This is similar to the way the Volt is going to work. I think the term is "pure series hybrid". Some locomotives use the same technology if I'm not mistaken.

It is a cool idea because there is no need of a mechanical drive train to the ICE. Saves on parts, weight and cost.

Series hybrid:

Thanks Big Tuna

I must clarify something - or try.

The Aptera hybrid is not really a 300 MPG vehicle.
Rating its mileage is complicated because it is has two sources of energy:

1. Gas
2. Your wall outlet

The Hybrids we see on the road now are gas-only hybrids.
They never plug into the wall so all electrical energy originally came from gas - so the term MPG makes sense.

The Aptera hybrid system is not like Toyota's or Honda's.
It is a third type called a Series Hybrid, like Big Tuna explained.
The gas engine never propels or even assists in the propulsion of the car.
Only the electric motor turns the wheel, even at top speed.
The gas engine only charges the battery, which in turn powers the electric motor.
This means fewer parts for lower cost and weight and higher reliability.

Now here's the messy part that the media is going to garble up.
As the battery charge goes down the ratio of energy coming from gas vs. the wall outlet gradually changes.
The gas just extends the length of the charge that you originally got from the wall outlet.

Aptera says when batteries are fully charged it “is getting” about 300 MPG.
When charge is low it “is getting” as bad as 130 MPG.
But Hold It!
You can't really say that.
It is always being powered by a combination of energy from the gas and the wall outlet.

At any instant you might be able to calculate the MPG and the Miles Per Watt, but nobody can say what MPG it gets overall.
Even the MPG term is misleading and incomplete for this vehicle.
After a tank/charge you must report MPG and Miles Per Watt.

Still, it's not like they are ripping you off saying it gets 300 MPG.
Cost-wise it may work out to even lower cost than 300 MPG for gas alone.
Their electric-only model goes about a mile on one penny of electricity.
So the cost contribution of the energy you use from your AC outlet is very low.

Need fewer troops to support.
Drive a hybrid.
Best tank 71.65 MPG.

Before this car I spent two years learning hypermiling on my 2004 HCH1.

Here's a visual reference from Honda, differentiating parallel, combined, and series hybrids:
http://world.honda.com/automobile-technology/IMA/ima02/

Id like to think of it as a patriotic versus patronizing remark.

Aptera, Kenny and others are putting up $$ to drastically reduce the use of petroleum for driving in California - thats good. I hope they are both sucessfull and that Aptera type technologies can grow to all the other states as well.

I hope that Kenny and other early adopters dont pay attention to critics of the Aptera but are vocal supporters now and when they can share just how well the vehicle is performing.

I do know that sheep get fleeced.

You do apparently get it basically. The Aptera still looks like a cool vehicle.

It's not that complicated. The media prefers sensation over information. They also are lazy and not skeptical enough. It doesn't take a lot of understanding to be skeptical of the "230 mpg" claim and do a bit of digging on the website. Aptera, itself, could make this information more transparent but it would mean that they would lose publicity (ie, free advertizing). (Yes, I think it's deliberate.)

What you are describing is a "plug-in hybrid". It's also a "serial hybrid" (The Prius is a parallel hybrid.) It appears that, for about $10,000, the Prius can be turned-into a plug-in (it looks like, even with being a parallel hybrid, the Prius is well-suited to be a plug-in). (The Aptera will obviously be more efficient.)
The Chevy Volt is also a plug-in serial hybrid.
Plug-in hybrids solve the severe limitations, terrible range and long "fill up" times of electric-only vehicles, which make electic vehicles not very practical.

It "gets" 300 mpg the same way a Suburban on a flat-bed truck "gets" infinite mpg! The "300 mpg" is a completely fake and meaningless figure!

For discussions of efficiency, that energy must be taken into account. In a discussion of efficiency, the 300 is fake (ie, it's a lie) and the 130 is accurate (ie, it's fair).

Efficiency is one discussion. Cost is another. I was only talking about efficiency. The Aptera is not a "230 mpg" car. It's dishonest to say that it is. Understanding that it is really a 130 mpg car indicates that it is "only" 2 times as efficient as your HCH.

No disagreement with that (as long as we are basing it on facts). The Aptera looks pretty cool and the hybrid version is much more practical than an electic-only vehicle.

Actually, it's simple. If you never plug it in, it is only using one source of energy. If you never plug it in, it gets 130 mpg.

If you are comparing the efficiency of the Aptera to a non-plug in, you use the 130 mpg number.

They are not "ripping you off" but the "300 mpg" number is a lie. Energy-wise, the car is not 4-times as efficient as your HCH. It's only 2 times as efficient.

There are certainly big advantages to being able to plug it in.

I agree!

... and a lot could happen before it actually reaches production volumes in the hands of the customers. For example, consider the impact of a Toyota PHEV based on the concept car that was shown in Chicago this year, clearly somehing way beyond a design exercise.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/02...he-toyota-1-x/

This 925 pound car is a lot lighter than the Gen II Prius, and not not so small for an electric. With only a 500cc engine and Li-Ion batteries it should be quite capable of 90 MPG+ at typical communte ranges. The chassis is mostly composite like the Aptera, but the price and coolness factor will be way down -- and probably more acceptable to J.Q . Public, family man.

Radical designs like the Aptera usually take a while to catch on except for a few early inovators (probably including me, in this case).

It is the ignorant among us that will eventually destroy us all.

Not to be overly picky but it is generally accepted that the Prius is a "combination" or "series/parallel" hybrid.

From Wiki:

The way I view an EV is that it would be recharged over night (like a cell phone) and used only for short range trips (like back and forth to work) so an EV would never require a fill up away from home.

Firefox includes a built in real time spell check BTW. It is a nice feature that makes spelling errors less likely. My spelling is horrible so I love that feature.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

That makes sense (it's not picky). (That isn't important to the points I'm making.) It looks like the Prius is "plug-in ready", unlike (as far as I can tell) the HCH.

This limits EVs to being a second car (they might work as the second car in a two car family) or for people who never use their cars for longer trips. This means that the market for EVs will be small (for a fair number of years) since it would be hard to find an economic justification for the extra $20,000 cost of the second car to save a little bit on fuel costs (about $50/month).

Given the tiny range of an EV (about 40 miles), the range probably has to be about twice the round-trip mileage of the commute to make running out of juice unlikely. The current limited range of EVs is like always driving with no more than 1-2 gallons of gas.

You never forget to plug your cell phone in?

For a bit of extra cost, a plug-in hybrid can work for most people as their only car and has pretty-much all of the advantages of an EV and none of the downsides.

(Complaining about spelling is a bit lame. I'd have less problem spelling if I didn't have spinal cord damage.)

Aptera is saying their EV will have a range of about 120 miles.
I think that is enough to accommodate most people's daily driving.

They say their hybrid's range will be about 300 miles.

Need fewer troops to support.
Drive a hybrid.
Best tank 71.65 MPG.

Before this car I spent two years learning hypermiling on my 2004 HCH1.

That range is very good for an EV.

Anyway, it's not really the daily driving that is the problem. If you do any weekend trips with any sort of frequency, even that range is not enough. That means, the EV Aptera is limited to being a second car for an extra $20,000. (While one could rent for longer trips, doing so once a month or so would eliminate any savings you'd have. Plus, it would be inconvenient to rent so often.)

Many more people could deal with the $30,000 hybrid Aptera as their only car.

The hybrid range is "only" OK but, since it takes only a few minutes to fill-up, it isn't really much of a limitation.