We drive Aptera's solar car, Tesla Cybercab specs revealed, Lucid Cosmos design leaks, and more

Set Winchell: Foreign.

Fred Lambert: We are live for a new episode of the Direct Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host and as usual, I'm joined by Set Winchell. How are we doing? Set?

Set Winchell: I'm good.

Fred Lambert: All right. And we have a special guest today. We have our one and only, the unique Jamie Dow. How you doing, Jamie?

Jamie Dow: Hi, everybody. Howdy. Howdy. Doing good.

Fred Lambert: Jamie's joining us because he, uh, he's the one of the lucky few to have ever driven the, the Aptera solar car. And he also visited the company, um, earlier this week.

Jamie Dow: Last week when was, uh, was last week. I took a little while to write it up and to edit the videos and all that kind of stuff.

Fred Lambert: All right, uh, if you haven't had the chance to, uh, look up his videos and uh, his article on the Aptera and his visit, I suggest that you do. It was very interesting, but you'll have uh, plenty of, uh, time to learn about it because we're going to interview him about, um, his little visit in the drive this week. And uh, if you guys have question, I'm going to remind you of that later on on the show as more people come in live. But you could going to be able to ask him questions directly if you're listening to the show live. But yeah, um, all right, let's uh, let's dive right in. How was it?

Jamie Dow: Uh, well, it was, I mean, it was interesting. Obviously I've, I've been waiting for this for a long time. Uh, as I mentioned in the article, uh, I've been driving electric cars for, what is it, 18 years now? 17 years, something like that. And Aptera has existed that entire time? Sort of. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Some version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, there was, there was an Aptera then, there wasn't then there was and there wasn't. Now there is something like that. But the fact that, um, it has been this long and finally there's a car that is available to be driven by somebody who isn't an Aptera employee is very interesting. Um, and, you know, the long history of Aptera, there were a lot of early EV fans or, you know, at the first, the first incarnation of it wasn't an ev, but there were a lot of early EV fans who did feel jilted by Aptera, uh, you know, promising a car for so long and then failing. Um, so there's a lot of, uh, sort of pent up frustration, uh, about that. But they finally have something which may or may not be a full, uh, vehicle. But it's progress.

Fred Lambert: It's progress. It's not.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, it is.

Fred Lambert: It's not certified to be sold or anything like that, but it is going the right direction.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And it did. You know, I mean, I checked out the factory too. It looked more complete than I expected it to look, but still maybe not as much progress as I would have expected since the factory video that they put out six months ago. Um, but in terms of the car, which is the real thing that we should talk about for first is that, uh, it's all right. Um, I think still needs quite a bit of work, especially on NVH noise, uh, vibrations and harshness. Um, you know they, they said that they've been tuning the suspension. It was too loose for a while now. I would say it's too tight. And I drove down there in a Tesla Roadster, which is a very, very rough car.

Fred Lambert: Very stiff.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. But this was, was maybe a little rougher, however, really interesting. Even though it's a carbon tub one really interesting thing with carbon tub cars is that, um, they're very noisy when you get rock chips and stuff from the ground. And this wasn't like that because the wheels that would kick up the rock chips are in pods, really far off from the body. So they don't kick up anything into the car, which is kind of nice.

Fred Lambert: And they are fully covered too.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. Uh, but yeah, so, you know, it accelerated fine. It wasn't anything to write home about in the acceleration. Um, I'm always really, uh, very specific about what I want my throttle pedal to feel like on an electric car. And it was close enough to that. Um, I think the power delivery was, you know, it's a little bit on the weak side, but it's supposed to be a hyper efficient vehicle, you know, um, and you know, the air conditioning worked, all this kind of stuff. So it, you know, it was all right. It handled a lot better than I expected for being a weird three wheeled vehicle. Um, it did feel pretty planted on the road, which is cool. And, and I even did manage to take it down like a little bit of a curvy road because they're up there in the, in the hills of San Diego. So mostly big business park roads, but we got on a couple ones that had some curves and hills and stuff. Um, and yeah, and it was producing solar power while I was driving, which is pretty cool.

Fred Lambert: Uh, so what was your experience in, with the solar while driving and, or, or parked or what kind of production did you see? What kind of integration in the car that uh, that we have deployed so far?

