PREVIEW

BY MARK WORGAN

Could the future of motoring be a car that looks like a space age version of the much-maligned Reliant Robin?

One company thinks so - and its bizarre, futuristic, three-wheeler is set to hit the roads this year.

US electric vehicle start-up Aptera Motors has begun building its validation vehicle assembly line, a key milestone towards production at its Southern California facility.

The company, based in Carlsbad, was founded seven years ago with a simple aim: to extract as much energy per mile as possible from a car.

That idea has resulted in the Aptera, a vehicle designed to slice through the air with minimal resistance. Its makers say it achieves the equivalent of about 350 miles per gallon. After several prototype versions, the car is now close to production, with only crash and durability testing needed before it can be certified for use on public roads. The electric car gets up to 400 miles per charge, but with a solar panel roof and dashboard, this means that the average driver may never need to charge for everyday use.

Once fully operational, Aptera’s headquarters is expected to produce between 80 and 100 vehicles a day. Co-chief executive Chris Anthony has said he hopes the car will begin rolling off the production line by the end of the year.
The three-wheeled, two-seat vehicle is not intended as a family car. Instead, Aptera is targeting what it describes as active professionals. It’s a far cry from the three-wheel Robin, and similar Regal, which were long treated as something of a laughing stock, thanks to mockery on shows like Top Gear. The Regal memorably appeared as Del Boy’s Trotters Independent Traders van in Only Fools and Horses.

The new assembly line marks a shift from one-off prototype builds to a repeatable manufacturing process, with engineers and technicians refining the tools and procedures needed to scale up production.

“This marks an important moment in Aptera’s journey,” said Chris Anthony, Co-CEO of Aptera.
“For the first time, our technicians will be assembling vehicles along a defined sequence of stations, using processes developed hand-in-hand with the engineers who designed them.”

Central to the new line is a large precision assembly fixture designed to build Aptera’s carbon-fibre body structure with high dimensional accuracy. The company says this will improve consistency and efficiency, while laying the groundwork for future expansion.

Aptera has been expanding its operations team and continues to recruit engineers and assembly technicians. With body and chassis components now arriving from suppliers, validation vehicles are being assembled using the new process.

“Seeing this line come to life signals the next phase for Aptera,” added Steve Fambro, Co-CEO. “It’s the bridge between our prototype builds and the preproduction and series production systems that we aim to one day use to deliver solar mobility at scale.”

The validation phase will allow the company to fine-tune every stage of assembly, from materials handling to final fit and finish, ahead of customer-ready production.

In its latest funding round the company raised $9 million via share sales - allowing it to forge ahead with production plans.