You can’t pay too much attention to the graphic details in these kind of presentations if they are not called out in the text. My wife does tech presentation graphics and I do R&D. The designer starts with the old presentation and edits it and it takes time to generate pretty renders. The engineers always give the graphics person the updated content at the last minute, so text is easy, but new graphics usually require iteration to look professional, so older “pretty” graphics can stick around for a while.
@@LK-pc4sq to be fair, things that hide the part they are showing off. But yes, I am sadly more interested in how to make all the tether connections work well in these designs vs a motor in a wheel.
@@robertd9850 Of course I'm wondering if I've hit geezer hood. I sure feel like it when doing my exercises. So Robert; We all know where it ends. When does it begin?
I'm not sure that a lot of information can be drawn off of this earlier graphic. The big walkaways from the webinar presentation are that Elaphe will be building the Aptera's motors, and customizing them for the special requirement of maximum efficiency while driving the lightweight, sleek, Aptera. And also that Elaphe will have matching ramped production of their motors at their new factory to coincide with Aptera's growing needs and pre-order demand.
SOO Much better looking! Spider doesn't need to be so heavy at center of inside. Loads are taken at the Attachments near Rim. Air Cooling, IF ADEQUATE, will remove the Coolant connections out where things take G-Loads. Lighter is So Much Better! EXCITING!
Air cooled motors would be amazing. It would take weight and cost out of the design. Of course, when the vehicle is moving fast when the most cooling is needed, the air stream would be greatest. This may be the result of early testing of the alphas without the cooling hooked up and finding sufficient performance. This would mean that skin cooling only has to cover the battery and cabin heat from the AC system, a much easier task.
@@n.brucenelson5920 The downside would be increased brake maintenance due to exposure to road salt, though no more than other vehicles. But access to the brakes may be more difficult. I hope they use a lot of stainless steel.
@@robertkirchner7981 Due to the light vehicle weight and the use of regenerative braking, the brakes will see little use. It may take hundreds of thousands of miles before the pads would need service.
@@n.brucenelson5920 with the wheel pants really enclosing the wheel, I wonder how much air cooling there would be? The spider design doesn't move to act like a fan blade to move air throughout the rim. The amount of air coming from the bottom/open area of the wheel pant seems to be very limited. Previous renderings showed the wheel cavity to be pretty tight. Hopefully by August we will all know the answer.
@@ddessert6 I by no means think it is a given now that the wheels are air cooled. In fact we may see one of the anti-freeze nozzles in the render. I think we will have to wait and see. What is clear is that with even more efficient wheel motors than the original design, there will be even less heat to remove.
Lightyear's production will be very limited. With a few initial models built now to start giving test drives. And with the full production run for preorders at the $176K price capped at 150 cars in total (with later $265K models to follow in 2023-'24) Elaphe should handle the production load just fine. I really doubt that Elaphe will have any problems producing the handful of motors needed for Aptera this year. And hopefully their new motor production facility will be ramping up by early 2023 to coincide with Aptera's increased production needs.
There appears to be a cooling port just below the the 3 power lines, a little closer to the tire. Where the second port is, I don't know but there appears to be a port there. I'm not certain how accurate the rendering is. The tire for example does not look to be a 195/45 R16. The tire that was rendered was not a low profile tire and the 195/45 R16 would be a low profile tire. Maybe this has changed as well? If I had to guess, the rendered tire looks to be more like a 195/65 R16 but I could be wrong. The new rendering definitely looks to be a weight savings as well as better cooling. I would also imagine that this design allows for better brake dust removal. I don't know the magnetic properties of brake dust but there are some powerful magnates that will attract anything magnetic to them. IF brake dust is magnetic, I can't imagine it being a good thing for the motor. Something that was mentioned a while back was that the motor seals will need to be replaced every 30,000 miles. I have asked Aptera about this and they have not gotten to my question. Does anyone know what the cost might be to replace these seals? I am thinking about an hour in labor for FWD + $80 for each seal. AWD would likely be 2 hours in labor. I'm thinking for FWD that it would cost around $300 unless this is something that can easily be done yourself and at that point it is just the cost of the seals.
