Powering cars with solar energy with Steve Fambro of Aptera Motors (2023)

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2:04To learn more about my Airbnb original experience, head to airbnb.com slash guy. Hey, everyone. Our team is taking a bit of a break this week. We'll be back shortly with a bunch of new episodes of How I Built This and How I Built This Lab. But in the meantime, we thought we'd bring you this episode about a man who founded a company that is designing and manufacturing a solar-powered car. This episode first ran in August of last year. It's a really fascinating story. So if you missed it, stick around. You're going to want to hear this one for sure. And on with the show. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.

2:41I'm Guy Raz. So when it comes to cars, the internal combustion engine is probably going to go away over the next 50 years. Every year, electric cars are getting better and going farther, but you still have to plug them in. So imagine a car that can drive without having to plug it in at all. A car powered by the sun. It's not a new idea, but it's a massively difficult one, in part because you need a lot of energy to power a car. So to solve this problem, a team of engineers in Southern California have designed a solar-electric hybrid. It's a car that can travel up to 40 miles simply on sunlight.

3:23And the way they've done it is to streamline the design. The car is called the Aptera, and it's already available for pre-order. It has three wheels, two seats, and a massive storage area in the back, enough for skis and a surfboard. Steve Fambro is the co-founder. He's been thinking about how to design cars more efficiently for a long time. He actually started his career back in 2005 as an electrical engineer for a San Diego biotech firm called Illumina. And the idea for Aptera actually came to him while sitting in traffic during his daily commute. I was doing what everybody does in San Diego that works south.

4:02You're sitting on the highway, a freeway, driving 10 to 15 miles an hour and stop and go traffic. And I was driving a Ford F-150 pickup truck. I was one of those people. I'm like, you know. I think it's a best-selling car in the U.S. It is. It's amazing how that is. But it's like I used the bed of it twice before I sold it. But so I'm thinking to myself, you know, I was also a student pilot at the time. So I had an understanding of aerodynamics and, um, I was just thinking about aerodynamics and planes and looking up at the planes and saying, you know, the planes are flying by, I'm staying still, you know, um, and then look at these vehicles.

4:39They're all boxy, even my own, you know, it's just this big, big boxy thing. And so I started doing little things like I would fold my mirrors back, uh, and, or, you know, let down my tailgate and try and see on a long trip if I could get more gas mileage. And then, you know, I just did some reading and I said, wait a minute, these cars, like 60 % of the energy is just pushing the air out of the way. They're like boxes or pieces of furniture pushing air out of the way. They're not made for aerodynamics. So basically you were just a commuter driving a Ford F-150 and also you happen to be an engineer and you were just asking yourself, why are cars designed in such a way as to just, you know, increase the drag?

5:27Because essentially it means that a Ford F-150 probably gets like 17, 20 miles per gallon, if that. I mean, I'm sure it's better now. Yeah. At the time, I think it was around 14 miles per gallon and I could, I could squeeze out 17, you know, if I did all these tips and tricks. Yeah.

6:14thought what was needed to be the most efficient was a rethink of the platform to have the least weight and the least aerodynamic drag possible. And just to be clear, you were just doing this as a tinkerer. I mean, you had a full-time job at a biotech company, but you started to just draw designs on paper for fun? Yes. My wife and I at the time, we didn't have any children. And so this meant that, you know, Saturday mornings I could lay out my drawings on the living room floor. I could drink coffee all day. I could work in the garage, you know, without distraction. And it was just a hobby. And at some point I thought, you know, I'm probably not the only person that wants this.

7:00I should think about how would I make this and sell it, you know. I have to have a business plan. So I worked with someone. I've never written a business plan. I was an entrepreneur. And so I kind of started from there. And so I guess around the same time, in San Diego, you meet this guy, Chris Anthony. And Chris had like a small business where he made boats? Yes. He had a company called Epic Boats. And he was using these computational fluid dynamic tools to make the boat have more drag, so to make a bigger wake, so you could have more fun. So he's working on the opposite thing. You wanted the boat to have more drag.

