As the team continues to advance the build of our first design intent vehicle, we are planning a number of programs intended to open Aptera up to you, our family, and our community. Read below to get info on our upcoming town hall that we’ve planned especially for you. Also, feel free to stop in for our March 27th community event as we bring North San Diego County up to speed with what Aptera is, and why we are here.
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Fun time with “Flo”
The Aptera team took a trip up to Hollywood to show off PP8 (our chassis development mule) to, Progressive Insurance spokeswoman, “Flo” in a made for internet commercial. It’s all part of Progressive Automotive Insurance’s campaign to promote awareness of the Xprize competition.
In the 5-minute interview, Aptera’s Chief Marketing Officer, Marques McCammon, sat down with “Flo” to give her a high level overview of Aptera and the 2e.
“It was a fun way to support the competition,” said McCammon. “It’s not often that you get to do something meaningful for society and promote it in a way that is interesting and lighthearted.”
There is no word yet as to when the “web-i-sode” will go live, but keep your eyes open for this and other communications promoting the Progressive Automotive Xprize. We invite you to spread the word so that we can all make the Xprize competition a force of change in the automotive world.
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Live chat with Aptera
Mark your calendars for Friday, March 19th at 1:30 pm. The Aptera marketing team will be hosting a real-time (virtual) town hall on our blog site, http://www.aptera.com/plugin.php. This 1-hour session is intended to give you, the Aptera family, the opportunity to dialogue directly with members of the Aptera team to share your ideas and get answers to some of your more pressing questions.
The format of the town hall will be that of a forum. You will be able to post questions or comments for the team to review and respond to. During the session, we will attempt to address a wide range of discussion points from various participants.
Our goal is a very open and positive exchange where we can all come away from the event having gained insights that will lead to a better Aptera. We hope you’ll join us.
Tech talk: A peek inside the 2e battery pack
After a great deal of testing and research, Aptera has finally settled on its production battery solution. In fact, the “battery gauntlet,” developed by Aptera co-founder Steve Fambro, turned away more than a dozen different suppliers and chemistries before the team arrived at the final solution.
Today, the production battery used in the Aptera 2e consists of more than 300 individual, prismatic pouch-type, high-power lithium ion cells, which are based on phosphate chemistry and configured into several modules. Each module contains cells carefully connected to provide an optimal operating voltage. The complete battery pack, as shown above, provides the 2e with an excess of 200 volts for the traction system. This particular production intent battery pack will make its world premier in our Xprize competition vehicle.
The unique design of the production batteries allows them to have an extraordinarily long cycle life. Most competing lithium ion battery technologies advertise good performance and operation of up to 1,000 to 2,000 recharge cycles. Test data demonstrates that the Aptera batteries should deliver at least 1 and ½ times as many recharge cycles, even when exposed to abusive conditions. Our selected battery technology can also deliver aggressive depths of discharge, so you don’t have to worry about damaging the battery pack.
Lastly, our Aptera battery pack does not use a complicated cooling systems. By avoiding such systems, Aptera is able to prevent considerable expense as well as the wasted energy associated with operating them. This factor was critical in our selection of this battery technology and reinforced our goal to assure we are putting as much of the vehicles energy toward driving use as possible.
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Xprize Update: Aptera passes tech deliverable 2
Our team continues to move forward in the competition. Just this week we got word from the Xprize judges that our team has passed the second technical deliverable. Make no mistake; there is no rest for the team. The next deliverable is just a month away and this one is designed to insure that the team and vehicle are race ready. We’re charged up and are putting our plans together to help bring you into the action. Stay tuned.
Read more at
Source: Aptera
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[...] USA: Aptera Newsletter March 2010 | 4EVRiders.org – Charging … The Aptera team took a trip up to Hollywood to show off PP8 (our chassis development mule) to, Progressive Insurance spokeswoman, ?Flo? in a made for internet commercial. It's all part of Progressive Automotive Insurance's campaign to … Source [...]