@@LanderMaybe so far the significant maintenance items that I have seen are these seals and tires. With very low drag, the major stopping item is the tires on the road. It is not real likely that we will see a significant difference in tire life compared to an ICE vehicle but I really doubt that we will get 80,000 miles on these tires. Probably closer to 40,000 miles. Unlike my Firebird, we will not be able to change tire sizes very easily unless the off-road package actually has a different wheel pant. On the Firebird, I would put the wide performance tires on and in the winter put narrow winter tires on all 4 wheels. Went from 10.5 in wide to 7.75 in. I can't see that as a remote possibility. BTW if Aptera stays with the 195/45 R16, they are 7.677 in wide and are 3.455 in high for a total tire height of 22.909 in.
Thanks for pointing this out but now you know I need to add all these details that to the printable model... Lol project never ends. At least sculpting details is more fun than trying to fix part print integration or mesh errors. The upper left of the control arm confuses me since it appears be be like a foot tall in the render - is that just inside the body?
Part of the motor design is airflow for cooling the brakes. That should also help with removing road debris. They only time I ever see debris build up on my wheels is when I have been driving in the mud. My current vehicle has over 180,000 MI on the wheels and none of them have any debris buildup. And, no I don't wash the wheels. I doubt that the motors will be significantly more prone to accumulating debris.
Exactly, I can picture 20lbs of sand, salt and ice packed into that opening. Not sure how the motor will function and how balanced the car will be. My original plan was to remove the bottom half of the pants leaving the top half with the turning signal and reflectors in the winter. Now from the wheel pants video, I am not sure if that is still doable. I guess I will wait and see when the production model comes out and, but if heated seat does not come, bottom wheel pants cannot be removed, no V2L, rear view camera is covered by winter grime. I am not sure if I will be getting this 😞
I wonder how much suspension tuning needs redoing? At least enough to benchmark the change from the tested motor/suspension to the actual motor/suspension? Changes, even beneficial ones, are the bane of getting a product out the door.
Looking so much forward to see the first SEV´s on the roads of the World. Sono Motors Sion, as a car short to mid range car. Do grocery shopping, take the kids to school / Club and so on. Aptera for extremely long range and Lightyear for kind of both.
I think the company is projecting a 40 year life for the vehicle and a 20 year life for the solar panels. Perhaps 400,000 mile life on the battery packs to 80% of original full charge or better.
@@BlueManRedManYellow that is because traditional ICE cars generate lots of heat. Carbon coking fumes that make there way to seals cook the seals make them turn to plastic so they dont seal. Carbon buildings up behind valves. This design is about as near perfect maintenance free design you will ever see on any car on the road. I imagine the brakes will last 200,000 miles!
@@n.brucenelson5920 incredible. My Fiat 500e’s first real maintenance is at 100k miles and even though Bosch makes the car it still amazes me how wonderful EVs are for mankind.
What you wear when driving is your business... ;-) Seriously though, in many states, you need to have some sort of wheel cover. Taking the wheel pants off will really impact air drag but if you are going off-road and don't care about air drag, you could remove them. For on-road, I believe the front turn signals are in the wheel pant so that might be an issue to be street legal. The beta vehicle has the turn signals in the "hood" area but that is just a test vehicle.
The beta was almost always driven without wheel pants. They have said that the wheel pants can be removed without tools. So, pretty easy, I’m guessing. Also, several people have mentioned taking the wheel pants off when taking it to rougher roads (off-road). Removing the wheel pants will decrease efficiency, particularly at highway speeds.
I'm planning on driving pant-less during the winter or while it's snowing. Although I do know that where I live it is illegal to have completely exposed wheels, therefore I do plan on producing the minimal necessary requirements to cover the wheels with some sort of fender. By the verbiage of the state law that I live in, some sort of mud flaps would be all that I would need or a half fender to cover the wheel to protect from road debris and water spray from interfering with other drivers.
Hey everyone. Once the highway of the future "if we survive man made climate change" has power lines in the road, and they are like the laid out coil of a linear motor, the car wont have to have wheels during long distance widely spaced cars. It will float above the road. the perm magnets will under the car. The wheels could tuck up inside the body of the car and it will float off the magnetic field.
