Watch a Solar-Powered EV Road Trip Route 66
A wild, three-wheeled eco-mobile has just been put to the test on a 300-mile drive along America’s most famous road.
The Aptera is ground-breaking sun-powered electric vehicle that will soon be on sale and, in the right conditions, owners may never need to plug it in. With 700 watts of solar panels on the car’s roof and bonnet around 40 miles of range can be added with sunlight alone.
For longer journeys there’s a 400-mile battery pack, or even a 1,000-mile option, which can be topped up at a charging station. Those numbers may seem incredible, but the Aptera is built from ultra-light carbon fibre and its slippery shape is said to be even more aerodynamic than a land speed record racer. It’s no slouch either, with a 201 hp electric motor giving the Aptera a top speed of just over 100mph.
As part of a rigorous development program Aptera’s co-CEO Steve Fambro took the latest prototype on a road trip along Route 66 from Flagstaff, Arizona to Imperial Valley, California, to prove its practicality and performance.
“Route 66 is a fantastic road, because it's not very traveled, and the scenes are just out of this world.,” he says. “It's a path not really taken, and that's one of the reasons we want to do it this way. When Route 66 was first proposed in the 1920s the idea of a single, continuous highway linking Chicago to Los Angeles seemed almost impossible, but visionaries like Cyrus Avery pushed forward, believing in something bigger than the road itself, believing in what it could unlock from the world, and they did it. Route 66 became one of the most iconic highways in America, proving that what once seemed improbable, would become inevitable. I think about that a lot with Aptera. We're building something, people say can't be done. The history shows us the boldest ideas, the ones that challenge the status quo, are the ones that truly change the world.”
Apparently some 48,000 potential buyers are already convinced and have reserved one of the $40,000 Launch Edition models. Watch the video of the Aptera Route 66 road trip and judge for yourself.