Jamie Dow: So it's got a screen in the car that shows you how much solar, uh, power you're generating live. I mean the main screen of the vehicle, uh, shows it in like the bottom right corner. Um, now they say eventually they're going to, they're going to have like a window there for CarPlay. If you, if you want to have CarPlay, which is interesting, maybe they'll do it before Rivian does.

Fred Lambert: I don't think. Ever going to do it.

Jamie Dow: I know. No, Rivian's never going to do it. But you know, the excuse is, oh, we've got our user interface, we don't want to confuse anybody. And it's like, well, Aptera is figuring out a way. I actually am in favor of, of Rivian not using it. But, uh, that's a, that's my hot take.

Set Winchell: What about GM not using it?

Jamie Dow: Also fine. I'm also fine. I know I'm, I know I'm the only person in the industry who says this. Everybody's going to get angry at me. But, but I think it's fine. I think GM's interface is pretty good actually. Um, but yeah, so it shows you how much wattage you're generating at any given moment. It was a very sunny, perfect San Diego day in June. So like literally ideal circumstances and it was generating 450 watts of electricity.

Set Winchell: Wow.

Jamie Dow: Which I think is a little less than what they say is the peak. I think it's 700 watt panel worth of panels, but you know, they're all curved and everything. So I think you can get a little more if you park it and you point it directly at the sun. Uh, but I think in normal driving around scenarios, uh, it was around 450 watts, which is, you know, that's, that's a, that's a chunk of, of energy. It's not enough to really drive the car, but it is, um, it is enough to offset some percentage of your, your driving and to probably offset your daily driving if you're a low mileage type of person. Um, and then it tells you how much solar you've uh, generated since the last time you parked the car too. That's tells you how many miles you've generated. It's a little bit further down on the, the wait on the page from where you are. I think I've got a little picture of it in there somewhere. It's. No, wait, maybe it's up from where you were. It's right above the,

Set Winchell: uh.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, I don't know where it is. Whatever you'll find it, somewhere on there. It's, it's the screen. There it is.

Fred Lambert: There you go.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, and it shows you 450 watts, 8 miles since last park. That was right when we had just uh, pulled it out to drive.

Fred Lambert: Mhm.

Jamie Dow: Um, the interface is I think pretty good, honestly. Uh, because it's all one uh, screen. Like you can switch screens, but the settings, there's very few settings, there's very few other things on the other screen. So you're just gonna leave it on that main screen all the time. And I know people don't like having um, non physical controls like everything on the touchscreen, but the fact that everything's in the same place all the time I think is, is acceptable. And there was a really cool thing to open and close the windows. You just slide your finger up and down. Yeah, I saw that on that uh, that little picture of the car. And it opens and closed the windows depending on if you slide it up or down, which is, which was neat and it worked well. Yeah, that's cool.

Fred Lambert: So around like the bezel here, that, is that a fan? That's the fan for the ac.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. That's where the H vac comes in. Which is kind of a weird. Now there is, there are two H vac, um, vents on the dash, on the, the corners also. But the main vent is around the screen. I thought that was really interesting because like you know, then you get the cooling from the ac, which helps keep the screen cool, which is nice. But then also when it's heating, I wonder if it like might overheat the screen or something like that.

Fred Lambert: I was wondering the same thing, but at the same time I don't know how hot that screen would get.

Jamie Dow: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the problem with it, they did have a little um, like fiddly bit. The um, the, the things that channel the air, they're a little fiddly feeling. But they said, oh, we're gonna make it better. I mean basically every time I said oh, that's a problem. They say they're we're gonna make it better. It's like, okay, well you'll probably make some of them better, but maybe some of them you won't make better.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, realistically.

Set Winchell: But so it's been a decade, so all the better done.

Jamie Dow: But now.

Fred Lambert: But they add the production validation units for, for less than a year now. So I guess that's the best comparison point. Uh, so okay, you talked a little bit about the driving experience. I mean, I guess you described it as okay.

Jamie Dow: Uh, yeah, it's I mean you know there, there is better out there, uh, obviously, but uh, I think, I think if they, they loosen uh, the suspension a bit. There's some NVH they need to do on like the uh, the air conditioning pump for example. They really need to isolate that from, from the chassis because when you turn on the air conditioning the whole thing shakes and the, the rear trunk area acts as like sort of a sound magnifier baffle that like just shoots the sound of the H vac pump into your brain and it's like. I mean it's not loud loud, but it's like I would rather this be quieter.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, I mean that, those are things that you, you figure out when you, you actually bring one of those vehicles to production, especially with the smaller evs. Like we've seen it, we have uh, in the garage right now. I had the, the Can Am Pulse, the motorcycle. That best thing is reviewing for us. And you feel more vibration when the fan of the cooling system turns on than when the vehicle is actually just running.

