I've been on their Discord since the company broke silence last June. CEO, CTO, and lead engineer have been very active about explaining design choices they've made, asking the people what they want on specs that haven't been nailed down yet, etc. Lots of innovations going on beyond what you can see from those shots and on that video. I'm pretty impressed with their strategy and cautiously optimistic that they'll deliver an amazing utility to price ratio.
The short distance from the nose to the front row's heels is certainly something to have some doubt about. Waiting to see their crash simulations and such before I make a judgment. Would like to see larger tires as an option, but that may be somewhat limited.
But other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing this thing in person in not too long.
I have been following also the Aptera development, and I can see that designing a new EV is a real daunting task !!!
This mini truck looks like a Japanese Fire Truck... This could be be a very cool truck but I wonder what would be a real maket for it.
My main concern would be the selling price. The price of the Aptera with 25 kWh and 250 miles range is estimated to $26k. But this
mini truck would not be as efficient and would require at least a 40 kWh battery, and an Aptera with a 40 kWh battery woud be $30k.
So
this mini truck would be competiting with the future Tesla Model 2 price range, estimated to be sold at $25k.
I wonder why they would not start with a Model 3 platform, to save cost of designing a new vehicle from scratch,
and make a kind of joint venture withTesla, to build a new vehicle.
Here is a picture showing the dimension of the above TELO/MiNi Cooper compared to a Model 3:
As an example, I was thinking at the
Truckla pickup who uses the bed of an old
Ford F150 welded to a Model 3?
And here is the Truckla pickup to have an idea of what a TELO based on a Model 3 platform could be: