[dan-stevens]

The buyer of the vehicle is the leasing company, which is a business. They get the credit (if eligible). They may choose to pass that on to you on the lease in the form of something like a cap reduction, effectively lowering your payments.

They may only pass part of it on.

They may keep it for themselves.

Personally, since I own a business, I’ll just buy mine for the business and take the credit directly. Case solved for me (pending a lot of clarity yet to come).

The bigger problem here is Aptera will need to find a finance company willing to lease the vehicle to customers. Most won’t, its to much of an unknown. There are ways to make this happen, but Aptera may not have the resources to do it. Not sure its a super big risk for them, but you never know.

[dan-stevens]

On a lease, it is a commercial vehicle, not personal. The IRA is explicit for personal vehicles it has to have 4 wheels, but I challenge you to find the same requirement for commercial clean air vehicle credit.

Let me give some references to get you started in your research:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-23-09.pdf
which states:
For purposes of § 38, § 45W(a) allows a taxpayer a § 45W credit for the
purchase of each qualified commercial clean vehicle, as defined in § 45W(c), placed in
service by the taxpayer during the taxable year.

Then you look up 45W(c) and get blurry eyed reading it, but…. it doesn’t mention anywhere that I can find a requirement for 4 wheels.
Reality is though, I don’t think 45W(c) is fully written yet and it can be changed. You can find the request for comments on it at:
I.R.C. § 45W(c)(1)

The issue here is, while the personal credit is legislative text, meaning it pretty much should be followed, the commercial credit is more of a – Hey IRS, go figure it out! which means it can be changed on a whim as well.

Bottom line though is that the commercial credit has similarities to the personal credit, but is not even close to the same thing. Don’t get them confused.

[dan-stevens]

I need to dig up the actual treasury statement, but if I just read the yahoo article, this is actually GREAT news for Aptera, as in perhaps on a lease, it will get the $7500 tax credit (not on a purchase).

The article states:
The U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday that electric vehicles leased by consumers can qualify starting Jan. 1 for up to $7,500 in commercial clean vehicle tax credits

Since this is clearly a work around for many other requirements and the fact that Aptera is an Electric Vehicle, and on a lease, it is a commercial purchase, it should be eligible, even with 3 wheels.

Of course, as I tell others, the devil is in the details. I’d like to find the actual treasury ruling on this since frequently, stuff is left out.

Also, I heard this morning that the Tesla Model Y is out, its not classified as an SUV unless its a 7 seater and because of this, it has the lower MSRP cap which it is over. As a 7 seater, it does qualify.

[dan-stevens]

What I have found out is everyone thinks differently on V2H and what value it brings to them. If you have very stable power then its usually not a big deal. If you live somewhere that has at least annual multi-day power outages, then it has great value.

Personally, I want V2 My RV, which is mostly the same as V2H, but is a different use case.

What I hope is this is mostly solved by the selection of the chargeport and inverter system they use. If it allows bi-directional power, then the ‘integration’ to various things can be done outboard of Aptera and not add cost or weight to the vehicle itself but be extremely useful for those who need power.

I view this as somewhat akin to cameras on phones, which was generally viewed as a silly idea when they first did it, but now, most people would have a hard time not having a camera in their pocket that also happens to make phone calls sometimes.

V2G – I know power companies want this but I don’t understand why a consumer would want it at all! Well, other than rate shaving, which I totally get, but its not the driving factor.

[dan-stevens]

Have to wait and see.

Chris Anthony has said multiple times that he wants to be able to do it but the standards are not there yet. Of course, Tesla has always said ‘NO’ to this and if they use the Tesla plug, as David pointed out, then it won’t work since the Tesla invertors don’t appear to allow bi-directional power flow. In fact, the connector isn’t really aligned to enable this due to dual usage of pins for both AC and DC.

So, I suspect, if they use the CCS connector, which I’m pretty sure will end up happening (no inside knowledge, just they don’t have an agreement on the Tesla one yet) then the chances of this happening as some point after production starts is much higher.

I highly doubt it will be there on the early production vehicles though.

Dan

[dan-stevens]

I have not seen one but its an interesting question.

In ICE vehicles, they have transmissions which make them more efficient at close to highway speeds, in their top gear at engine efficiency RPM’s, usually designed for best efficiency at 50-60MPH.

Electric vehicles are different, they have to overcome a certain amount of rolling resistance friction, electric motor efficiencies but after that, propulsion becomes less efficient as speed increases. For best efficiency though, you have to think about hotel loads (lights, HVAC, charging phones, entertainment system, whatever).

With ICE vehicles, they tend to have a highway MPG rating higher than a city MPG rating. Electric vehicles are the reverse of that, with higher city MPG and lower highway MPG.

All that said, I’ve noticed in almost every electric car I’ve driven, best efficiency is usually around 30-40MPH, depending somewhat on how much work the HVAC has to work. Probably lower, around 20MPH, if you shut everything else off and just move the car.