7:42You were working on something with less drag. But this was for wakeboarding, basically a specific type of boat designed to make wakeboarding more fun or more exciting, I guess. Yes. Apparently, it is a thing. I didn't even know it was a thing. I don't get out much. It's like water skiing on like a boogie board. Wakeboard is going to kill me for saying that. But it's sort of like that. Yeah, it's kind of like that. You have this wake in perpetuity that you can sort of surf behind or even do wakeboard tricks and stuff behind. And in Mission Bay here in San Diego, it's pretty popular. Yeah, you hold on to a rope or – yeah, like when you're water skiing.

8:23That's right. So he was working on that. So you meet him. He's somebody you feel like I should get to know this guy because he knows how to design a boat. So maybe I can talk to him about designing my vehicle, whatever it's going to be. Yeah, we both are – I had my own shop full of tools, welder and mini lathe. I, of course, make circuits and things like that as well. So I was pretty handy myself. He was also handy with hand tools. Chris is a bit of a polymath. So he has many different talents. He's actually a finance guy by training. But I could see sort of by inspection. I could see the work that he's done.

9:03He's able to make things that he can visualize, which is a really unique trait. And as we are talking about some of these problems and how we might build the structure, how it might need to be shaped to carry the load, he could easily visualize, whereas maybe I would need to do more math to convince myself of something. All right. So you start talking to Chris and what did you have in mind at that time in terms of what you wanted to do? You knew you wanted a vehicle that was more energy efficient. And were you thinking like a traditional car? What kind of designs were you thinking about? Well, once I saw what was possible, we said, well, let's see what the, like in engineering, oftentimes you'll set a term to zero.

9:58You won't know the answer, but you'll set a term in an equation to zero or infinity to kind of see what the equation does. And so I just sort of asked myself rhetorically, what is a drag shape with a frontal area of X? And X is just basically two people sitting side by side, but with, with the coefficient of zero, what does that look like? And what does that shape look like? And once we determined what that was, uh, through our research, you know, we, we believe that with the diesel engine at the time, we could achieve over 300 miles per gallon. And so we just, we built the company around that and we started fundraising and got our first investor and, um, you know, it was off to the races.

10:41So, all right, let's kind of, I'm just curious, I mean, about the decision you made to leave your job and to start a car company. I mean, it was kind of, let's just be blunt, kind of nuts, right? I mean, when you went to your partner, I think you were married, your wife at the time, did you say, hey, I want to start a car company? And I mean, you had a job and this is kind of an ambitious thing. I mean, it's not like just starting a farmer's market stand. I mean, it requires a lot of capital and a lot of, you know, there's a lot, there's a long road to make that work. What was her reaction? I mean, it's very interesting.

11:27It's an interesting question and also situation for the reasons you just said. I had every reason to stay there. I would have been retired by now from the money I would have made on my stock options had I kept them and not liquidated to start Aptera. My friends at Illumina remind me of that often. but i i remember once once i saw that the only way i could do this was was full-time raise money full-time and build the company and i went home and i told my wife i said honey you know i'm she was like six months pregnant by the way our first child and wow i said i want to quit illumina and and start a car company and you know how some you know every woman i think uh when they go through pregnancy.

12:15They have different experiences. Some have, you know, bouts of sickness or, you know, immense joy. And my wife was the latter. She was just, whatever hormones were in her body because of that made her extremely happy about everything. And so I remember I told her that I'm quitting to start a car company. She's kind of smiled and said, okay, hon, that's great. I was like, what? Like, did she even hear what I just said? You know, I don't, maybe she didn't understand. She's also an electrical engineer. And so she had an appreciation of the challenge ahead. So you and Chris decide to start this car company called Aptera, which means wingless flight.

12:57It's right in Greek. I guess more simply wingless, like a pterodactyl. If you say Aptera, it's just without wing. Without wings. Okay. And you set out to design, and I'll try to describe but maybe you can do a better job. Basically, a three-wheeled vehicle, like two wheels in the front, one in the back, and it looks like the fuselage of a small airplane, right? It's like a motorcycle-car hybrid kind of thing. Yes. If you can, since we're on voice and radio, or audio rather, I'll describe it. If you can imagine like the shape of a shark, maybe flattened out in the middle, but without the fins and then with two wheels in the front of where the mouth is and a wheel in the sort of the back where the tail is.

