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1:30

Hello and welcome to How I

1:32

Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So

1:34

when it comes to cars, the internal

1:37

combustion engine is probably

1:39

going to go away over the next 50 years. Every

1:42

year, electric cars are getting better

1:44

and going farther, but you

1:46

still have to plug them in. So imagine

1:49

a car that can drive without having

1:51

to plug it in at all. A car

1:54

powered by the sun. It's

1:56

not a new idea, but it's a massively

1:58

difficult one. In part,

1:59

because you need a lot of energy

2:02

to power a car. So to solve

2:04

this problem, a team of engineers in

2:06

Southern California have designed a solar

2:08

electric hybrid. It's a car that

2:10

can travel up to 40 miles simply

2:13

on sunlight, and the way they've done

2:15

it is to streamline the design.

2:18

The car is called the Eptara and it's already

2:20

available for pre-order. It has three wheels,

2:23

two seats, and a massive storage

2:25

area in the back, enough for skis in the

2:27

surfboard. Steve Fambro is

2:29

the

2:29

co-founder. He's been thinking about how

2:32

to design cars more efficiently for

2:34

a long time. He actually started

2:36

his career back in 2005 as

2:38

an electrical engineer for a San Diego

2:40

biotech firm called Illumina, and

2:43

the idea for Eptara actually

2:45

came to him while sitting in traffic during his

2:47

daily commute. I'm just doing

2:49

what everybody does in San Diego that

2:51

works south. You

2:53

know, you're sitting on the highway, a freeway, driving 10

2:56

to 15 miles an hour and stopping the traffic.

2:59

I was driving a Ford

3:02

F-150 pickup truck. I was one of those people. I'm like,

3:04

you know. I think it's a best-selling car in the US. It is.

3:06

It's amazing how that is, you know,

3:08

but it's like I used the bed

3:10

of it twice

3:13

before I sold it.

3:14

So I'm thinking to myself, you know, I

3:17

was also a student pilot at the time, so I had

3:19

an understanding of aerodynamics, and I

3:21

was just thinking about aerodynamics and planes

3:24

and looking up at the planes and saying, oh, the planes are flying

3:26

by. I'm staying still, you

3:28

know. And then look at these vehicles.

3:30

They're all boxy, even my own, you know. It's just this

3:33

big, big boxy thing, and

3:35

so I started doing little things like I would fold

3:37

my mirrors back and

3:40

or, you know, let down my tailgate and try and see

3:42

on a long trip if I could get more gas mileage.

3:45

And then,

3:46

you know, I just did some reading, and I said, wait a minute,

3:49

these cars, like 60%

3:52

of the energy is just pushing the air out of the way. They're

3:55

like boxes or pieces of furniture pushing

3:57

air out of the way. They're not made

3:59

for aerodynamics.

3:59

So basically,

4:02

you were just a commuter driving

4:05

a Ford F-150, and also you

4:07

happen to be an engineer, and you were

4:09

just asking yourself why are

4:11

cars designed

4:13

in such a way as to just

4:16

increase

4:18

the drag? Because essentially it means that a Ford

4:20

F-150 probably gets like 17, 20 miles per gallon, if

4:24

that. I

4:26

mean, I'm sure it's better now. At

4:28

the time, I think it was around 14 miles per gallon,

4:30

and I could squeeze out 17 if I

4:33

did all these tips and tricks. But

4:37

you could see, once you ask a question and

4:40

see it in

4:41

the following perspective of basically

4:45

a continuous lineage from sort of Roman

4:47

carts to horse and carriages to modern

4:50

cars, you can see that four

4:52

corners, a wheel under

4:54

each corner, and just various

4:56

manifestations of that. And so it's understandable

4:59

how none of that would really change. It

5:01

would just kind of slightly evolve. And

5:05

I thought what was needed to be the most efficient

5:07

was a rethink of the platform to have

5:10

the least weight and the least aerodynamic

5:13

drag possible.

5:14

And just to be clear, you were just doing

5:16

this as a tinkerer. You had a

5:18

full-time job at a biotech

5:21

company, but you started

5:23

to just draw designs on

5:25

paper for fun? Yes,

5:28

you know, I was my

5:30

wife and I at the time, we didn't have

5:32

any children. And so this

5:34

meant that, you know, Saturday mornings, I could lay

5:37

out my drawings on the living room floor, I could drink

5:39

coffee all day, I could work in the garage,

5:41

you know, without distraction. And

5:44

it was just a hobby. And at some point,

5:47

I thought, you know, I'm probably not the only

5:49

person

5:50

that wants this. I

5:52

should

5:53

think about how would I make this and sell

5:55

it, you know, I'd have to have a business plan. So

5:58

I worked with someone, I've never written a business plan. plan.

6:00

I was an entrepreneur and so

6:02

I kind of started from there.

