At home / while visiting
Because of Aptera’s extreme efficiency (10 miles or 16 kilometer per kWh) even the simple 3.3 kW on-board charger can get you 33 miles (or 52.8 km) of range per hour. This means using a normal 220V socket with a 16A fuse is enough for adding more than enough range overnight.
Let’s say on a workday you come home at 18:30h and leave the house the next morning at 07:30h. This means you’ll be able to charge your Aptera at home for 13h, which results in an added range of 429 miles, or 686km. This basically means you’ll never have to use a fast charger if you leave from home.
Another scenario is that you might go on a long road trip (eg. a holiday) and you’re going through more remote areas where there are no chargers for electric cars. With Aptera you’ll be able to fully charge your vehicle overnight if you just ask someone if you can plug into a normal outlet.
On the road
Aptera will be able to DC fast charge with a rate of at 40–60kW. Now, that doesn’t seem like a very high number compared to other brands, but when you take into account that Aptera needs much less energy per mile, it proves to be more than enough. 50kW results in a charging speed of 500 miles or 800 kilometers of range per hour.
When going on long trips, travelling at 60 mph or 100km/h, you’ll need to take a 30 minute break every 4 hours. Let’s be reasonable, that’s the minimum for safe travelling anyway.
Now, there are EV’s that charge even faster. However, very high charging rates are bad for your battery, charging losses increase, they require extreme infrastructure (expensive and bad for the environment) and in reality, the charging rates are often not achieved at all, for instance because multiple vehicles are charging at the same time. Aptera’s 50kW will be achieved much more easily, which means your planning becomes a lot more dependable.
Also, because Aptera’s architecture only has to run on 380V (faster supercharging requires higher voltages and more expensive batteries), the vehicle remains affordable to make.
Solar
Here comes the best part. If you choose to get the full solar package and you’re able to park your vehicle in the light, you’ll be getting most of your driving completely for free. Even in countries with lower sun intensity like the Netherlands, you’ll be getting around 10,000km of free driving every year (unless you park it in a garage of course).
Check out how often you have to charge based on your daily driving and location on the Aptera US website.
A lot of us will only ever have to charge on long trips and your battery will last a long, long time.