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PI builds starting for validation is what was just announced, this is exciting!. What’s your thought for oncoming milestones between now (March 2024) and first delivery? My guess goes like this:

Q2 – Q3: PI build & validation; greenlight for vendors to tool up

Q3 – Q1 ’25: Plant equipment purchase, pre-production builds, recruiting & training

Q1 ’25: 1st delivery

Q1 ’26: 5,000th delivery

Q3 ’26: 10,000th delivery

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Quid Pro Quo – No DC fast charge ADVANTAGES

Agree DC fast charging is very important, will drive many people from the purchase and will impact resale value too. My use case considers no road tripping, or road trips of 400 miles or less total. I live in the south where I’m not worried about range loss in cold weather. And there are advantages I see with L2 only:

1. I will likely get my Aptera much sooner, as I think many (or most) people will not take the launch edition, will instead wait for this feature to be made available

2. Battery degradation with L2 only should be very minimal, pack should basically last forever (check stats on Chevy Volt battery longevity. No DC for that car, and battery failure rates were basically zero).

3. Simpler & lighter vehicle: I personally suspect skin cooling is insufficient for handling certain fast charging scenarios, with car parked in hot asphalt for instance. I suspect fast charging will require a radiator to heat exchange air, pulling from the cowl. Car will need a fan, longer coolant circuit, ducting to route air from cowl to back of car, heavier electrical components, etc. Maybe tie in air conditioner to battery thermal management. Cost, weight, complexity. Tough luck retrofitting this!

All in all I still no DC is a strategic mistake for Aptera, but for me this might as well work out great!

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Anyone heard whether solar hatch will come out at first? On my configuration I have it off, as I think rearward visibility and plain daylight inside would be nice, but it’ll be back on if it helps me get it faster.

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Kids growing, need an extra car. I’m probably losing my Mazda CX5, will use the Aptera as my daily.

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A. I think first delivery will be next year, unfortunately. Remember 9 months for tooling lead time, that time starts after PI. Once tools are ready they will build validation pre-production units. If they sell those it will be to employees, who will help debug the thing, for software and for NVH.