Perhaps this will help get the remaining state governments (New York and Arkansas) and the EU to rule that autocycle class vehicles deserve consideration.
This is interesting:"In 2021 we are giving Challenger teams the opportunity to explore the advantages and disadvantages of four wheels versus three wheels."
Challenger class is something Aptera won't be competitive in at all, though, to the point that I suspect an Aptera would DNF - in practice there's 5 kWh allowed in the pack. (It's designed for single-seater purpose-built prototype vehicles that only get solar charging.)
But, I do wonder if Aptera actually announcing a production solar EV two days before the previous World Solar Challenge might have helped cause that change to the rulebooks, even if Aptera is closer in concept to the Cruiser class than the Challenger class...
...interestingly, Aptera doesn't comply with the current rules.
"2.2.1 When driving in a straight line, the solar car must fit inside a right rectangular prism 5000 mm long, 2200 mm wide and 1600 mm high, with the base of the prism coincident with the ground."
88 inches is 2235 mm. (Note that this is a similar, albeit less extreme, issue to the L5e width issue brought up elsewhere on this forum - the current Aptera is extremely wide for everywhere but the US market, and is even relatively wide as far as the US market goes.)
Additionally, being a three-wheeler, Aptera would end up in the Challenger class, where overnight charging would be unavailable.
Interesting. So a special Solar Challenger Aptera would need to be built with narrower wheel tracking.
Of course, Aptera is not optimised in other ways for this challenge. Does the 250 or 1000 mile range battery help if it is not allowed to charge up before the race? Do the standard heavy car wheels with their 100 KW of motors? Also its suspension is way overbuilt if it doesn't need to handle 100+ mph speeds.
I'd still like to see the Aptera race the Lightyear One, though.
If they ran a production class in a similar way to their Cruiser ruleset (Lightyear One actually being the product of a team that competes in the Cruiser class), Lightyear One would have an advantage through having five seats (and therefore able to achieve higher person/km, which goes into the scoring) - they can use up to 2.5x the energy that Aptera uses and get the same energy efficiency score.
Also, don't forget Sion. (I fully expect Sion would... not do well... compared to either Aptera or Lightyear One, given their mediocre aerodynamics.)
(Note that as I said below, Aptera doesn't comply with the current rules due to being 35 mm too wide and doesn't fit in the Cruiser class not having enough wheels. Lightyear One similarly doesn't comply due to being 57 mm too long. And, Sion similarly doesn't comply due to being 70 mm too tall. So, an actual production class would be required for any of the planned production solar cars to be able to enter.)
Perhaps this will help get the remaining state governments (New York and Arkansas) and the EU to rule that autocycle class vehicles deserve consideration.
This is interesting: "In 2021 we are giving Challenger teams the opportunity to explore the advantages and disadvantages of four wheels versus three wheels."
https://www.worldsolarchallenge.org/blogs/2020/11/03/why_do_cars_have_four_wheels?fbclid=IwAR0VfgsuMfMVZLQrVH5aeSfzCpbRVbHnAiUdJ1QEHgk9p-sEd_eGc7JD1D8
...interestingly, Aptera doesn't comply with the current rules.
"2.2.1 When driving in a straight line, the solar car must fit inside a right rectangular prism 5000 mm long, 2200 mm wide and 1600 mm high, with the base of the prism coincident with the ground."
88 inches is 2235 mm. (Note that this is a similar, albeit less extreme, issue to the L5e width issue brought up elsewhere on this forum - the current Aptera is extremely wide for everywhere but the US market, and is even relatively wide as far as the US market goes.)
Additionally, being a three-wheeler, Aptera would end up in the Challenger class, where overnight charging would be unavailable.
Yeh this would be great!
Maybe we could convince them to have a category for production vehicles. It then would be between Aptera and LightYear One. No contest! 🤗