6:04

And so I guess

6:06

around the same time, in San Diego

6:09

you meet this guy Chris Anthony,

6:11

and Chris had like

6:13

a small business where he made boats? Yes,

6:16

he had a company called Epic Boats

6:18

and he was using these computational

6:22

fluid dynamic tools to make the

6:24

boat have more

6:26

drag, so to make a bigger wake so

6:29

you can have more fun. So he's working on the opposite, that you

6:31

wanted the boat to be more drag.

6:33

You're working on something with less drag, but this

6:36

was for wake boarding, basically

6:38

a specific type of boat designed

6:40

to make wake boarding more fun

6:43

or more exciting, I guess. Yes, apparently

6:45

it is a thing. I didn't even know it was a thing.

6:47

You know, I don't get out much. It's like water skiing

6:50

on like a

6:52

boogie board. Wake board is gonna kill

6:54

me for saying that, but it's sort of like that. Yeah,

6:56

it's kind of like that. You have this this wake in

6:58

perpetuity, you know, that you can sort

7:00

of surf behind or even do

7:03

wakeboard tricks and stuff behind. And

7:06

in Mission Bay here in San Diego, it's

7:09

pretty popular.

7:10

Yeah, you hold on to a rope or yeah,

7:12

like when you're water skiing.

7:15

That's right. So he was working on that, so you

7:17

meet him. He's somebody you feel like, I

7:19

should get to know this guy because he knows how to design

7:21

a boat, so maybe I could

7:24

talk to him about designing my vehicle, whatever it's gonna

7:26

be. Yeah, you know, we both are,

7:29

you know, I had my own shop full of tools,

7:31

you know, welder and mini

7:34

lathe and, you know, I of course

7:36

could make circuits and things like that as well,

7:38

so I was pretty handy myself. He was also

7:41

handy with hand

7:43

tools and he could, you

7:45

know, Chris is a bit of a polymath, you know, so he has many

7:48

different talents. He's actually a finance guy

7:50

by training, but I could see, you know,

7:52

sort of by inspection, I could see the work

7:54

that he's done. He's able to make

7:57

things that he can visualize,

7:59

which which was a really unique trait. And

8:02

as we are talking about some of these problems

8:05

and how we might build the structure, how

8:07

it might need to be shaped to carry the load,

8:10

he could easily

8:12

visualize, whereas maybe I would need

8:14

to do more math to convince myself

8:17

of something.

8:17

All right, so you start talking to Chris, and

8:20

what did you have in mind at that time in

8:24

terms of what you wanted to do? You

8:26

knew you wanted a vehicle that was more energy efficient,

8:29

and were you thinking like a traditional

8:31

car?

8:33

What kind of designs were

8:35

you thinking about? Well,

8:38

once I saw what was

8:40

possible, when we said, well, let's

8:43

ask, let's see what the,

8:45

like in engineering oftentimes, you'll set

8:47

a term to zero. You

8:50

won't know the answer, but you'll set a term in an equation

8:52

to zero or infinity to kind of see

8:54

what the equation does. And

8:56

so I just sort of asked

8:58

myself rhetorically, what is

9:00

a drag shape with a

9:03

frontal area of X, and X is just basically

9:05

two people sitting side by side, but

9:08

with the coefficient of zero, what does that look

9:10

like? And what does that shape look like?

9:13

And once we determine what that was

9:16

through our research, we

9:18

believe that with the diesel engine at the

9:20

time, we could achieve over 300 miles

9:23

per gallon. And so we just, we

9:25

built the company around that, and we started fundraising

9:27

and got our first investor, and

9:30

it was off to the races.

9:32

So, all right, let's

9:34

kind of, I'm just curious, I mean, about

9:37

the decision you made to leave your

9:39

job and to start a

9:41

car company. I mean, it was kind

9:43

of, let's just be honest,

9:45

kind

9:48

of nuts, right? I mean, when

9:50

you went to your partner, I

9:53

think you were married, your wife at the time, did you

9:55

say, hey, I want to start a car company.

9:58

And I mean,

9:59

You had a job and

10:02

this is kind of an ambitious thing. It's

10:04

not like just starting a farmer's

10:06

market stand. I mean, it requires a lot of capital

10:08

and a lot of ... There's a lot. There's

10:11

a long road to make that work. What

10:13

was her reaction? I

10:16

mean,

10:17

it's very interesting. It's

10:19

an interesting question and also situation

10:22

for the reasons you just said. I

10:26

had every reason to stay there. I

10:28

would have been retired by now from the money I would

10:30

have made on my stock options had

10:33

I kept them and not liquidated to start

10:35

Aptera. My friends

10:37

at Illumina remind me of that often. But

10:41

I remember once

10:44

I saw that the only way I could do this

10:47

was full time, raise money full time

10:49

and build the company. I went home and I told my wife,

10:51

I said, honey, she

10:53

was like six months pregnant, by the way, our first

10:55

child. Wow. I want to

10:58

quit Illumina and start

11:00

a car company. And you know

11:02

how every

11:04

woman, I think, when they go through pregnancy,

11:07

they have different experiences. Some

11:09

have bouts of sickness or immense

11:12

joy. My wife was a

11:14

ladder. She was just ...

