Safety with respect to an external weight

[OC-LA driver]

There was a prior discussion of roof crush strenth, expressed as a multiple of weight. I was drawing the conclusion that the Aptera might be safer in a single-vehicle rollover accident than other vehicles (or at least less likely to suffer roof crush) if APtera had an ability to support say 4 times its own weight while other vehicles can support only 2 times.

But given the approximate weights of different vehicles (Aptera 1500 lbs, Prius 3000 lbs, Escalade 6000 lbs) I'm wondering about the nastier scenario of something heavy landing on the roof...be it another vehicle, a tree, anything external landing above my head.

In other words, while strong in relation to its own weight, how strong and "safe" is the roof in relation to a given external weight?

Aptera's 300 mpg claim for he plug-in hybrid seems inflated to me, as it ignores electrical power from plugging in. I'd dislike it if Aptera were to claim its vehicle is "stronger" than other vehicles, if that's not true in the absolute sense.

I am very pleased that composites allow high strength-to-weight ratios...just want to know if the group thinks absolute strength is where they want to see it

[KarenRei]

Even if you assume that the Aptera's crush strength is only "twice" what's normal, that'd mean that if you doubled the mass of the vehicle -- 3,000 pounds -- then it would "only" have a normal crush strength.

Composites are nice that way. ;)

I agree completely about the 300mpg claim, though. I've long been a critic of it. They're not the worst violator (the worst I've seen is a "150mpg" SUV that's actually barely over 20mpg), and even the EPA is about to condone this process by considering the Volt as over 100mpg, but it's still wrong.