Toronto, Ontario – In this weekly electric and autonomous vehicle report, Aptera shows solar EVs may be closer to production; meanwhile, Swiss Re and Waymo promote self-driving vehicle safety in a new report.
A sunny outlook
Aptera Motors, the American crowd-funded automotive start-up company based in Carlsbad, California, gave an update this week on its solar-assisted EV, but still haven’t provided a firm timeline for production.
The Aptera 3-wheeler uses integrated solar panels to boost range up to 1,000 miles in some variations, with “enough power to outrun some sports cars,” claims the automaker.
The vehicle will also be able to be charged conventionally with Aptera being the first non-Tesla automaker to adopt Tesla’s NACS charge ports.
Earlier this year, the company claimed to have 40,000 reservations for the vehicle.
Upon launch, the Aptera 3-wheeler will have one motor powering each wheel with a total output of 171hp and a 42-kwh battery pack providing an estimated 400 miles range.
The exact delivery time for the vehicle remains unclear. In its progress report, Aptera said over 60 percent of “the essential equipment and tools” needed to produce the EV’s carbon-fibre body shell have been “completed and commissioned,” but still, consumer release remains unclear.
Tooling is already being used to produce parts for production-intent vehicles that will be used for testing and validation, according to Aptera. This will include fine tuning of suspension and software, durability and efficiency testing of the powertrain, and testing of the airbags and climate control system, the company said. This will be followed by crash-testing, as well as validation of the production line.
Aptera has had multiple false starts. After a previous project a decade ago was canceled. Aptera relaunched in 2020 and claimed that its $25,900 three-wheeler would arrive in 2021.
However, with recent reports, it appears as if the company is the closest it has ever been to putting its vehicle on the market.
Safety first
A first-of-its-kind study on autonomous vehicles has recently been released by insurance-based company, Swiss Re, and self-driving car company, Waymo.
Last year, Swiss Re and Waymo launched a research partnership to define a standard for assessing the risk of autonomous vehicles.
Having now published the data to compare the safety performance of AVs versus human-driven vehicles, the study reveals that overall, AVs outperform human drivers.
Swiss Re was able to produce mileage and zip-code-calibrated (human driven) baselines against which Waymo’s third party liability insurance claims data were compared.
The combined data revealed that in over 3.8 million miles driven without a human behind the wheel, the Waymo Driver incurred zero bodily injury claims when compared with the human driver’s baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles.
Similarly, the Waymo Driver also significantly reduced property damage claims to 0.78 claims per million miles versus the human driver’s baseline of 3.26 claims per million miles.
While there is still a long way to go before self-driving vehicles have the full confidence of all levels of the automotive industry, this report help reveal the potential possibilities of the technology for the future.