I wish the motor will be as light as possible because as you said a higher unsprung weight has an impact on acceleration, braking, cornering and ride quality. These are the reasons why manufacturers don't use in-wheel motors.
The current motor, wheel, brake and fender weight was 65lbs for the Alpha model, which would have about the same effect as putting 20" wheels and tires on a small, lightweight car. I don't think that it will have much of an effect on the Aptera, but losing weight at the wheels always has beneficial effects on any car's handling and performance. So it is great that Aptera/Elaphe are improving lightness in their design and engineering.
I'm also unsure why it has a spoked hub. Probably does mean less weight but.. that has to get extremely filthy off road?? This needs a very distinct 1 hr deep dive. Please make it so.
6 months ago I emailed Elaphe because I was looking for technical details on the motor that they are designing for Aptera. Specifically I wanted to know what type of motor they are using. This was their reply: Dear Lorne,
Thank you for your interest.
For technical questions you can read publicly available article with information about the technology incorporated into Elaphe motors: www.emobility-engineering.com/elaphe-l1500-in-wheel-motor/.
If you have a specific application that would be related to the development and integration of our units, we are glad to help with evaluation if you can supply us with basic data and development plans.
Best regards,
Elaphe Team Elaphe is indicating that they will use the L1500 motor NOT the M700. In the data sheet they characterize the L1500 as permanent magnet, axial flux, three-phase synchronous AC motor. I believe these motors are NOT efficient at higher speeds. This motor is less efficient as speeds increases due to induced back EMF from the permanent magnets resulting in Eddie current losses in the stator which can cause overheating concerns and possibly lower reliability. Tesla was able to reduce the back EMF with their IPMSynRM motor by adjusting the angle between the stator and rotor when operating at high speeds so that the permanent magnet fields are eliminated by the stator electro magnet fields. An even better solution would be to have a motor that did not have any permanent magnets at all, and this would be much cheaper to build. Such motors include the Switched Reluctance and Synchronous Reluctance motors. The switched reluctance motor is the simplest, cheapest, most robust and can be designed in a pancake shape. This motor has higher efficiency from low to high speeds, without any back EMF and runs cooler. I think Aperta has done a great job of designing a cool looking EV that should be very efficient at higher speeds due to the aerodynamics compared to the completion, but much of that efficiency I fear, will be lost due to the motor design. 10 miles/kwh is meaningless if I have to drive 20 mph to achieve it. If I am on a road trip I will usually be driving from 70 to 85mph and will be disappointed it my range is far lower than advertised. If anyone knows if Elaphe was incorporated a way to reduce back EMF and Eddie current losses at high speeds please let me know. I am a big Aptera fan and I am considering whether I will buy one in the future.
@@ApteraOwnersClub I have seen this video and it does not address motor efficiency at all. This efficiency that is discussed is related to power train losses and takes motor efficiency out of the equation. In a webinar over a year ago someone asked one of the Elaphe guys what is the efficiency of the hub motors. He replied that motor efficiency was not important, but overall efficiency and range is important. Elaphe has been side stepping motor efficiency questions for over a year and a half which I find frustrating. I like everything about the Aptera, but the motors remain a big question mark. I wish we could get better technical transparency from Elaphe.
I think they did that for handling and vehicle dynamics reasons. It would be cheaper and simpler but the performance and handling and safety would suffer.
@@ApteraOwnersClub I have been using three-wheeled vehicles with a single rear motor for many years and have never had any handling problems. There are hundreds if not thousands of "reverse trike" motorcycles on the road in the United States and they don't have a reputation for being unstable. I would definitely be willing to give up performance in exchange for simplicity. The biggest reason I think for front-wheel motors is regenerative charging because the rear wheel looses some traction when the vehicle is decelerating. (My vehicles don't have regenerative braking, or rear brakes.)
Aptera started on this design in 2019. They will be shipping production Aptera before Tesla gets the Cybertruck out. Also Tesla took 6 years to do a simple EV conversion of the Lotus Elise. Aptera has been moving far faster than Telsa has.
Tesla took out tens of billions in investment to make that happen which has been very stressful and resulted in many problems and constant heartache and stress for its investors. They are lucky to have survived the bad press the way they have.
Some people have mentioned that this picture is from an old render in 2019.