11:16

Whatever hormones were in her body because

11:18

of that made her extremely happy

11:21

about everything. And so

11:23

I remember I told her that

11:25

I'm quitting to start a car company. She just kind

11:27

of smiled and said, okay, hon, that's great. I

11:30

was like, what? Like did she even hear what I

11:32

just said? Maybe

11:34

she didn't understand. She's

11:36

also an electrical engineer. And so she had an appreciation

11:40

of the challenge ahead. So

11:42

you and Chris decide to start

11:44

this car company called Aptera, which it

11:47

means wingless flight. It's right in

11:49

Greek. Or I guess more simply wingless,

11:52

like a pterodactyl. If you say

11:54

Aptera, it's just without wing.

11:57

Without wings, okay. And

11:59

you see ... set out to design, and I'll

12:01

try to describe it, but

12:04

maybe you can do a better job. Basically, a

12:06

three-wheeled vehicle, like two wheels in the front,

12:09

one in the back,

12:11

and it looks like the fuselage

12:13

of a small airplane, right? It's like a

12:16

motorcycle-car hybrid kind of thing. Yes,

12:19

if you can, since we're on

12:21

voice and radio, or audio

12:24

rather, I'll describe it. If you can imagine the

12:27

shape of a shark,

12:29

maybe flattened out in the middle,

12:31

but without the fins, and then with

12:33

two wheels in the front of where the mouth is,

12:35

and a wheel in the back where the

12:38

tail is, that's kind of what Aptara

12:40

looks like.

12:43

There's actually a lot of biomimicry there, because

12:46

sharks, other

12:48

fish that swim near the bottom of the

12:51

ocean or lake, in what they call ground

12:53

effect, where you're not in the free

12:55

stream, but you're down very low to the surface,

12:58

those creatures also

13:00

camber their back, like

13:02

Aptara is cambered, and

13:05

that radically reduces the

13:08

drag coefficient. So

13:11

it's a

13:12

fundamental discovery that I

13:14

made early on in the process. This

13:18

is not the free stream. This doesn't

13:21

need to be a symmetrical sort of an

13:23

airfoil or a teardrop. This needs

13:25

to look different, because

13:27

it is in what they call ground effect.

13:30

So how did

13:32

you finance building that

13:34

prototype? Because you

13:36

had a prototype within two years. By 2007,

13:39

you had the first vehicle. How did you finance it? Who supported

13:41

you? Well,

13:49

our first investor was

13:51

a business incubator

13:54

in Pasadena called Idea Lab. And

13:57

they were instrumental in getting us off

13:59

the ground.

13:59

and connecting us with ongoing

14:02

funding. And we actually had the first prototype,

14:05

I think within about six months of funding. And

14:07

it was really just myself, Chris, and a

14:09

young engineer. And we were working 20

14:12

hour days. We were doing all

14:14

the work ourselves, welding, wiring,

14:17

and everything else. And it was just lots

14:19

and lots of long hours. And

14:22

that was just the only way

14:24

to do it. And then the

14:27

sort of production intent version, the Mark I, we

14:29

launched September

14:32

27th, I think it was 2007. And

14:35

on the day that we said we would, around

14:37

January or so, we

14:39

told our board and everyone else this

14:41

is when we're gonna launch it. And it launched that

14:43

day.

14:45

We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,

14:47

more from Steve about Eterra's early

14:49

rise and fall, and how he

14:51

and his co-founder are making another run at

14:54

solar powered cars today. Stay

14:56

with us, you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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16:20

Welcome back to How I Built This Lab, I'm Guy

16:22

Roz. My guest is Steve Fambro, founder

16:24

and CEO of the solar car company Eptara.

16:27

So it's 2006, way

16:29

before electric vehicles were mainstream. In

16:32

fact, there was barely an electric

16:34

vehicle industry at the time, there

16:36

were no charging standards, nothing built

16:38

for the industry, but Steve was certain

16:40

he was on the right track. We believe

16:43

that electric was the future, it

16:45

made all the sense in the world. We

16:47

don't need to be burning hydrocarbons, even

16:50

if they're

16:50

very efficient, there's better ways

16:52

to power a vehicle and that was with electricity. I

16:56

mean, essentially you had

16:59

this electric

17:00

vehicle, this prototype and I think you

17:02

unveiled it and it's the public,

17:04

a TED conference in 2007 and

17:07

that really got people excited. You got a

17:09

lot of interest and

17:12

you had a lot of people

17:15

coming to you to make

17:18

investments and

17:21

people wanted this car, people were really

17:24

excited about it. Yeah, that

17:26

was a really big, that conference

17:28

was a really pivotal event for us because it

17:31

put

17:31

us on the map, it got a lot

17:33

of press, it introduced

17:36

us to lots of investors and

17:38

we went on to raise probably another $40 million

17:41

or so at the time before

17:44

we left the company.