Note: This is a very unscientific perspective, based on my limited understanding of batteries, electric motors and my personal experience.

[dan-stevens]

Your question is timely to my thinking…

I was wondering the same thing, heck, 30% of $30K(+) = a $10,000 discount, pretty aweseome!

The big catch here is you would have to have V2H capability so it would be a solar install with battery backup, which would qualify for the 30%. There appears to be a lot of language changes in the law that allows for this to happen.

The catch is getting V2H working, which probably isn’t on Aptera’s ‘must do NOW’ list. It would be interesting to see where it is on the roadmap though. If they can enable bi-directional power flow in the chargeport (a big reason not to use Tesla), then perhaps they could have a charger company enable it, or use a third party product like:
https://www.dcbel.energy/r16/
Which is designed for this type of thing.

The dcbel charger isn’t cheap, running $8543 for the full backup solution, and on top of that, I don’t think it is shipping (and doubt it will, based on how long they have been working on it), but that would also be eligible for the credit, so, not to bad. I assume others are out there, especially with the F150 lightning having their own as well.

Lots to work through on this, but I plan on using the credit, till they tell me I can’t.

[dan-stevens]

As someone who has a home in the mountains that will frequently lose power, I’m a big fan of V2H backup systems. For now, we have an auto-start generac whole home generator that keeps us going when we need it. Burns through a lot of propane though.

This concept, if I understand correctly, where you have a reasonable but smaller battery (15-20KW perhaps?) permanently in the home and then can plug your car in to supplement that, just makes a HUGE amount of sense to me. The Ford F150 system is similar, but you need to figure out the ‘what if my car isn’t plugged in right now’ piece for yourself. This seems to have that covered.

Not really clear on why power companies want you to sell your power to them, except I’m sure they will significantly underpay your costs of doing this. That said, if you have solar, then you can rate-shave the dickens out of it, sell when the price is high, charge back when its low, all thanks to net-metering. This only works to offset your own usage, but very doable if you have a wide price change between peak hours and off peak, like I do with PG&E.

[dan-stevens]

I can’t remember the last time I actually looked at the pedals of a car when I drive it.

This means 2 things to me: The colors, while great for a statement, probably won’t have much overall impact.

And the second thing is, if I don’t see them or look at them, why complicate production with them? I know some people want them, so absolutely could be a choice in an order, or better, put the color ones on but include non-color ones for owners to swap to if they want. A bit of low cost personalization.

My bigger concern, maybe not valid, but if these are wood, how long will they last?

[dan-stevens]

For those who have an hour to waste….. errr, I mean want to understand this better….

There is a video of the pre-application workshop that sort of walks through what this is for, how it can be used, talks about the ‘match’ and does a good job of answering none of your questions:

The recording and
presentation slides are available in the GFO-21-605 pre-application web page at
https://www.energy.ca.gov/event/funding-workshop/2022-04/pre-application-workshop-gfo-21-605-zero-emission-transportation.

For reference:
At 13:58, they talk about eligible project costs
At 14:39, they talk about match funding requirements

And if you just want to peruse the Q&A document, you can download it from:
https://www.energy.ca.gov/solicitations/2022-03/gfo-21-605-zero-emission-transportation-manufacturing

Scroll down near the bottom and find the Questions and Answers document. Once you read it, please explain it to me.

Also at the bottom is a link to the presentation I listed above.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by  Dan Stevens. Reason: added time references

[dan-stevens]

I gave the direct link to the award document previously, but failed to give the link to the grant page.
You can get a (totally not understandable) overview of the grant at:
https://www.energy.ca.gov/solicitations/2022-03/gfo-21-605-zero-emission-transportation-manufacturing

There are links to a lot of the grant info on this page, but if you follow them, you’ll quickly end up in areas not related to this grant.

The $60Million mentioned on this page was SIGNIFICANTLY increased, allowing for $184,672,200 of funds to be spent on the grant. Yes, that is government math in action.

[dan-stevens]

Assuming its sitting outside for a week before you pick it up, it will likely have a completely full charge.

That’s the point of the car 🤣

[dan-stevens]

Interesting thought, but there is a fly (or two) in this suggestion.

Picking up the car in California will subject the sale of the car to California sales tax, which I believe in Carlsbad is 7.75% on the full value of the car. If its a $30,000 version, that means you will pay California a total of $2325 in sales tax.

If your state has say a 5% sales tax rate, then if you took delivery in your state, it would be $1500 for the same car.

For California to not charge sales tax, you have to take delivery out of the state, meaning you have to pay someone to take your car out of state where you sign the paperwork and take possession.

Ultimately, this becomes a taxation nightmare.

If tax rates are basically the same, then this doesn’t matter so much since your state should give you credit for the taxes paid in California when you register it in your own state.

[dan-stevens]

Figure 40 miles of range from solar a day.
5 solar hours a day (average)
40 miles divided by 5 hours = 8 mph.

Definitely faster than 7. No land speed record being set here though.