Jamie Dow: Uh, exactly.

Fred Lambert: But yeah, you, you wouldn't even think about that when making a gasoline motorcycle, but when you do an electric one is like, you actually have to improve that quite a little bit. It's not, it's not that crazy but, but still. So yeah, the driving experience is you know, passable. So if you look at like the interior, for example. The interior, you just talked about it a little bit. But uh, if you were to put like a percentage on it, how much you think it's like production ready.

Jamie Dow: Um, let's see. I think um, I mean the storage options seemed pretty close to done. Uh, in terms of the like, uh, they've got a little, uh, a little thing that you can pop up to put like uh, your USB chargers and things in. They've got a center console, they've got cup holders. They don't have a glove box, but I don't think they're ever going to have a glove box. So it's just a little um, zip up like thing for your documents and stuff. Um, there's really not a lot of stuff on the interior to be done. You know, like it's a very small interior. Um, I think it would be nice if they had a telescoping steering wheel, uh, which they don't currently have because uh, the way it works is the, the seat only has one movement. You can move forward or back. And when you move forward you get a little less headroom. And headroom is already kind of a premium in this Car. Um, so I like to sit with my seat a little bit forward so I'm a little closer to the steering wheel. But I lose a little headroom when doing that. So if I could bring the steering wheel out a little bit, I think that would be nice. But I don't know if they're going to do that. Uh, they do have to fix the screens for the, uh, rear view and side view mirrors. Now all the, all the mirrors are cameras in this, which is pretty interesting, uh, because every, every car designer for decades has wanted to do that. Uh, but they haven't been able to because regulations say you have to have mirrors on a car, but you don't have to have mirrors on an auto cycle, which this is regulated as. So it has to ship with mirrors in some states. But the mirrors are actually genuinely useless. You cannot see through them. They're not adjust. There's a little bar in the way so like, literally you can see like a little tiny corner of like the wheel. Uh, so they tell you, yeah, we have to ship it with mirrors. Here's how you remove them. Put them in the trash when you're done.

Fred Lambert: This part here. And, and this will stay exactly.

Set Winchell: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: Okay. So I think that's interesting because you see, like what we see here, the window that you can actually operate is only this part, right.

Jamie Dow: It's very small. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: So it's, it's. Why do you have to do that? Because it's kind of like a fake frameless door, basically.

Jamie Dow: I think it's both, uh, structural to help improve, increase the, the stiffness of the, you know, the window safety structure, side safety structures, and then also aerodynamic. Because by doing that you reduce the amount of opening for the window, which means that you can channel the air sort of around the window. Even if you open the window, you can kind of channel the air around it a little bit so that you, ah, don't lose as much efficiency with the windows down, I think. Um, but yeah, so one thing they need to fix is the screens for the side and rear view mirrors because, uh, you can't use them with polarized sunglasses, which is something that I always note on cars. Uh, that's easy enough. All they need to do is put the screens the other way around. But the, uh, the supplier gave it to them with the wrong polarization. So, you know, that's just one of those things that you put it on the car, you realize, oh, wait, this doesn't work. And then you have to go back and get them to do it the other way. Around. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: One thing that I think a lot of people don't, uh, appreciate enough about this auto car, whatever you want to call it, uh, it's the. The storage room is actually storage. Yeah, the storage is pretty significant.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. I laid down it. I'm six feet tall. I did have to be on a diagonal, but I could lay down completely fully laid out with the seat back. And I had my head basically brushing against the seat and my feet basically brushing against the, uh, the end of the thing. But if I push the seat forward, uh, or had a pillow in there or something like that, I, I could probably sleep in it.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. This could be like two people. Uh, there's this idea of having like a ten, two that comes down the back.

Jamie Dow: Uh, two people if they really like each other.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, I can. Not even having to sleep in it. But like as a, as a road trip car, like you can have your. The bag full of luggage and uh.

Jamie Dow: Oh, for sure.

Fred Lambert: And. And be a. One other thing I like too is I, I know. I just realized it's pretty crazy that uh, they put just like three solar cells on each side.