You can’t pay too much attention to the graphic details in these kind of presentations if they are not called out in the text. My wife does tech presentation graphics and I do R&D. The designer starts with the old presentation and edits it and it takes time to generate pretty renders. The engineers always give the graphics person the updated content at the last minute, so text is easy, but new graphics usually require iteration to look professional, so older “pretty” graphics can stick around for a while.
I am a former automotive tech. Worked on hundreds of makes/models of vehicle. Like to know where is the caliper? brake lines? Splash shield ?
@@LK-pc4sq to be fair, things that hide the part they are showing off. But yes, I am sadly more interested in how to make all the tether connections work well in these designs vs a motor in a wheel.
Thanks for going into more detail on the motors Steve - Your videos are excellent and do a lot to give a deeper dive into Aptera developments. Thanks
Thanks again Steve. My first and last new car. Let's hope they get most of it right.
Hopefully my last new car as I am approaching geezer hood.
@@robertd9850 Of course I'm wondering if I've hit geezer hood. I sure feel like it when doing my exercises. So Robert; We all know where it ends. When does it begin?
I'm not sure that a lot of information can be drawn off of this earlier graphic. The big walkaways from the webinar presentation are that Elaphe will be building the Aptera's motors, and customizing them for the special requirement of maximum efficiency while driving the lightweight, sleek, Aptera. And also that Elaphe will have matching ramped production of their motors at their new factory to coincide with Aptera's growing needs and pre-order demand.
SOO Much better looking! Spider doesn't need to be so heavy at center of inside. Loads are taken at the Attachments near Rim. Air Cooling, IF ADEQUATE, will remove the Coolant connections out where things take G-Loads. Lighter is So Much Better! EXCITING!
They will probably have an outer aero casing for the control arms. Maybe with the open design the motors are now air cooled.
Air cooled motors would be amazing. It would take weight and cost out of the design. Of course, when the vehicle is moving fast when the most cooling is needed, the air stream would be greatest. This may be the result of early testing of the alphas without the cooling hooked up and finding sufficient performance.
This would mean that skin cooling only has to cover the battery and cabin heat from the AC system, a much easier task.
@@n.brucenelson5920 The downside would be increased brake maintenance due to exposure to road salt, though no more than other vehicles. But access to the brakes may be more difficult. I hope they use a lot of stainless steel.
@@robertkirchner7981 Due to the light vehicle weight and the use of regenerative braking, the brakes will see little use. It may take hundreds of thousands of miles before the pads would need service.
@@n.brucenelson5920 with the wheel pants really enclosing the wheel, I wonder how much air cooling there would be? The spider design doesn't move to act like a fan blade to move air throughout the rim. The amount of air coming from the bottom/open area of the wheel pant seems to be very limited. Previous renderings showed the wheel cavity to be pretty tight. Hopefully by August we will all know the answer.
@@ddessert6 I by no means think it is a given now that the wheels are air cooled. In fact we may see one of the anti-freeze nozzles in the render. I think we will have to wait and see. What is clear is that with even more efficient wheel motors than the original design, there will be even less heat to remove.
I think routing it through the upper makes it less likely to lose power to the wheel due to hitting something, including a deep pothole.
I assume Elaphe first needs to make the motors for Lightyear, whose production timeline seems to be a few months ahead of Aptera.
At $265k for the car, , Lightyear won't need even one truckload of motors for a year's production.
Does Elaphe have motors in mass production, or are they a new company?
I imagine the LightYear will come first because they can afford to pay top dollar.
@@matthewhuszarik4173 true, but in limited quantities.
Lightyear's production will be very limited. With a few initial models built now to start giving test drives. And with the full production run for preorders at the $176K price capped at 150 cars in total (with later $265K models to follow in 2023-'24) Elaphe should handle the production load just fine. I really doubt that Elaphe will have any problems producing the handful of motors needed for Aptera this year. And hopefully their new motor production facility will be ramping up by early 2023 to coincide with Aptera's increased production needs.
There appears to be a cooling port just below the the 3 power lines, a little closer to the tire. Where the second port is, I don't know but there appears to be a port there.
