Aptera Motors has shared another exciting progress update video, giving us our best look yet at its production-intent solar EV out in the real world. The SEV startup recently completed the PI build’s first-ever road trip, traveling over 300 miles using an all-electric battery and free energy from the Sun.
This might be a dumb question, but I think it’s worth asking anyway. How do they deal with the interior of the car getting as hot as a fucking blast furnace? Because if you leave a regular car out in the sun, it becomes like a fucking blast furnace when you open the door. Heat like that can actually cause interior damage, like cracking dashes and stuff. So if you have to leave this car out in the direct sun to charge, how do they avoid this problem? Like, I’m imagining you go to work, and your car is sitting in the work parking lot directly in the sun for hours a day. And it’s collecting power to drive you home, but it’s also massively heating up.
…most cars are left out in the sun already
And cars get far to hot already
So the answer is they deal with it the same way as every other car.
From a quick search I found out they have answers for that on their site:
https://aptera.us/unlocking-the-magic-of-solar-mobility/
https://aptera.us/article/how-does-aptera-perform-in-extreme-heat-and-intense-sun-exposure/
Oh, okay. So I’m guessing that means like the car might turn on and run the air conditioner for a few minutes every hour. Just to cool itself down. That’s what it seems like anyway.
Using some of the incoming power to run the AC seems reasonable. Especially when the battery is above 75% charged. It would be interesting if the AC would go harder for more minutes per hour as the charge level gets higher.
I imagine just running the fans is adequate to keep the temps low enough to avoid damage and would use less power than the AC
They can use some of the solar energy to cycle the air using a fan, or just run the AC if it’s really bad.