After 20 Long Years, Aptera Finally Has A (Somewhat) Drivable Car

It's not difficult to find examples of young car brands that have been around for less than a decade yet are already churning out thousands of cars per year. Aptera, on the other hand, was founded in 2005 but has never delivered a single car to customers. However, it has now managed to develop a working prototype, which Marques Brownlee was given exclusive access to for an Auto Focus review.

Aptera allowed Brownlee to take the car out on public roads, where some of its limitations quickly became apparent. The car's extremely limited rear and sidewards visibility proved to be a problem, with Brownlee having to rely solely on the wing mirror cameras, as the side window's split design meant that it was tricky to see out of them. Aptera is reportedly planning on fitting a rearview camera to the car, but at the time of the review, it wasn't working, so there was no way to see directly behind the car either.

The unusual teardrop-like design of the car helps make it very aerodynamically slippery, but its stuck-out front wheels also meant that it was difficult to work out exactly where the car ended. At the back, the Aptera only has one wheel, making it look even weirder. Technically, it isn't classed as a car at all — it's instead classed as a motorcycle, which means Aptera can skirt around some of the tougher crash safety regulations that cars have to adhere to.

Aside from its appearance, the Aptera's most unique feature is its integrated solar panels. Its maker touts a 400-mile range for the car and says that drivers who travel less than 40 miles a day won't need to plug in the car at all, as it will be able to recharge solely through solar power. This claim is, at the very least, extremely ambitious, and Aptera hasn't produced any evidence so far to verify this number. A calculation by Wall Street Millennial based on Aptera's preliminary efficiency data suggests that the panels' real-world charging capabilities wouldn't add much more than 10 miles of range per day across much of the U.S.

In his review, Brownlee also found another issue with the solar panels. As well as being fitted to the hood, roof, and rear of the car, the panels are also fitted inside the cabin, at the front of the dash. These additional panels capture the light coming through the car's large windshield, but they were so reflective that they blinded Brownlee when he was driving in bright sunlight. Given that the entire idea of the car is to drive it in sunny areas where it can charge as much as possible, that seems like a pretty significant oversight from the design team.

Now that it has a working prototype, Aptera is moving ahead with testing and validating it, with the goal of eventually getting it into production. However, it's still not clear exactly when the car will reach production, if it ever does. To say that the timelines keep changing would be an understatement: we first wrote about Aptera's EV way back in 2009, when its production date was "pushed back to 2010." The company folded a couple of years later but was resurrected in 2019. In late 2020, Aptera announced that it was opening the order books for its current, solar-assisted EV, with prices starting between $25,000 and $46,000.

Five years later, Aptera lists a $40,000 target price for the car, and its representatives told Brownlee that around 50,000 preorders had been taken. Potential customers can place a preorder for $100. If it reaches the market at its planned price, the Aptera would be roughly on par with an entry-level Tesla Model 3, which has an EPA-estimated 321 miles of range, a well-established service center network, and none of the practicality issues that come with trying to daily drive a three-wheeler with butterfly doors.

One three-wheeled rival is the Can-Am Spyder, but it's significantly cheaper, has a traditional combustion engine, and again benefits from a nationwide network of service centers. That leaves the Aptera in a very niche corner of the market even if it does finally make it to production one day, and that in itself is still far from likely.