2009 Aptera 2e Three Wheel Car is a Tourist Attraction in San Francisco

If you're the kind of person who loves to be the center of attention, the Aptera 2e is the car for you. The three-wheel, two-seat electric car draws a crowd everywhere it goes.

We discovered this Tuesday as we drove the 2e around downtown San Francisco, where the car literally stopped traffic. People pointed. They snapped pictures. They asked "What is it?" and "How much?" One person asked, in all seriousness, if you can drive it under water. Another asked, perhaps inevitably, "Can it fly?"

"It flies right past gas stations," replied Paul Wilbur, president and CEO of Aptera Motors. The line came out so quickly you get the impression he's used it before.

But as odd as the 2e looks -- and we'll get to that in a moment -- it's a real car that rolls silently into driveways by the end of the year.

The 2e is about the size of a Honda Civic on the outside and a Honda CRX on the inside. It seats two people in relative comfort and has enough room to haul three sets of golf clubs or 22 bags of groceries. Wilbur knows this because he loaded that many in there himself.


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