Jamie Dow: I don't think they were there on the, the final one. I think that's a earlier, um, version of it because they didn't have that on the, on the one I was, I was in. Yeah, that's, uh, it's four main panels. The one weird panel is they have one on the dash which produces like 30 watts or something like that. Uh, it's pretty low, but, uh, but it is something, you know, but it is a little weird too because it's kind of, uh, a little bit reflective. I didn't see that problem, but I've seen other reviews that had that problem where they had the sun coming in through the dash and it made it really hard reflection on the interior of the, um, uh, interior of the windshield. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if that one has the dash. Yeah, this picture doesn't have the, the solar on the dash, but they do have a solar dash piece, um, for

Set Winchell: the pretty watts as well. Yeah, it's like one of those little $12, um, solar panels, right?

Jamie Dow: Yeah. That one in particular just seems like they were just trying to find a place to put a solar panel.

Set Winchell: Right.

Jamie Dow: Uh, the other cool thing about the solar panels on the car is they are split up into distinct zones so they're not all wired together. Uh, and that's in case you like, park halfway under a tree. One thing with solar cells is if one of them gets shaded it can decrease the efficiency of the entire panel. So when you cut it up into separate panels, then if shade is on half of the panels, then the other half of the panels can still be generating it. Maximum.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. That's nice. I can see this being cool. Like if you're going on vacation or something and you're taking a flight, like you don't. You can get like the outdoor parking, the cheapest outdoor parking at an airport. You leave this in for a week, two weeks, and you, you'll be fully charged by that time instead of having to, you know, negotiate a, uh, a uh, parking spot with, with charging or which they often charge at airports. So for things like that. M. That's really cool.

Jamie Dow: But yeah, exactly.

Fred Lambert: For people that are gonna, you know, daily drive this and use this as their main commuter, unless they have a limited commute, they're gonna have to charge this either overnight or you know, a, ah, public charging station. What's the charging solution they have on this?

Jamie Dow: They have an AX port. They're the, in fact the first, uh, automaker outside of Tesla that announced they would use the NAX port.

Fred Lambert: They got the ball rolling.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, well, I think they even predated nax.

Set Winchell: Weren't they going to use a test support before they asked for it?

Fred Lambert: Actually they asked before Tesla made it an open, uh, open standard. So. But uh, but they were the first. You know, Jamie's right.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yeah. Uh, and it is a, uh, I think it's like a 50 kilowatt DC or something. And you're like, oh, well that's kind of low. But it's also a 44 kilowatt hour battery. And the car is so efficient. It's 100 watt hours a mile as opposed to like the 300ish watt hours a mile that most electric cars are that it charges at 3x the rate in terms of miles per kilowatt, you know, so you can consider it as being like 150 kilowatt hour, uh, kilowatt, uh, charging rate.

Set Winchell: Mhm.

Jamie Dow: Because, um. Because it's three times more efficient than everyone else.

Fred Lambert: Exactly. Uh, I don't think in the podcast

Jamie Dow: post I put your visit because the factory one.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, but uh, we can pull that up.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. So that was the other interesting thing is the, the factory tour was um, I think, I think pretty enlightening for me because they really did feel like they were showing me everything. Like I, I don't think they were hiding, uh, much. Um, you know, they, there were times when I was walking around and I was like, should I be taking pictures of this and they're like uh, maybe not. And I'm like, I had to ask you guys that, like shouldn't you have you know put the things away that I'm not supposed to look at yet?

Fred Lambert: So unless they were doing with executive or with prison with PR.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. Chris, um, Chris Cameron, Chris McCammon, I forget. Um, he's their, their like comms head and Kenpachi over there. Uh, I did meet with Chris, uh, Anthony and talked to him for a little while. Uh, the co. CEO. Yeah. Uh, but I didn't write up that as a separate interview. I just kind of put the information we talked about into the various articles. Um, but yeah, and you know they seemed to be quite open about things. Obviously they're, they're talking in PR methodology, they're you know, hyping things up and saying we're working on that and all that kind of stuff. But uh, you know they had more cars around than I expected. They had more parts ready to go, they had the stations laid out nicely and everything. Now you know the place isn't really built for high volume. Uh, it was a lot of manual stuff. Um, but they've only made 15 cars so far. It wouldn't make any sense for them to have some sort of mechanized assembly line for thousands of vehicles per year.

Fred Lambert: 15 cars, uh, in, in various stages of production or 15 validation units completed or.

Jamie Dow: Oh, so that's more my own number of just what I saw in the factory.