17:46

So, all right, so this

17:48

prototype comes out and by the way, it looks

17:51

like what the car looks like today, it

17:53

looks very similar, but there's

17:55

a lot that happened between then and now.

17:59

And so let's talk about some of what happened.

18:02

I mean, there was a lot

18:04

of interest. I mean, eventually

18:06

within a year or so, you had

18:08

about 4,000 people put down deposits

18:11

to buy

18:12

one of these really cool vehicles, two-seaters,

18:16

but with a lot of trunk space. And

18:20

meantime, you, I guess you would, Chris, your

18:23

co-founder, decided to find a CEO,

18:25

like a professional CEO, who

18:27

could really kind of take the company to

18:29

the next level, but

18:32

for a variety of reasons that would turn out to be maybe

18:35

not the right decision. Well, you know, it was a tough

18:37

time for any startup at that time. I

18:40

remember a lot

18:43

of the VCs we were talking to,

18:45

they were,

18:46

at that time, it was the economic downturn. It

18:48

was gloom and doom. I still remember Bill Gurley,

18:52

prominent Silicon Valley VC at the time. Vested

18:54

in Uber and many others, yeah. I remember

18:57

he had a single slide on a PowerPoint

18:59

with sort of a

19:01

piece of ham, where all the ham was gone

19:03

and a knife on a bone saying cut

19:06

to the bone. That was his advice

19:08

to all of the startups at the time. And

19:10

so, we recognize that

19:12

the team, the professional

19:15

team that we hired, they

19:18

were working with the Department of Energy to get

19:20

a loan and to bring in a four-wheel vehicle.

19:22

And with the cutting to

19:25

the bone mentality, we thought maybe

19:27

the company would be in better

19:29

hands if we left it to the professionals and we

19:31

would go off and start

19:32

another company. And that's what Chris did

19:35

and that's what I did. And basically

19:37

what would happen if I'm, just to summarize

19:40

it, I mean, the company

19:42

sought out loans from the government, the Department

19:44

of Energy, which did give big loans to Tesla

19:47

and to Fisker and even to Ford,

19:50

but initially, because

19:52

you had a three-wheeled vehicle, you weren't eligible

19:54

for one of these loans that were designed

19:56

to help electric car companies get

19:58

off the ground.

19:59

And I guess the team

20:03

that you sort of hired to run the company decided

20:05

that maybe they should move

20:08

towards a four wheel vehicle, like

20:10

a traditional sedan, and

20:12

that's where they kind of shifted all their energy

20:14

towards. Yes, that's exactly right.

20:16

And so they had used a

20:18

lot of the same concepts and ideas

20:21

to

20:22

design a four wheel vehicle. I think that's what they were

20:24

trying to get through the DOE at the time. So

20:26

essentially by 2009, you and Chris

20:29

were on the way out. You had started

20:32

this company in 2005, but about

20:34

four years later, there's a

20:36

professional team, many of whom had come from

20:38

the automotive industry, running

20:40

Aptera.

20:42

And I guess you felt like

20:44

there wasn't much for you to do at that point

20:47

in the company?

20:48

Yeah, I mean, that's basically

20:50

it. We wanted to make

20:52

sure if we're there getting a salary, that

20:55

we're adding value and all moving

20:57

in the same direction. And I think

21:01

the direction that the team and the

21:03

board wanted to move was the four wheel

21:06

and the DOE alone. And so we felt that we

21:08

would

21:09

probably add more value to something new

21:11

and something different. The professional team was

21:13

in place and sort

21:15

of left in charge. All right. So

21:18

you guys leave. At the time, Aptera does

21:20

manage to

21:22

secure a loan, a commitment, I should say,

21:24

but they had to, I

21:26

guess there was a condition. They had to raise money

21:28

from the private markets,

21:31

but for a variety of reasons that

21:33

fell through. And

21:35

by 2011, the company you founded, Aptera,

21:38

it shut down. It basically

21:41

liquidated and refunded the

21:44

depositors money who wanted people who

21:46

deposited on the cars and then paid investors

21:48

back what they could pay them back.

21:50

That's right. I mean, how did you feel?

21:52

I mean, so this sort of dream

21:54

that you guys had, that was it?

21:57

I mean, were you... How did you feel

21:59

at that time?

21:59

You know,

22:04

at the time I tried to

22:06

channel all of that grief, like in

22:08

this, in the positive energy. And, you know, so

22:11

I did the day I left Aptara

22:14

originally, you know, I was maybe two or three weeks

22:16

before I had, you know, my first signed term

22:18

sheet for my new company. And

22:21

I just tried to put all of that thought and

22:24

grief into energy and the momentum, you

22:26

know, into something different. But it's,

22:29

you know, it's analogous to the loss of someone

22:32

that you love and you never really

22:34

get over it.