13:48That's kind of what Aptera looks like. And there's actually a lot of biomimicry there because sharks, other fish that swim near the bottom of the ocean or lake, in what they call ground effect, where you're not in the free stream, but you're down very low to the surface, those creatures also camber their back like Aptera is cambered. And that radically reduces the drag coefficient. So it's a fundamental discovery that I made early on in the process. This is not the free stream. This doesn't need to be a symmetrical sort of an airfoil or a teardrop. This needs to look different because it is in what they call ground effect.

14:39So how did you finance building that prototype? Because you had a prototype within two years. I mean, by 2007, you had the first vehicle. How did you finance it? Who supported you? Well, our first investor was a business incubator in Pasadena called Idealab. And they were instrumental in getting us off the ground and connecting us with ongoing funding. And we actually had the first prototype, I think, within about six months of funding. And it was really just myself, Chris, and a young engineer. And we were working 20-hour days. We were doing all the work ourself, welding, wiring, and everything else.

15:26And it was just lots and lots of long hours. And, you know, that was just the only way to do it. And then the sort of production intent version, the Mark I, we launched September 27th, I think it was, 2007. And on the day that we said we would, around January or so, we told, you know, our board and everyone else, this is when we're going to launch it. And it launched that day. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Steve about Aptera's early rise and fall and how he and his co-founder are making another run at solar-powered cars today. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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19:17Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest is Steve Fambro, founder and CEO of the solar car company Aptera. So it's 2006, way before electric vehicles were mainstream. In fact, there was barely an electric vehicle industry at the time. There were no charging standards, nothing built for the industry. But Steve was certain he was on the right track. We believed that electric was the future. It made all the sense in the world. We don't need to be burning hydrocarbons, even if they're very efficient. There's better ways to power a vehicle. And that was with electricity. I mean, essentially, you had this electric vehicle, this prototype, and I think you unveiled it to the public at a TED conference in 2007.

20:03And that really got people excited. You got a lot of interest, and you had a lot of people coming to you to make investments. And people wanted this car. People were really excited about it. Yeah, that was a really big, that conference was a really pivotal event for us because it put us on the map. It got a lot of press. It introduced us to lots of investors. And we went on to raise probably another$40 million or so at the time before we left the company. So, all right. So this prototype comes out. And by the way, it looks like what the car looks like today. It looks very similar. But there is a lot that happened between then and now.

20:56And so let's talk about some of what happened. I mean, there was a lot of interest. I mean, eventually, within a year or so, you had about 4 ,000 people put down deposits to buy one of these really cool vehicles, two-seaters, but with a lot of trunk space. And meantime, you, I guess you and Chris, your co-founder, decided to find a CEO, like a professional CEO who could really kind of take the company to the next level. But for a variety of reasons, that would turn out to be maybe not the right decision. Well, you know, it was a tough time for any startup at that time. I remember a lot of the VCs we were talking to, at that time it was an economic downturn.

21:45It was gloom and doom. I still remember Bill Gurley, a prominent Silicon Valley VC at the time. Invested in Uber and many others, yeah. I remember he had a single slide on a PowerPoint with sort of a piece of ham where all the ham was gone and a knife on a bone saying, cut to the bone. That was his advice to all of the startups. at the time. And so, you know, we, we recognize that the, uh, the, the, the team, the professional team that we hired, they, um, they were working with the department of energy to, to get a loan and to bring in a four wheel vehicle. And, you know, with the, with the cutting to the bone mentality, you know, we thought maybe the company would be in, in better hands if we left it to the professionals and we would go off and start, you know, another company.

22:31And that's what Chris did. And that's what I did. And basically what happened, if I'm just to summarize it, I mean, the company sought out loans from the government, the Department of Energy, which did give big loans to Tesla and to Fisker and even to Ford. But initially, because you had a three-wheeled vehicle, you weren't eligible for one of these loans that were designed to help electric car companies get off the ground. And I guess the team that you sort of hired to run the company decided that maybe they should move towards a four-wheeled vehicle, like a traditional sedan. And that's where they kind of shifted all their energy towards.