Fred Lambert: That's what I'm asking.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yes. Somewhere around 15 or 20 cars. And um, I would say most of them were in the roughly this validation stage. There were a number of prototypes from previous stages. Um, and I took pictures of some of them. Uh, but I think most of them were uh, this sort of phase of, of car which I guess they're calling this prototype Artemis. They have all the different names for prototypes and I can't keep it straight.

Fred Lambert: See that drive unit is pretty beefy.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: For a vehicle that size.

Jamie Dow: They were originally going to do um, hub motors. They switched to an inboard single motor because it would be simpler and because apparently the hub motor uh, supplier was having like a 80% failure rate or something. So they're like yeah, this doesn't sound right, we shouldn't use this.

Fred Lambert: And the body is made in Italy, right?

Jamie Dow: A uh, body made by a ah, company called CPC Group and it uses sheet molding, carbon fiber sheet molding compound. So it's basically fiberglass but carbon fiber. Mhm reinforced which is pretty neat. And it's, it's very low, um, labor cost. So that's why they do that, because, you know, you can squirt out one of these bodies and like 10 minutes per piece, and there's only, I think, six pieces.

Fred Lambert: I don't know if they've been hit by a tariff situation importing those.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, well, I mean, the nice thing is they've taken 10 damn years to build the thing. So they could just wait, wait 30 days and something will change.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, that's the thing. You don't have that much time. Or in this case, money. Which. Money is time. Time is money. But, uh, last I checked, they had like $17 million in the bank, and they, they basically are burning two. $10 million a quarter.

Jamie Dow: Um, yeah, they, they did say they've got a raise coming up sometime soon. Uh, they're preparing a raise. They didn't give me any details on that. And, uh, it sounds like they're going to need more money. But having themselves listed on the nasdaq, uh, helps in terms of, um,

Set Winchell: making,

Jamie Dow: uh, it possible to raise money. You know, they can do a raise more easily that way than having to do the crowdfunding that they've done and all that kind of stuff at the

Fred Lambert: detriment of shareholders to, to dilution, obviously, because you're looking at like an 80 million market cap. Yeah. So, you know, if you're raising at, uh, 15 million a puck, uh, you dilute your stock pretty fast. But look, at this point, I think it's the, it's the only way to try to get there anyway. So. I'm not older, by the way. I'm still.

Set Winchell: There's one other way to get capital, though. They could start selling some cars.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, that's true, that's true.

Fred Lambert: Talking about that.

Jamie Dow: Or they could. Whether they felt they could just make everything up, merge with Xai and whatever, I don't know. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I said that there's gonna be.

Fred Lambert: I said talk about that later on. Uh, what's your, uh. So did you talk about that? Uh, timeline to certification, timeline to potential deliveries. What does it look like?

Jamie Dow: Uh, so that is actually one thing that I didn't ask them specifically, and I realized that I should have. But also, uh, I think every other time they've given a date, it hasn't held. So it's kind of as useful as asking Elon when self driving is going to happen, you know, at this point.

Set Winchell: End of the year.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, yeah.

Jamie Dow: So. So I just said at the beginning of this, the mantra will remain Wait and see. And I think that's just, I think any uh, fans, any reservation holders, any shareholders, uh, just have to kind of, you know, meditate on nothing happening for a while. Uh, but it, you know, they got cars that, that run which is, that's not nothing.

Fred Lambert: You know, like everything they did is impressive. And I, I do like just the idea of the car itself. High efficiency. I think it's awesome. I do think that you know, solar car producing your own energy that you're running on. There's something romantic about this. Something like really cool even. And it's the first time, it's not the first time that's been done, but it's the first time that's been done in a way that feels useful rather than gimmicky. So I think that's uh, that's right.

Jamie Dow: And on a vehicle that like both is designed to be solar because to make a car solar you really do have to design it around it. You can't just make a car and slap solar panels on the top. Um, but it also looks kind of cool enough and kind of uncompromised enough that you could still use it. And there are particular use cases like uh, the CEO, co CEO Chris Anthony told me that he's really interested in commercial they now I think that's either a long shot or a retreat. A lot of these companies kind of retreat to commercial from m trying to make mass market consumer um, vehicles. But the idea of having these for uh, you know, food delivery or something like that, you know, it's not too far off from the idea of using Cyber Cabs for this. Um, high efficiency.

Fred Lambert: It's all about.