[dan-stevens]

You can see a better image (the full image used on the fleet page) at:
https://i.imgur.com/wnhYHwA.jpg

I’m guessing these are renders, but it could be a touched up version of the actual gamma vehicle. There is definitely a lot of photoshop work done on this image so it is a bit hard to tell.

The image is good to see though, looks like a LOT of progress over Alpha / Beta (not that beta was ever much to look at).

Now, to get the production line in place!

View post on imgur.com

[dan-stevens]

As far as I know, the Tesla ‘plug’ is patented by Tesla and while they will allow others to use it, they have very strange and strict requirements on the usage. Are they willing to forego their claim to the plug? If not, then why would we want it as a standard?

As an investor in Aptera, I would not want to give up the rights to enforce Aptera’s patents just to use a slightly more convenient plug.

[dan-stevens]

I’m pretty sure they could just ‘turn the motors off’ in a freewheel mode and you could flat tow the car. Unlike most other cars, I don’t think there is anything else that ‘spins’ and has lubrication issues, so this would make it easier than most with the in wheel motors.

Unfortunately, I doubt doing this, testing it, having someone come up with the required baseplate for flat towing is not on the radar until after production is well under way.

I also would like to have a simple method to transport the car behind my RV. It would make a great toad!

[dan-stevens]

I assume that this is a RPM limitation on the motors. I know with the Chevy Spark that you mentioned, that was the reason for the speed limitation (and the fact the battery would die in 5 minutes at that speed).

I personally have no desire to drive this thing over 110MPH, so I’m okay with that. In fact, I’d prefer the opposite, set the upper limit to 110, but give me a way to limit lower (which I would only use for kids if I let them drive it).

[dan-stevens]

Given that my hypothesis that this potentially could open up Aptera for a credit, and if so, and if Aptera creates Aptera Finance (no normal lease company will do these leases) then yes, you could.

What the Treasury Department announced is consumers can in fact get the $7500 credit applied to a lease of an EV that does not qualify for other reasons, such as not made in the US, doesn’t meet battery specs, etc.

Because in a lease, the actual purchase is done by a business, the finance company, not the individual, it qualifies under the business terms which are far more lenient now than the purchase terms.

So, if a whole bunch of stars align and that alignment doesn’t cause a Tsunami, then yes, you should be able to lease for 3 years and then buy it.

[dan-stevens]

Not sure, but I think the grant money is given out as reimbursement to expenses. I doubt they are given the cash upfront. Perhaps they will get a partial advance and then as they account for the spend in an approved way, they will get more. Not sure how it will work.

There are a lot of stipulations on what it can be spent on and you can bet California will monitor that pretty heavily.

[dan-stevens]

Interesting…

Wish I understood how to do this kind of math!

I know when the Nissan Leaf first came out, a lot of owners wanted to join the 100 mile club (100 miles on a single charge, car was rated for 80’ish). They would literally drive for 3+ hours at 30-40 MPH, which sort of mirrors your statement of optimal speed.

I always just assumed it was balancing a known, this works speed, with the patience of the driver, mixed a bit with bladder control and a touch of you couldn’t run the HVAC system to make it work.

I know from my SparkEV, Bolt, Tesla that driving at 30-40 MPH gets me FAR more range than 70+ but always assumed driving slower would be better except I didn’t really have patience to drive slower for any real distance.

[dan-stevens]

I wonder if they would post some of their virtualization software renderings?

They have shown glimpses of them in various videos, would be interesting to get a better walk through of them.

That said, my experience with multiple EV’s is between 50 and 70mph, you can see a marked drop in efficiency, then above 70, it really drops like a rock.

This part of class I remember though, aero drag is the square of the speed, so it makes sense that as you go faster, the tail turbulence is going to increase causing less efficiency. Just the point you really notice it can vary a bit I guess.

[dan-stevens]

As I understand it, planes are generally calculated for optimal speed based on friction drag which makes sense, you need lift.

Cars are calculated based on wake drag, which is mostly the turbulence created by moving the car.

Since you don’t need lift for a car, the most efficient aerodynamic speed of a car is basically as slow as you can drive it. Other things will make this not the most efficient overall speed, but for aerodynamics, it seems that simple.

And yes, planes have significantly different rules because you want them to get off the ground. Formula 1 cars have their own set of rules as they have significant both friction and wake drag.

That said, its been a LONG time since I studied fluid dynamics. I’m open to being told I’m missing something obvious.

[dan-stevens]

Prepay isn’t an issue, it is based on where you take delivery, i.e., where are you handed the keys.

In checking on this further, there may be a way for Aptera to work around it by having an ‘office’ in your state. Not sure they would be willing to do that since it involves more than just renting a box at the local MailBoxes etc, especially when it comes to cars. But better minds than mine can figure that out.

I wouldn’t worry about it to much till it gets closer to delivery time but my point in this was simply to be smart and ask the question up front about how taxes on the car will work when you pick up a car in a different state then where you live.

Please note, this isn’t an Aptera issue, outside of them making the cars in California, at least initially, and California likes to collect taxes.