I'm not certain how accurate the rendering is. The tire for example does not look to be a 195/45 R16. The tire that was rendered was not a low profile tire and the 195/45 R16 would be a low profile tire. Maybe this has changed as well? If I had to guess, the rendered tire looks to be more like a 195/65 R16 but I could be wrong.
The new rendering definitely looks to be a weight savings as well as better cooling. I would also imagine that this design allows for better brake dust removal. I don't know the magnetic properties of brake dust but there are some powerful magnates that will attract anything magnetic to them. IF brake dust is magnetic, I can't imagine it being a good thing for the motor.
Something that was mentioned a while back was that the motor seals will need to be replaced every 30,000 miles. I have asked Aptera about this and they have not gotten to my question. Does anyone know what the cost might be to replace these seals? I am thinking about an hour in labor for FWD + $80 for each seal. AWD would likely be 2 hours in labor. I'm thinking for FWD that it would cost around $300 unless this is something that can easily be done yourself and at that point it is just the cost of the seals.
I am not sure Elaphe has an answer yet. They were testing permanent seals, but I don't know if they are happy with the performance yet.
At 30,000 miles, that sounds like something it should be covered by warranty.
@@LanderMaybe Probably not if that is the design life. We will see.
@@LanderMaybe so far the significant maintenance items that I have seen are these seals and tires. With very low drag, the major stopping item is the tires on the road. It is not real likely that we will see a significant difference in tire life compared to an ICE vehicle but I really doubt that we will get 80,000 miles on these tires. Probably closer to 40,000 miles. Unlike my Firebird, we will not be able to change tire sizes very easily unless the off-road package actually has a different wheel pant. On the Firebird, I would put the wide performance tires on and in the winter put narrow winter tires on all 4 wheels. Went from 10.5 in wide to 7.75 in. I can't see that as a remote possibility. BTW if Aptera stays with the 195/45 R16, they are 7.677 in wide and are 3.455 in high for a total tire height of 22.909 in.
I occasionally replace my own trailer tire bearing seals. It costs $11.95 for each seal and takes about 1 hour to do all 4 of them.
Thanks Steve! Your contributions are invaluable!
expanding mass production itself is very challenging. Combining with expanding mass production in suppliers will make the challenge 10 times larger.
That render is from 2019. I think they just grabbed it for the presentation since it was handy.
Oh really? Hmm. I totally misread that then
Thanks for pointing this out but now you know I need to add all these details that to the printable model... Lol project never ends. At least sculpting details is more fun than trying to fix part print integration or mesh errors. The upper left of the control arm confuses me since it appears be be like a foot tall in the render - is that just inside the body?
This is the design from 2019 FYI.
I like the look but I’m worried it might be susceptible to road debris built up over time, thoughts on this?
Part of the motor design is airflow for cooling the brakes. That should also help with removing road debris. They only time I ever see debris build up on my wheels is when I have been driving in the mud. My current vehicle has over 180,000 MI on the wheels and none of them have any debris buildup. And, no I don't wash the wheels. I doubt that the motors will be significantly more prone to accumulating debris.
The new motor concern for me is snow, salt and ice access into the motor head. Here in Northern MN... that open design in this regard concerns me.
Exactly, I can picture 20lbs of sand, salt and ice packed into that opening. Not sure how the motor will function and how balanced the car will be. My original plan was to remove the bottom half of the pants leaving the top half with the turning signal and reflectors in the winter. Now from the wheel pants video, I am not sure if that is still doable. I guess I will wait and see when the production model comes out and, but if heated seat does not come, bottom wheel pants cannot be removed, no V2L, rear view camera is covered by winter grime. I am not sure if I will be getting this 😞
That's an old design from 2019. I'd go off of the Elaphe reviews in mid 2020 which had it enclosed - and the beta design.
I wonder how much suspension tuning needs redoing? At least enough to benchmark the change from the tested motor/suspension to the actual motor/suspension? Changes, even beneficial ones, are the bane of getting a product out the door.
I don't think they're changing it. This is an old picture.
I wonder if they make the disc brakes also since the brakes are actually inside the motor .
Regenerative brakes i thought
@@CautionBlue420 only partially .
I’d hoped they were a little closer to there tried and true
Motor not a total revamp. Hope it works flawlessly by the time they put em in mine.
