Aptera has already shown several times it has a very unconventional approach to personal transportation. The solar trike tackled all three pillars of energy efficiency at once: mass, aerodynamics, and propulsion. This is why it has a body-in-carbon (BINC) instead of a body-in-white (BIW). The startup announced the C.P.C. Srl would help it with that.
Created in 1959 as Modelleria C.P.C. in Modena, C.P.C. Srl evolved into one of the world’s best composite components companies, working as a supplier for BMW, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and many other carmakers. Aptera is the latest one to join the pack.
C.P.C. Srl will produce all the six parts that compose the Aptera body in the Italian Motor Valley in Modena. Most of these parts will be made with a technique called Carbon Fiber Sheet Molding Compound (CF-SMC), which allows them to be press-molded. According to Aptera, that “substantially reduces manufacturing time for the BINC and allows Aptera to begin delivering vehicles to customers more quickly.”
If you think reservation holders will get the solar trike in 2022, that is not the case. The first deliveries are still scheduled for 2023. Aptera did not disclose if it intends to make these parts in the U.S. in the future or if they will always come from Italy. Apart from manufacturing these parts, C.P.C. Srl also helped Aptera develop them.
The startup revealed that it now has 37,000 reservations for the solar trike. In January, we wrote that if Aptera kept receiving 2,000 preorders per month, it would reach production by the end of 2022 with 35,000 reservations. As you can see, the preorder pace was faster than we could anticipate. For Aptera, that is fantastic news.
Now that Aptera has a BINC supplier, we should soon see the Delta version of the solar trike. In other words, it should hit production status shortly – the most critical suppliers have already been defined.
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