Jamie Dow: Right. Insanely high efficiency, very low cost per mile and it still has a lot of room in the back. So you know there's.

Fred Lambert: And just as useful as Cyber Cab which we're going to get into next.

Jamie Dow: But uh, two seater and this one, you don't have to charge. You don't have to set up a whole charging system at your, your business. You know, instead of having to put in DC quick chargers everywhere at your business you could put in 120 volt. 120 volt outlet gets this thing 13 miles an hour which is, you know that's 130 miles overnight. That's enough for a shift. Right?

Fred Lambert: You need zool charge. Can you can, can you charge the battery through solar and through, through connector?

Jamie Dow: Uh, I, yeah, I believe so. The way it works is so they were telling me about the charge system. They have two separate charge controllers. They have A separate charge controller just for the solar. Because the normal charging system, and this is true on any electric car, uses like 200 watts of overhead or sometimes even more. Which means that, um, the efficiency you get when charging an ah, electric vehicle on a lower powered charging port is a lot lower because you're using a lot of that energy on overhead or the power on overhead. Um, so they designed a separate solar charge controller that uses only like 8 to 15 watts of overhead. So that, that way they're not using up half of their solar, uh, running the charge system. And then they kind of rebalance the batteries by activating the full charge system every once in a while. Uh, so I think that you could do that. I don't know specifically, but I think you can by just plugging it in and also having the solar going. And then you would have, you know, you'd be charging it whatever, 450 watts during the day while you're driving around and then 1300, 1500 watts or whatever overnight.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. For reference, like you said, 100 on 120 volt, just a regular outlet. You get 13 miles per hour on my Model 3, which is, you know, pretty efficient. I'll, I'll get like less than 5 miles per hour. So, yeah, pretty big difference for sure.

Jamie Dow: Yep. Yeah. So it's, it is sort of when you're charging 120v on a normal car, on a normal electric car, it just feels like, uh, that's, it's kind of slow. You can maybe make it work, but you always feel like you're having to make it work on this. 13 miles an hour, 130 miles overnight, like, that's enough for the vast majority of people's commutes.

Set Winchell: Yeah, this is closer to like an E bike or a very efficient motorcycle. All right, we're about halfway through the show. Maybe we can wrap up. Like, you know what, what do you think, uh, Aptera is gonna like, what's going to happen here?

Jamie Dow: I don't know, man. It's, it's. I mean, right now is a great time to go to the market to get ridiculous amounts of money for stupid bets.

Set Winchell: Right.

Jamie Dow: Uh, as we. This week specifically is the perfect time. So if they can manage to raise a good chunk of money in this ridiculous market before whatever happens, uh, sometime soon, you know, it's possible they could have given them, they could give themselves enough Runway to actually get this going. But it, I think it's still going to take a good amount of Runway. So it's really about them either finding a trillionaire who wants to have something to do with this or, uh, you know, getting some banks involved or whatever. And uh, if they can get the money, you know, maybe. But then the question is, what market do we go into? Will people take it over the Bolt or the Leaf or the Cyber Cab? If the Cyber Cab happens as we're about to talk about, um, so it, it's, it's still a rough road. Even if they get the money, it's still a rough road because, uh, it is a compromised vehicle. It's cool. It's different. But not everybody wants cool and different, you know.

Set Winchell: Yeah, well, we wish them the best, obviously.

Fred Lambert: Yes. All right, um, so Jamie's gonna stay on comment a little bit on the few other articles that we, we have on. And then at the end, as usual, uh, for people watching live, we can, we can take you guys questions. So, uh, if you have a question for Jamie about his visit on Terra Terra, you can ask them in the comment section right now. We'll get to it in a few minutes. Or it can be also any other topics that we're discussing today or any, any topics in the UV world that you would like said. Uh, Jamie or I, uh, stake on it. But yeah, the Cyber Cab, uh, what happened this week is, uh, EP certification. It was uh, it was teased a few weeks ago by, by Tesla that um, it was the newly record efficiency for any kind of, uh, vehicle officially certified by the epa. And we can, we can confirm that uh, through the filings this week. But uh, there's a few other. Some things that were confirmed, something that we weren't sure about. Uh, just a few points to, to, to discuss in terms of actual specs of the, of the vehicle. So we, uh, a 47.6 kilowatt hour battery pack. Uh, it's using a three phase. A three phase permanent magnet motor rated at 163 kilowatts, which is uh, just over 200 horsepower. It is a front wheel drive. So we already knew that, um, uh, the weight. So the weight was not a big question because you know, the goal was to make this car as efficient as possible. 3,113 pounds. It's uh, that, that's curb. Yeah, curb weight is the. Yeah, that's the right.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, that's the unladen weight. That's 300 pounds heavier than my roadster.

