The Tacita T-Race Rally will appear at Dakar

[advrider]

Tacita intends to debut the 2020 version of its T-Race Rally at Dakar next month, but it won’t be running the entire race. Instead, it’s only going to do a one-off entry into a special section.

According to Tacita’s Facebook page, it plans to enter the T-Race Rally in the Qiddiyah Grand Prix, which is a sort of 20-km special at the Dakar’s end that doesn’t actually make any difference in the rally’s standings. So, it’s not actually entering the race.

Tacita says it will bring the T-Race Rally to the Jeddah Dakar Village at the event’s start, to every bivouac along the route, and to the final day at Qiddiyah. Along the way, fans can test the bike, says the Facebook post, and check out Tacita’s solar-powered recharging station.

Based in Italy, Tacita also has cruiser-style motorcycles in its lineup, along with enduro and motocross offroaders. Tacita’s been working on the T-Race Rally for many years, actually entering an earlier version of the bike in the 2012 Merzouga rally. The current version of the motorcycle supposedly has a 220-km range, and output equivalent to 59 hp.

That sounds pretty decent, but would it be enough to finish Dakar? The answer is no. For now, electric motorcycles just aren’t capable of matching gasoline-powered rally bikes in their ability to pound out mile after mile in the desert. The electric machines just don’t have the battery range.

However, the ASO (organizers of Dakar) are keen to move towards alternative energy, or at least be seen as such. The T-Race Rally will appear on a “New Energy” Podium at the race’s start in Jeddah, and Tacita says it has plans for the rally in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Plans to once again ride a simple 20-km section and haul a solar panel array to every bivouac? Or plans to actually race? We’ll see.

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