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The Power of "Simplicate" There are tremendous advantages in simplicating, rather than complicating. By simplifying a vehicle, you reduce weight. If you reduce weight, the brakes can be smaller and lighter, wheels and tires can be smaller and lighter, etc. So the vehicle becomes lighter yet. Suppose you further simplify by picking a reasonable top speed (rather than the 130 mph that even a plain-Jane Honda Accord is designed for.) That makes a huge reduction in engine size possible. With lower speed, brakes and suspension components can be smaller and lighter. As the car becomes lighter, the need for power steering and power brakes disappears. That, of course, saves more weight. Less weight means an even smaller engine is required. Suppose you reduce frontal area, and make the car more streamlined. Even less power is required. Pursue this kind of thinking far enough, and you end up with the mc2. Although the gasoline/ethanol engine in the mc2 can produce 11 hp (itself a tiny amount in automotive terms) it actually operates at a constant 8 hp, where it is optimally efficient. Need to accelerate quickly? The combined 30 hp of the electric motors driving the front wheels can get you to 60 in 10 seconds.
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Tandem Seating? Tandem seating has several advantages, the most obvious being that it's more fun to ride with your girlfriend's legs around you. But right behind reason number one is this: the frontal area (and therefore aero drag) can be lower with tandem seating. Lower drag means better MPG, and therefore less CO2 per mile. But the most important reason for your health and happiness is this: Safety. Our patent-pending Side Impact Protection System offers far more crush space than on any car. When a car hits the mc2 from the side, the point of initial contact is about 18" from the driver’s shoulder, instead of the more typical 4". The impact wings absorb the crash energy by deforming these crush zones before the guard beams (part of the frame in the mc2) are contacted. In a conventional car, the door guard beams are contacted almost immediately, so no energy dissipation can occur. The typical car is knocked out from under the occupant, who slams into the door with too-often lethal force. All cars have crush zones front and rear. Only the mc2 has side crush zones -- and tandem seating enables these zones to be quite large, making them very effective.
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Cogeneration Vehicle Charging System Our patent-pending Cogeneration Vehicle Charging System can charge up your mc2 by using a natural-gas-powered generator. That may seem like an odd idea, but with a cogeneration system, you can brew your own electricity far more efficiently than the power company does (unless you are lucky enough to have all your electricity generated by wind, solar or hydro power). In our cogeneration system, the engine driving the generator is the same dismally inefficient engine type used in cars, lawnmowers, and power equipment. About 25% of the fuel goes into mechanical power, and the rest goes off as waste heat. But suppose you collect that waste heat, and use it to heat domestic hot water. Then what was waste becomes valuable. It happens that if you use your mc2 about 30 miles per day, the “waste” heat generated overnight as the vehicle is charged will heat enough water for a family of 4. If the system runs to heat water when there is no charging demand, then the electricity is sold back to the power company, through an inverter. Such a system can have an overall efficiency of 85% or even 90%. Nationwide, electricity is generated at 32.8% efficiency, mainly from coal. (The best natural gas fired plants are about 60% efficient.) Honda makes a cogeneration unit for home use for which they advertise 85% efficiency. Whispergen makes several units advertised at 90% efficiency. We believe we can build an economical 85% efficient unit purpose-built for vehicle recharging. Natural gas is cheap and abundant – but not so abundant that you should throw it away. A cogeneration unit offers a supremely efficient means for powering both your vehicle and your hot water tank from natural gas. Certainly, solar, wind, and hydro should be your first choices, but those choices are not available everywhere. For all those other places, our Cogeneration Vehicle Charging System is a remarkably efficient alternative.
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The Folly of Rear-Wheel Drive The only safe handling trikes have two wheels in front. Much has been written about this elsewhere, so I won’t elaborate. Given two wheels in front, then it seems to make sense to power a single rear wheel – it is certainly the cheap way to go. However, if you think seriously about the requirements of a commuter vehicle, you’ll decide that front wheel drive is safer in any panic or low-traction situation. Skilled, alert drivers can handle oversteering cars safely. Old Porsches can be fun to drive. But for typical drivers on the way to work with only one coffee in the system, oversteer can be, and has been, a killer. Ralph Nader’s famous book, “Unsafe at any Speed” was about the unsafe oversteering characteristic of early Corvairs. If a designer puts enough weight (50% or more) on a single rear wheel for good slippery road traction, then the vehicle will be prone to oversteer, especially on slippery roads, but even in panic maneuvers on dry roads. If instead, the designer drives two front wheels, and puts 60% of the weight on the front wheels, then the vehicle will naturally understeer (a much safer condition) and traction on slippery surfaces will be better as well. A rear wheel drive trike is essentially useless on snowy roads, where snow gets pushed into the center of the lane, right where the drive wheel rides. The Aptera people, wisely, do not recommend their vehicle for mountainous or slippery roads. We are aiming for a little different market, in which commuters expect practicality and safety. Our drivers are far more likely to use the mc2 to get back and forth to work than for cruising Sunset Boulevard in the sun, looking eco-cool.
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