Cars: Low price, or ultra efficiency?

While the largest Indian car manufacturer, Tata Motors, is setting everything up to launch its Nano model (the cheapest car in the world) to the streets of India later this year, there are other companies which believe that the future success of the car industry does not necessarily reside in making cars as cheap as possible, but making them as efficient as possible.

The latter is the case of a company based in San Diego, California. Accelerated Composites is an organization founded in 2006, and it is still in an entrepreneurial stage of development. However, they came up with a very interesting car prototype: the Aptera (image on the left, click to enlarge), a hybrid model which, according to its developers, will be able to run 330 miles per gallon. That is 126.72 kilometers per liter! That's outstanding compared to any hybrid models available right now, from which I can hardly remember any able to run more than 30 kilometers per liter at best.

I found a very interesting article that talks about the Aptera and its specifications, which is worthwhile reading. It is located in the How stuff works website, and you can access it by clicking here.

If the Aptera is really as good as it promises to be, then that will be a huge leap forward in the history of cars and technology... and environmentalism too.

Image by Accelerated Composites