22:35

You, in the meantime, you were working

22:37

on this other company, this vertical farming

22:41

company that would allow people, I guess, to raise their own

22:43

vegetables

22:44

inside their homes or? Well,

22:46

it was more industrial food

22:49

production, but indoors. But it

22:51

was

22:53

the idea of

22:54

growing food is densely packed

22:57

in three dimensions as you could, and then only

22:59

expanding it out at the time of harvest

23:02

so that you could, in the smallest

23:04

amount of space with the least amount of energy

23:06

and least amount of water, raise,

23:09

you know, the highest amount of biomass per

23:11

unit area

23:13

per unit time.

23:15

Wow. Meantime, Aptara

23:17

is just done. The assets were auctioned

23:20

off. Apparently, there was

23:22

a Chinese company that, you

23:24

know, at some point tried to spin out another

23:27

like independent company called Aptara

23:29

US that sort of would make a gas

23:31

version of the car, never really took

23:34

off.

23:35

But it seems like

23:38

this Chinese company that essentially

23:40

bought the assets never really filed

23:43

to take over Aptara's IP.

23:46

Yeah, they didn't really do much of anything

23:49

with it. And

23:51

I think even the company that

23:54

one of the one of the people that bought the assets of the first

23:56

auction, they ended up with a bunch of the older

23:59

vehicles.

23:59

sitting in a warehouse up somewhere in Northern

24:02

California that we've, you know, Chris

24:04

and I have tried to locate just for sentimental

24:06

reasons. You know, we'd love to have them as part of our heritage

24:09

is sort of on display or something. But

24:11

yeah, they were sort of cast to the four corners

24:13

of the earth and the IP,

24:16

the products and tools and nothing

24:18

ever really happened with it. And it just kind of a sad

24:21

as an idea in my mind and Chris's mind

24:23

and Jason, a few others, you

24:25

know, for

24:27

basically until we were able to bring

24:29

it back to life.

24:30

So tell me how that happened. I mean,

24:34

2019 you and Chris

24:36

joined forces to relaunch Aptara.

24:38

Like tell me about the conversations you were having

24:40

to do that because I mean, you

24:43

started in 2005, it essentially folds in 2011 and probably

24:45

most of the investors

24:50

lost money, right?

24:54

So tell me how, I mean,

24:56

how did you guys even start talking? Like take

24:58

teaming the conversation. Like, let's, let's

25:00

start this again. Let's, let's go back to this thing.

25:03

Actually, I think it might've started

25:05

with our lobbyist, Dwayne Gibson,

25:07

who was in town and

25:10

just, you know, wanted to reconnect.

25:12

And just to be clear, you had a lobbyist that you

25:14

hired

25:15

to work in Washington DC to focus on

25:18

subs, like on, on loans

25:20

and subsidies that the government was offering to electric

25:22

car makers. Correct. It

25:25

helped us navigate the waters, you know, when

25:27

you're connected with someone like that, it's not just about

25:30

sort of lobbying for loans and programs.

25:33

It's also you're making sure you

25:35

have a seat at the table with

25:39

different regulatory bodies or that you have

25:41

the right legal oversight, you

25:43

know, protection and certain regulatory affairs.

25:45

And so we were just sort of kicking around

25:48

the idea saying, look, you know, that

25:50

who is it? There's just Tesla really, you know, there's

25:52

no one else. And why is that? And, and

25:55

everything is just an electrified car.

25:57

It's not really designed.

25:59

It doesn't appear to be designed from scratch

26:02

as an electric vehicle. And

26:05

Chris,

26:06

of course, owning this battery company and

26:08

us talking about it, the numbers and said, well,

26:10

with the new technology, how

26:13

many batteries could we fit in an ApTAR anyway? And

26:16

so we just started doing some back of the napkin calculations.

26:18

So, with these new batteries, we could fit 100 kilowatt

26:21

hours

26:22

in that vehicle and 100 hours

26:25

per mile, which is what

26:26

we achieved with the old ApTAR,

26:28

about 95 watt hours per mile, which is extremely

26:31

efficient. That would be 1,000 miles. And

26:34

so that kind of just,

26:36

it made our eyes open because

26:38

we knew from some little

26:39

bit of research that we'd done that

26:42

range wasn't the most, but it

26:44

was a very important factor in

26:47

deciding to buy an electric car or which electric

26:49

car people wanted to buy. And if you

26:51

could control the range factor,

26:54

then you could really control a significant

26:57

part of the market. And that was our premise,

26:59

is how do we blow up range? How

27:02

do we own range? And we do that

27:04

with efficiency. And that was really the genesis

27:06

of the restart.

27:09

We're going to take another quick break, but coming

27:11

up in just a moment, more from Steve about

27:14

his inspiration to go solar. Stay

27:16

with us. I'm Guy Roz, and you're

27:18

listening to How I Built This Lab.

