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SYFY WIRE solar power

Meet the electric vehicle that doesn't need charging and drove right out of Blade Runner

By Matthew Jackson
Aptera three-wheeled vehicle

Electric vehicles are advancing all the time, paving the way for the future of road travel with each new breakthrough, but one common concern people who've never driven one have is the idea that they require regular charging, particularly after or even during a full day of driving around the city. Well, the company Aptera is hopefully here to change that with a new vehicle that, according to the company, will usually not require a charge at all. Oh, it also looks like it just rolled out of the future, to boot.

On Friday Aptera revaled a sleek, futuristic new two-person electric vehicle that it's billing as the "first never charge solar vehicle," a three-wheeled machine that looks like something straight out of Blade Runner and "requires no charging for most daily use" thanks to an advanced and powerful solar array that helps keep the battery topped off while you drive. 

OK, so it's not exactly "never charge" depending on what kind of driving you're doing, but the new vehicle does boast a range of up to 1,000 miles per full charge (depending on the model you get), and the solar array can provide "up to 45 miles of range per day" all by itself. Plus, the vehicle boasts some serious power, with the ability to go from zero to 60 in 3.5 seconds, again depending on the model you choose. It achieves all this, according to the company's press release, thanks in no small part to a design that produces a drag coefficient of just 0.13. For more information, check out the video below. 

If you follow the electric vehicle market, you may recall that Aptera previously tried to launch a line of three-wheeled electric vehicles all the way back in 2011, only to sputter after it failed to secure funding for that particular version of its product. Now Aptera is back, they've made more advances in the past nine years, and there's clear enthusiasm for the new phase of their product. The Paradigm and Paradigm+ models of the new three-wheeled vehicle sold out of preorders within a day of the new launch, but that doesn't mean you're out of luck. Preorders are still available for customized versions of the new Aptera vehicle for a refundable deposit of $100. Pricing starts at $25,900 and, depending on the options you choose, could run up into the $47,000 range and beyond. 

Whether you go shopping for the new Aptera or not, be on the lookout for this sleek new things on the road when they're released to their new owners in 2021. An electric vehicle that allows a typical commuter to zip around a city all day without charging once could be a welcome breakthrough on the roadways of the future.