Breakthrough: The Aptera, the coolest car of the 21st century... and BEYOND

By Ashley Lin, Breakthrough Generation Summer Fellow

This post is part of our week-long Special Issue exploring ways to sever the link between transportation and oil by electrifying transportation.

The cars featured so far for electrifying transportation week have been interesting, but they don't look like the Aptera Typ-1!

As a kid, The Jetsons cartoon was my vision of the future. Its portrayal of a life with aero-cars, moving walkways, and labor saving devices sparked my imagination and excitement for the world to come. Other representations of the future were similarly optimistic of human advancement. The future, with its sleek flying cars and space suits was cool. It was sexy.

But that was the early 90's...

Nowadays, futuristic utopias are few and far between. Just take Wall E, a Pixar movie set in 2700, when humans have escaped to outer space after making earth a virtual wasteland. The humans spend their days aboard a spaceship sitting in hovering chairs, drinking French fries out of a cup, and growing fatter by the day. This is the future shown to children of the 21st century.

Recently, however, that vision of a sleek, sexy future was evoked for me once again by a new car design. Produced by a start-up in Carlsbad, CA, the Aptera Typ-1 is a spaceship-like two-seater with three wheels. There are two versions of the car, one being a plug-in hybrid (typ-1h) and the other running solely on electricity (typ-1e). The electric car has 120 miles of battery life, and the hybrid gets about 130 mpg, although Aptera Motors says that number is more like 300 mpg when one accounts for the fact that an average daily trip is less than 120 miles.

The Aptera Typ-1 is not just some model car crafted for looks. It has exceeded many safety standards and is doing well in crash tests. A solar panel on the roof regulates the interior temperature. It has a GPS, keyless ignition, and cargo space big enough to fit a couple of surfboards. The Aptera car can be a family car too, with space for a car seat for when 2 people become 2.5.

The website lets you reserve the electric car when it comes out in 2008, for 500 refundable dollars. As of June 19, there have already been 3000 reservations. I am seriously considering putting my name down as well. Who needs spinners on your car when you've got wings?

The Aptera, which means "wingless flight" in Greek, looks like it came straight from a 1950's depiction of the future. When people in the 50's thought about the 21st century and imagined flying cars, they might not have been too far off. While the Aptera can't fly, its aerodynamic design certainly suggests the possibility. When I see the Aptera, I can once again imagine a cool and sexy future in which electric cars with wings circle tall, shiny skyscrapers.

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