27:28

Welcome back to How I Built This Lab.

27:31

I'm Guy Roz, and my guest is Steve Fambro,

27:33

the founder of ApTara Motors. So

27:36

basically, you decide, let's

27:39

still make an electric vehicle, but it'll have

27:42

solar panels all over it as

27:45

an additional source of power. Correct.

27:48

Correct. And it's

27:50

not like normal if you want, but most people won't ever have to because

27:52

here in Southern California, you'll

27:54

probably get about 11,000 miles a year of free charge.

27:59

Just by sitting it, just by leaving it outside,

28:02

it's just going to get powered by

28:04

the sun. That's right. And that'll give

28:07

it about up to 40 miles of range,

28:09

just from solar energy. That's right.

28:12

And that's because this is

28:14

a small and efficient vehicle.

28:18

Because I mean, imagine

28:20

that the technology around solar just isn't

28:22

quite there yet to power a one-ton

28:24

vehicle.

28:25

You're

28:28

right. It's

28:31

you're looking at 25%

28:33

or so conversion

28:35

efficiency once it's all

28:37

encapsulated in a matrix.

28:41

And if you tried to do this to

28:43

any large electric vehicle, it's

28:46

barely going to budge the needle. So

28:49

the advantage of designing for

28:51

efficiency and being a brand that's

28:53

really grounded in efficiency above all

28:55

else is that these kind of things become

28:57

possible. And we can use a smaller

28:59

battery pack. It's going to mean

29:01

less cells and less cost for the battery

29:04

and hopefully a lower cost to the consumer,

29:07

more range, less charge time, et cetera,

29:09

et cetera. That's the direction

29:11

that we push stuff. It's to push

29:13

to more and more efficient using less

29:16

and less energy along the way. How do

29:18

we keep reducing the amount of energy that the vehicle

29:20

uses while expanding the amount that we're producing

29:23

on the solar panels? So let's

29:25

talk about the car. Obviously,

29:28

now the landscape is very

29:30

different from 2005 when you started. It's

29:33

a different environment. You're seeing a lot

29:36

of Model 3 Teslas

29:38

all over the United States now. You're

29:40

seeing a lot of the Kias, sort of a

29:42

lower price point. You're seeing obviously

29:44

Chevy and then the Ford F-150.

29:46

Lightning is out there. You've

29:48

got the Rivians. A

29:51

lot of companies, Hyundai, are in the game

29:53

now, in the electric car game.

29:56

Who is this for? I

30:00

mean, who is this

30:02

car going to appeal to? It's a different kind of vehicle.

30:04

It's a two-seater. And

30:08

so what part of the market

30:10

are you targeting?

30:11

Well, Aptara is a brand, and

30:13

the Aptara is a product,

30:16

are going to appeal to people who

30:17

want a kind of freedom,

30:21

a freedom of mobility, a freedom to go and

30:24

to move without being encumbered either

30:26

by a charge cord or having to pay for electricity.

30:31

That freedom from the old way of

30:33

doing things is really what Aptara is about. There's

30:36

lots of electric car choices out there and

30:39

lots of electrified cars, cars that are

30:41

just steel boxes with electric

30:43

components shoved in them. Those

30:46

are all

30:47

great products for different customers, and

30:49

they'll sell lots of them. But that's not what

30:51

we're about. We're about solar mobility,

30:53

and we're about giving that freedom to people.

30:56

And the first vehicle that you see, of course, a

30:58

two-seater, that's the tip of the sword.

31:01

But there's a product

31:03

portfolio and vehicles that

31:05

are coming behind that that are going to embody

31:07

the same ethos and

31:09

double down and triple down on efficiency and

31:11

solar. So expect to see

31:13

a family of vehicles from Aptara where

31:15

this is a first, but all of them are going to have the same

31:18

promise of the kind of solar freedom

31:20

and solar mobility. So I think the majority

31:22

of daily commutes

31:23

are under 40 miles. So

31:27

in theory, if you're just driving a

31:29

couple miles to the office, maybe the grocery store

31:31

and home, like solar power

31:33

alone could power the car. But

31:36

what about parts of the country where it's not

31:38

as sunny? Or on days when it's not sunny

31:40

at all, does the car store the solar power,

31:42

the solar energy?

31:44

Yes, it'll still charge.

31:46

It might only charge 10 miles worth

31:48

or 12 miles worth or

31:51

something like that. If it's overcast

31:53

or in a northern latitude. And

31:57

so the way to think about it is, are

31:59

you plugging in?

31:59

it in

32:01

once every six months? Are you plugging it

32:03

in once every month? That's

32:06

how it's going to impact people. It's

32:08

whether you get 30 miles a day, 40 miles a day, the launch

32:11

vehicle is going to get around 400 miles range. It's

32:14

really just going to affect, are you plugging it in monthly

32:16

or

32:17

maybe every

32:18

two weeks or something like that.