This is an old render from 2019. I don't think they're changing it between beta and production.
Go to the Elaphe website for details on the testing and certification that these motors are subjected to if you have concerns.
Looking so much forward to see the first SEV´s on the roads of the World.
Sono Motors Sion, as a car short to mid range car. Do grocery shopping, take the kids to school / Club and so on.
Aptera for extremely long range and Lightyear for kind of both.
Man I love this tech! So cool. So what kind of maintenance and life span are expected for Aptera customers regarding these things?
I think the company is projecting a 40 year life for the vehicle and a 20 year life for the solar panels. Perhaps 400,000 mile life on the battery packs to 80% of original full charge or better.
@@n.brucenelson5920 I'd be happy with even half of those numbers. It's crazy how fast new cars break down nowadays.
That may be a recency bias. Today’s cars are actual a lot more reliable than the ones we grew up with.
@@BlueManRedManYellow that is because traditional ICE cars generate lots of heat. Carbon coking fumes that make there way to seals cook the seals make them turn to plastic so they dont seal. Carbon buildings up behind valves. This design is about as near perfect maintenance free design you will ever see on any car on the road. I imagine the brakes will last 200,000 miles!
@@n.brucenelson5920 incredible. My Fiat 500e’s first real maintenance is at 100k miles and even though Bosch makes the car it still amazes me how wonderful EVs are for mankind.
Don’t you think the wires being mounted like that will be under stress when steering? I’m sure they’ve thought of that though…
How many motors are in a small batch?
How many miles would this last in the real world?
I just hope they make it.
Does this motor need cooling? Does anything in the Aptera EV need cooling?
Yes check through my videos I think everything you might have questions on has been covered
Do you know if the rear wheel also runs in-wheel motor?
It does
Yes, on AWD versions. I have ordered 2WD.
Can I drive it without pants? Also, can I take the wheel pants off easily and drive it?
What you wear when driving is your business... ;-) Seriously though, in many states, you need to have some sort of wheel cover. Taking the wheel pants off will really impact air drag but if you are going off-road and don't care about air drag, you could remove them. For on-road, I believe the front turn signals are in the wheel pant so that might be an issue to be street legal. The beta vehicle has the turn signals in the "hood" area but that is just a test vehicle.
The beta was almost always driven without wheel pants.
They have said that the wheel pants can be removed without tools. So, pretty easy, I’m guessing.
Also, several people have mentioned taking the wheel pants off when taking it to rougher roads (off-road).
Removing the wheel pants will decrease efficiency, particularly at highway speeds.
@@ddessert6 Good point about the turn signals. I hadn’t considered that element.
I'm planning on driving pant-less during the winter or while it's snowing. Although I do know that where I live it is illegal to have completely exposed wheels, therefore I do plan on producing the minimal necessary requirements to cover the wheels with some sort of fender. By the verbiage of the state law that I live in, some sort of mud flaps would be all that I would need or a half fender to cover the wheel to protect from road debris and water spray from interfering with other drivers.
"I'm planning on driving pant-less during the winter or while it's snowing. "
That sounds REALLY uncomfortable.
Hey everyone. Once the highway of the future "if we survive man made climate change" has power lines in the road, and they are like the laid out coil of a linear motor, the car wont have to have wheels during long distance widely spaced cars. It will float above the road. the perm magnets will under the car. The wheels could tuck up inside the body of the car and it will float off the magnetic field.
I wish the motor will be as light as possible because as you said a higher unsprung weight has an impact on acceleration, braking, cornering and ride quality. These are the reasons why manufacturers don't use in-wheel motors.
The current motor, wheel, brake and fender weight was 65lbs for the Alpha model, which would have about the same effect as putting 20" wheels and tires on a small, lightweight car. I don't think that it will have much of an effect on the Aptera, but losing weight at the wheels always has beneficial effects on any car's handling and performance. So it is great that Aptera/Elaphe are improving lightness in their design and engineering.
@@deanmcmanis9398 Thanks for the answer Dean. We'll see in real life.
I'm also unsure why it has a spoked hub. Probably does mean less weight but.. that has to get extremely filthy off road?? This needs a very distinct 1 hr deep dive. Please make it so.
This is an old render from 2019. 2020 and betas are mostly enclosed.
