Year: 2024

Aptera Talk: Shameless Commerce (save money reserving a solar car)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Note: Too busy to read this post? I understand. In that case, you can click on the link below to save $30 on your Aptera reservation!
https://lz953.isrefer.com/go/preorder/a124831

The title of this post pays homage to Car Talk (Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers).

These two brothers and their radio show transformed the American automobile experience into a humorous discourse. The most practical advice I picked up from the show was this: in order to teach someone how to use a manual transmission, park the car on a level, empty parking lot and have the person depress the clutch pedal, put the car in first, and slowly engage the clutch without touching the accelerator pedal. It works (I tried it)!

The brothers referred to their merchandise as “shameless commerce,” including this cute mug,

No Factory Recalls. So far.
“No Factory Recalls. So far.”

Now, onto my shameless commerce! As my previous post declared, I reserved a car that I’d like to see on the road:

Aptera home page

The reservation costs a refundable $100 and purchases a place in the queue in order to obtain an Aptera when they are produced (starting 2025). My friend, Marc, is #800 in the queue. I’m #70,000. I’ll let Marc debug the car so that mine is perfect when it rolls off the production line in Carlsbad, California.

Aptera sent me a link to share with you if you, too, want to reserve an Aptera. You get $30 off, and I get something like $100 credit toward my Aptera if I end up buying one. Deal? Click away—it’s simple. It’s fun, even if you back out before you include a form of payment. At least you get to see a well-designed web site along with the options available with every Aptera.
https://lz953.isrefer.com/go/preorder/a124831

Shamelessly – Louis

Aptera vs. Automobile

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Finally, I found a car about which to be excited—in a positive way. (Yes, huge pickup trucks coming into my bike lane excite me also.)

Note: Too busy to read this post? I understand. In that case, you can click on the link below to save $30 on your Aptera reservation!
https://lz953.isrefer.com/go/preorder/a124831

The Aptera is not in production but the prototypes assure me that it will look similar to this:

Aptera — not sure the oceanside parking spot comes with it.

Trust me, it’s not the space-age look that excites me…the look is largely the result of the wind-tunnel design that allows the vehicle to get incredible mileage. The Aptera is solar powered, so if you park it in the sun one day (easily done in Colorado), the battery receives 40-miles worth of power. That’s nearly free driving if the car’s already paid for (or if you steal one). The battery you charge can provide 1,000 miles before it needs a new full charge (preferably with a charging station unless you want to leave the car in the sun for 25 days). The gasoline equivalence of the Aptera’s efficiency is approximately 350 miles per gallon.

How do you buy one? There’s a waitlist. I’m in that queue: #78,145, expected delivery, 2025 (prob. Dec. 31 at 11:59). The reservation requires a $100 refundable deposit. I’m tempted to reserve a second one for reasons I cannot find. The car will cost me ~$33,000 according to the current estimation. I selected the 400-mile battery because I don’t want to drive 401 miles or more in one spell. Also, I ordered a custom color so that I could get a brightly colored car to help the huge pickup trucks see me.

I’ll end this post with a list of advantages and a couple of optional videos:

The Aptera is classified as a motorcycle/autocycle and therefore requires…

  • a motorcycle license tag (cheaper)
  • motorcycle insurance (cheaper)

But doesn’t require…

  • a motorcycle driver’s license

Furthermore…

  • It seats only two people but the lengthy aerodynamic tail provides comfortable sleeping space, better than most automobiles (I feel like a salesman at this point)
  • It has an electric motor on each wheel which has advantages that I don’t understand
  • The plan is to put a QR code on almost every part of the vehicle so that you can scan and order a replacement part, installing it yourself or taking it to a local garage
  • It uses the Tesla charging hardware (which has now been adopted as the US standard)
  • It has a 5-star crash rating
  • It has all that smart-car stuff that will drive me crazy since I buy only manual transmission cars until now… but if you knock on the door or the trunk it politely opens automatically, etc.
  • It has a very convincing CEO as the following 49 minute video will show. Although my son thinks all CEOs are convincing, he never worked for some of the ones I have, but this one is:

Here’s a fluffier video (21 minutes with a test drive at minute 12):