s turn radius will be? I’m expecting it will be looser than a Prius C, but tighter than a honda civic.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by  Zac Courtney. Reason: Found a better Gif
• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  Gabriel Kemeny.

[Gordon Niessen]

I hope it is fairly tight. I have a 2001 Prius and have enjoyed being able to do a 180 in a normal city street. Really surprised drivers license tester that was trying to see how I handled a 3 point turn. I do hope the Aptera can get close to that.

[Zac Courtney]

@Gordon, Exactly! Since the two-seater will be wider and longer than my current compact, it’d be a tremendous advantage in cities to have tight turns and comfortable clearance. 🤠

[kerbe2705]

@Zac Courtney I’m guessing it’s another one of those “wait and see” questions: Until the design of the front wheel pants is finalized they won’t know how much the front wheels can turn without impacting the body.

[George Hughes]

If you go back through some of the Beta videos, I recall seeing them saying the Aptera’s front wheel geometries were improved for handling, including a tighter turn radius.

You’ve got to remember that in addition to steering angles, Aptera has another advantage, torque vectoring. This in essence means that with the proper programming and possibly a Harbor freight furniture dolly on a non-powered rear wheel, you could make tank turns.

How accessible this ‘feature’ might be is not clear, at least for a stock Aptera. I’m hoping someone will create an ‘app’ that will allow such turns in what I would characterize as “parade mode” along with some ot her practical limits on speed and operation. I don’t think HF dolly would be very safe at speeds above 15 mph – perfect for a parade.

[Jerry Freter]

I am not convinced that the Harbor Freight car dollies are safe at speeds above 0 mph, or even in a garage. I would want to load test them before I use them on anything important.

[David Marlow]

When the first prototype was built there were some tests done with torque steering (zero turn?), it will be interesting with how much of that will be allowed in the final version