32:21

So that's how that difference in daily

32:23

solar charge is going to manifest.

32:25

You also

32:28

are, I mean, the body

32:30

of the car is different.

32:31

It's a carbon

32:34

fiber body. And

32:36

so, I mean, it kind of looks

32:38

like, you know, there are these like Velo

32:40

racing bicycles, right? It's

32:42

almost like this aerodynamic, like,

32:46

I mean, teardrop isn't the right description as you

32:48

said earlier, but it's sort of like that.

32:53

Is that also, I mean, does that also

32:55

enable it to, does that

32:57

enable the range? I mean, the weight

32:59

of the material, for example?

33:01

Well, it is a combination of both.

33:04

The drag, the low drag, which, you

33:06

know, the shape, the very

33:09

curvaceous, you know, shark-like shape

33:12

and the lightweight is both of those are what

33:14

really enabled the efficiency.

33:16

And the lightweight comes from composites. Now the challenge

33:18

with composites and the challenge with how

33:21

we were doing them before and how Chris was doing

33:23

with his boat company, very labor intensive

33:25

and it doesn't really scale.

33:26

And so what we wanted was a process

33:28

that we could stamp them out like you would

33:30

stamp out steel pieces and

33:33

produce them as fast as you would a steel car.

33:36

And that's what took us to Italy, to CPC.

33:39

Our partners have devised a very

33:41

high throughput process, which

33:43

to my knowledge, no one else in the world has this

33:46

capacity and this ability to

33:49

produce parts every, you know, four to six minutes,

33:52

just like you were producing a steel part. So

33:54

it's a strong composite

33:57

thermoplastic, but without, without

33:59

any.

33:59

of the hand labor and the waste

34:02

and the cutting and the materials and all that

34:04

other stuff. It just produces a nice

34:07

part

34:08

that comes right out of the mold, ready to be

34:10

vinyl wrapped or just

34:12

used without having to paint. It's a radically

34:15

different way of producing the vehicle. There's only six structural

34:17

pieces. And so being able

34:19

to build the vehicle from six pieces,

34:21

it's just order of magnitude, simplification

34:24

of tooling fixtures, et cetera.

34:26

So the idea

34:29

is to get these, I know that

34:31

you can now order, you can reserve one, right? I

34:33

mean, you have, I guess,

34:36

up to about 40,000 people have reserved

34:38

one. And

34:39

the idea is to start delivering them when?

34:43

About 43,000 ever reservations, about $1.6 billion worth of vehicles. We

34:50

believe, we're pretty confident after

34:53

about nine months of closing our Series

34:55

B funding somewhere between nine and 12 months, we

34:58

could deliver the first vehicle. We

35:00

still have lots of big things to do.

35:02

We have to go through our airbag certification program.

35:05

For example, we have to go through the ABS,

35:07

the ABS braking system

35:09

certification. For

35:12

those that may not know, you can't just order that

35:14

part and install it on the vehicle. It has to go

35:16

through the manufacturer's own

35:19

sort of certification process. So there's some things

35:21

like that that we still have to do. That's

35:23

why we're fundraising the Series B.

35:26

What about

35:28

the safety of the vehicle? It's

35:31

an enclosed vehicle, but it is three

35:33

wheels and it's a two

35:35

seater. And

35:38

so, obviously a motorcycle is not

35:40

the safest mode of

35:42

transportation, but this has

35:44

airbags, presumably. I mean, it has all the

35:47

safety features of a car. Yeah. Think

35:49

of it just as a modern car

35:51

in terms of safety features, you know, the rollover,

35:55

crush strength, airbags, seat belts,

35:58

interlocks, all that kind of stuff.

35:59

Same stuff we have, designed to the same

36:02

standards. So not required

36:04

for a motorcycle, but we're

36:07

just trying to adhere

36:10

to as many of the regular automotive standards

36:12

as we can. And

36:15

the price point starts at about $26,000, I think, right? High

36:19

20s for the

36:21

250-mile version, which is the smallest

36:23

battery pack, 25 kilowatt hour

36:26

and goes up to around $50,000,

36:29

I think, for the highest configuration, 1,000-mile range,

36:33

three-wheel drive. So the options

36:35

are basically battery pack size and

36:38

you want two-wheel drive or three-wheel drive. Those

36:41

are the big cost drivers.

36:42

In

36:47

terms of solar technology,

36:50

there are some companies, including Fisker,

36:52

which is coming back, right? It sort

36:54

of went away for a while and it's coming back. They're

37:00

also experimenting, or will be experimenting with solar,

37:02

I

37:04

guess you call it solar hybrid,

37:06

like solar electric hybrid maybe. What

37:09

kinds of leaps in solar technology have

37:12

to happen for a car to be fully

37:14

solar powered? If

37:18

the solar is going to be meaningful

37:20

on the vehicle, if it's going to add a meaningful range,

37:22

the vehicle is going to have to be aerodynamic, right? It

37:24

can't just be a boxy, flat-sided vehicle.