23:11Yes, that's exactly right. And so they had used a lot of the same concepts and ideas to design a four-wheel vehicle. I think that's what they were trying to get through the DOE at the time. So essentially, by 2009, you and Chris were on the way out. You had started this company in 2005, but about four years later, there's a professional team, many of whom had come from the automotive industry, running Aptera. And I guess you felt like there wasn't much for you to do at that point in the company? Yeah, I mean, that's basically it. We wanted to make sure if we're there getting a salary, that we're adding value and all moving in the same direction.

23:55And I think the direction that the team and the board wanted to move was the four wheel and the DOE loan. And so we felt that we would probably add more value to something new and something different. The professional team was in place and sort of left in charge. All right. So you guys leave. Meantime, Aptera does manage to secure a loan, a commitment, I should say. But they had to, I guess there was a condition, they had to raise money from the private markets. but for a variety of reasons that fell through. And by 2011, the company you founded, Aptera, it shut down. It basically liquidated and refunded the depositors' money who wanted people who deposited on the cars and then paid investors back what they could pay them back.

24:47That's right. I mean, how did you feel? I mean, so this sort of dream that you guys had, that was it i mean were you how did you feel at that time you know uh at the time i tried to channel all of that grief like in this in the positive energy and you know so i the the day i left aptera originally you know i was maybe two or three weeks before i had you know my first signed term sheet for my new company and i just tried to put all of that thought and grief into energy, into momentum, into something different. But it's analogous to the loss of someone that you love and you never really get over it.

25:33In the meantime, you were working on this other company, this vertical farming company that would allow people, I guess, to raise their own vegetables inside their homes or? Well, it was more industrial food production, but indoors. But it was the idea of growing food as densely packed in three dimensions as you could, and then only expanding it out at the time of harvest so that you could, in the smallest amount of space with the least amount of energy and least amount of water, raise the highest amount of biomass per square, per unit area, per unit time. Wow. Meantime, Aptera is just done. The assets were auctioned off.

26:18Apparently, there was a Chinese company that at some point tried to spin out another independent company called Aptera US that sort of would make a gas version of the car. It never really took off. But it seems like this Chinese company that essentially bought the assets never really filed to take over AppTarra's IP. Yeah, they didn't really do much of anything with it. And I think even the company that – one of the people that bought the assets at the first auction, they ended up with a bunch of the older vehicles sitting in a warehouse up somewhere in Northern California that we've – And Chris and I have tried to locate just for sentimental reasons.

27:03We'd love to have them as part of our heritage, just on display or something. But yeah, they were sort of cast to the four corners of the earth and the IP, the products and tools and nothing ever really happened with it. And it just kind of sat as an idea in my mind and Chris's mind and Jason and a few others for basically until we were able to bring it back to life. So tell me how that happened. I mean, 2019, you and Chris joined forces to relaunch Aptera. Like, tell me about the conversations you were having to do that. Because, I mean, you started in 2005. It essentially folds in 2011. And probably most of the investors lost money, right?

27:50So tell me how – I mean, how did you guys even start talking? Like, take me in the conversation. Like, let's start this again. Let's go back to this thing. Actually, I think it might have started with our lobbyist, Dwayne Gibson, who was in town and just wanted to reconnect. And just to be clear, you had a lobbyist that you hired to work in Washington, D.C. to focus on loans and subsidies that the government was offering to electric car makers. Correct. It helped us navigate the waters. You know, when you're connected with someone like that, it's not just about sort of lobbying for loans and programs.

28:30It's also, you know, making sure you have a seat at the table with different regulatory bodies or that you have the right legal oversight, you know, protection and certain regulatory affairs. And so we were just sort of kicking around the idea saying, look, you know, who is it? There's just Tesla, really. You know, there's no one else. And why is that? And everything is just an electrified car. It's not really designed. It doesn't appear to be designed from scratch as an electric vehicle. And Chris, of course, owning this battery company and us talking about it, the numbers, and said, well, with the new technology, how many batteries could we fit in in Aptera anyway?