Aerodynamics will not be impacted because the wheels are in wheel pants.
The new wheel design will also offer better heat dissipation capability.
This is the design from 2019
6 months ago I emailed Elaphe because I was looking for technical details on the motor that they are designing for Aptera. Specifically I wanted to know what type of motor they are using. This was their reply:
Dear Lorne,
Thank you for your interest.
For technical questions you can read publicly available article with information about the technology incorporated into Elaphe motors: www.emobility-engineering.com/elaphe-l1500-in-wheel-motor/.
If you have a specific application that would be related to the development and integration of our units, we are glad to help with evaluation if you can supply us with basic data and development plans.
Best regards,
Elaphe Team
Elaphe is indicating that they will use the L1500 motor NOT the M700. In the data sheet they characterize the L1500 as permanent magnet, axial flux, three-phase synchronous AC motor. I believe these motors are NOT efficient at higher speeds. This motor is less efficient as speeds increases due to induced back EMF from the permanent magnets resulting in Eddie current losses in the stator which can cause overheating concerns and possibly lower reliability. Tesla was able to reduce the back EMF with their IPMSynRM motor by adjusting the angle between the stator and rotor when operating at high speeds so that the permanent magnet fields are eliminated by the stator electro magnet fields. An even better solution would be to have a motor that did not have any permanent magnets at all, and this would be much cheaper to build. Such motors include the Switched Reluctance and Synchronous Reluctance motors. The switched reluctance motor is the simplest, cheapest, most robust and can be designed in a pancake shape. This motor has higher efficiency from low to high speeds, without any back EMF and runs cooler. I think Aperta has done a great job of designing a cool looking EV that should be very efficient at higher speeds due to the aerodynamics compared to the completion, but much of that efficiency I fear, will be lost due to the motor design. 10 miles/kwh is meaningless if I have to drive 20 mph to achieve it. If I am on a road trip I will usually be driving from 70 to 85mph and will be disappointed it my range is far lower than advertised. If anyone knows if Elaphe was incorporated a way to reduce back EMF and Eddie current losses at high speeds please let me know. I am a big Aptera fan and I am considering whether I will buy one in the future.
ruclips.net/video/Pwdv724Kq6Q/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/c4YKIVrUxTM/видео.html
@@ApteraOwnersClub I have seen this video and it does not address motor efficiency at all. This efficiency that is discussed is related to power train losses and takes motor efficiency out of the equation. In a webinar over a year ago someone asked one of the Elaphe guys what is the efficiency of the hub motors. He replied that motor efficiency was not important, but overall efficiency and range is important. Elaphe has been side stepping motor efficiency questions for over a year and a half which I find frustrating. I like everything about the Aptera, but the motors remain a big question mark. I wish we could get better technical transparency from Elaphe.
Why a minimum of two motors? One motor would cost less and be much simpler.
I think they did that for handling and vehicle dynamics reasons. It would be cheaper and simpler but the performance and handling and safety would suffer.
@@ApteraOwnersClub I have been using three-wheeled vehicles with a single rear motor for many years and have never had any handling problems. There are hundreds if not thousands of "reverse trike" motorcycles on the road in the United States and they don't have a reputation for being unstable. I would definitely be willing to give up performance in exchange for simplicity. The biggest reason I think for front-wheel motors is regenerative charging because the rear wheel looses some traction when the vehicle is decelerating. (My vehicles don't have regenerative braking, or rear brakes.)
Looks like a radial flux design.
Bloop
indeed
@@robertkirchner7981 finally someone who gets it lol
So much talk, so little production after 11 years. I wonder if Tesla would have succeeded had they taken this approach.
Aptera started on this design in 2019. They will be shipping production Aptera before Tesla gets the Cybertruck out. Also Tesla took 6 years to do a simple EV conversion of the Lotus Elise. Aptera has been moving far faster than Telsa has.
The previous Aptera company is different. There was no continuous work going on.
Tesla took out tens of billions in investment to make that happen which has been very stressful and resulted in many problems and constant heartache and stress for its investors. They are lucky to have survived the bad press the way they have.
So much BS from mp3lwgm in such a short timeframe. I wonder if he’s paid by the word to bash Aptera.