37:27

So if it's going to be aerodynamic, it means you're going to have

37:30

curves in 3D. So fundamentally, you're going

37:32

to be making 3D curve panels. So

37:34

that's number one. How do you bend those

37:36

cells without cracking or micro-cracking,

37:39

which will lead to a crack? And how do you

37:41

do it repeatedly and consistently?

37:45

And then also make that panel very lightweight

37:47

for an automotive application and then also

37:50

make it affordable and then also make

37:52

it able to stand up to hail and rocks.

37:55

That's what's required to make it practical.

37:58

And that's what we've been doing for the past two years.

37:59

years.

38:00

So, I mean, looking

38:02

ahead, five years from now, and there's

38:05

lots of Aptara's driving down the freeway, up

38:07

and down the freeways, at least in California and maybe

38:09

beyond, from what you know

38:11

and from your perspective, I mean, are we looking at

38:13

a future

38:15

sooner than we may think of electric

38:18

vehicles going a thousand

38:20

plus miles on one charge?

38:23

I definitely think so. I think Aptara's

38:26

gonna show the way because the way technology is right

38:28

now, there's no other way it's achievable

38:31

without this extreme obsession

38:35

with efficiency. There's no

38:37

other platform out there that can do it.

38:39

So, the vehicles, the

38:41

race for the high range, which I think is

38:43

going to be the new era that

38:45

you see unfolding, you know, in EVs,

38:48

when you look at where the innovations are, how do we

38:50

get more range? I think

38:52

you're going to see some common trends of aerodynamic

38:54

shapes, lighter weight materials, and

38:57

hopefully Aptara can maintain its lead in

39:00

that position. I

39:01

have to assume you're going to be one of the first owners

39:03

of the Aptara. When will

39:05

you be driving one around?

39:07

Permanently, I would say early

39:10

next year. Yeah, I don't

39:12

want to hand-build. I mean, I drive the

39:14

prototypes here all the time, but I want

39:17

to drive a production version. Yeah. So, I

39:19

have to fight probably Chris and a couple of other investors

39:22

for the very first one, but

39:24

we'll see. Maybe we'll, you know, spend

39:26

the bottle or something, see who gets

39:28

the first one, but I think

39:31

early next year I'll be driving one of the first ones. Sounds

39:33

like there's going to be a little bit of a fight. Yeah,

39:35

I've learned not to, you know, try and

39:38

arm wrestle him or fight him. I usually end up, you know,

39:40

the doctor's office if I do that.

39:43

By the way, I noticed

39:46

that it has rear-view mirrors, which presumably

39:48

affects drag. I think that's a regulatory

39:50

thing in the US, right? Because you can replace

39:53

rear-view mirrors with cameras, but right

39:55

by the US, but the regulatory

39:58

still require a rear-view mirror.

40:00

It's vestigial. It's

40:02

like saying, you know, you must have a clip for

40:05

your whip on your buggy, you know, you can't

40:07

have your whip laying around in the buggy. Like

40:09

there's no whip, there's no buggy. You know, we don't need that.

40:12

But it is a vestigial requirement. So

40:15

we have the least amount

40:17

of size required by law. Got

40:20

it. And the doors open

40:23

electronically or what? Because they open like wings.

40:25

Yeah, there's electric and mechanical

40:28

release. So there's a, the most

40:30

common way to do it is with a button that's right there on the

40:32

armrest, but then there's sort of a backup

40:34

mechanical release underneath it, which

40:36

many EVs have that strategy now. And,

40:40

but you can only fit two people, you can't fit more

40:42

than that, but it has a lot of cargo space.

40:44

Yeah, thousand liters of cargo space, which is

40:47

like, is comparison, you

40:49

know, any modern EV that's

40:52

out there, you fold down the back seats and

40:54

you get a thousand liters of space

40:55

or more in that era. So

40:58

it's, I mean, you can put surfboards in it, you can

41:00

put a ladder in there, tools,

41:02

you can put, you know,

41:05

if you're like a Macedonian

41:08

army reenactment person, you can put all your

41:11

spears and stuff in there as well. I mean,

41:13

it's an amazing amount of space. Hmm. Well,

41:16

that's a huge market. Apparently

41:18

a lot of Macedonian reenactors

41:21

out there. So that's a, that's a huge market.

41:23

Huge market. Yeah, we're going to be big in that market.

41:28

That's Steve

41:29

Fambro, co-founder and co-CEO

41:32

of Aptara Motors. Thanks

41:34

so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please

41:37

make sure to follow the show wherever

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contact our team, our email address is

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41:54

This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson

41:56

with editing by John Isabella. Our music

41:59

was composed

41:59

by Ramtin Erebloui. Our audio

42:02

engineer was Neil Rauch. Our

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production team at How I Built This includes Alex

42:06

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42:09

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Neva Grant is our supervising editor. I'm

42:16

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