Fred Lambert: I, I think I personally, I thought it was, it was heavier, uh, than I was expected. You know, I thought it could get under 3,000.

Jamie Dow: Um, yeah, it's tough with, with batteries, you know.

Fred Lambert: Yeah.

Jamie Dow: And without using carbon fiber and all that kind of stuff.

Fred Lambert: Mhm. Yeah. I think, I think another like the battery is definitely part of it. There's, there's. Yeah but we've seen, I think there's some decisions that, that uh, are unrelated to batteries also led to that because we, we see other vehicles that are you know, lighter. Uh, like the uh, the you know we're going to talk about the Honda and later. I think that's a little bit lighter than this. You know it's a smaller footprint but it's I think more practical probably overall. Um, there's uh, you know the, the long bow uh in, in Great uh Britain that you know it's a roadster also but it's lighter than your roadster too. I think it's thousand pound lighters and then this uh, obviously it's optimized for that or for driving condition but still.

Jamie Dow: And the Aptera is also a thousand pounds lighter. It's 2200-ish. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: Fair as one fewer wheel though.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, one fewer wheel. That's a heavy wheel.

Fred Lambert: Yeah.

Jamie Dow: Um, yeah but it's a similar size battery. It's 44 kilowatt hour battery. So almost the same size and two seats fewer. Probably fewer safety structures and things. Maybe even more cargo though.

Fred Lambert: Maybe uh, the combined EPA range but that's the unadjusted range so it's not, it's not like the official one and nowhere near the reality of uh, real world driving this car. 4 uh, hundred and eighteen combined, 375 highway. But uh, we know Tesla's goal is about 300 miles of range on this thing and um, only 48 kilowatt hour battery pack and they kind of weight and not, not a crazy powerful motor. It's, it looks very achievable but yeah this is, this is the inside of the car here though. So like it's you know it's definitely bigger than the interior of the Aptera but it's not you know, significantly bigger.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, the seats look a little bit thicker. The interior storage looks smaller actually or non existent even.

Fred Lambert: But uh, I mean obviously the, the biggest thing with, with, with the Cyber Cab is just you know whatever you think of, of the actual vehicle, the design of it and its, its utility, uh it's the main feature is the fact that supposed to be pedal less steering less steering wheel less. It's supposed to be fully autonomous and so far there's just. Tesla doesn't really solve unsupervised Self driving at any kind of meaningful scale, which makes the vehicle kind of confusing to other people, myself included, because we're starting to see, you know, a decent amount of them around. Tesla is supposed to be in production since April. Um, if something Tesla is good at, it's, it's ramping up production of mass market evs. And we've seen hundreds of them coming out of the factory being tested all over the US and it's unclear what's the actual use case of them because I don't think they can be used on anything else outside of Tesla's current, you know, limited geofence robotaxi services. Particularly in Texas where regulation is uh, is, is the most relaxed out there. Tesla hasn't even applied for a permit to fully self drive in uh, California. Um, so I, but I mean we've seen, we've seen the efforts going on right now in Arizona, in Nevada. So I would assume that the goal for Tesla is to expand for take what they learned in Austin, Austin and uh, Dallas and then you know, expand that locally, bring that to probably Las Vegas, bring that to Phoenix where regulation also, you know, not too crazy and uh, and then not just use the Model Y which they're doing right now for they're uh, both Axiom Texas and then use the Cyber Cab as well. Are we, are we guys in agreement on that?

Jamie Dow: Oh, um, probably. Yeah. You know we're seeing a lot of them. Um, we see spy shots all the time. But they all have steering wheels.

Set Winchell: Yep.

Fred Lambert: They are just being validated. So that's the thing. Like they are being validated uh, for, for self driving, but they're also being validated as actually like the, the driving. Like any kind of evs running, um, coming out for production, you need to test like the suspension, you need to test the sh, you need to test the uh, the efficiency, the driving performance. You need to uh, you know, put it to a stress test. So I think they're doing that at the same time and you know, you kind of have to uh, have a steering wheel for that.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yeah, you need someone in it to feel what it feels like. And they can't just write it right now because they haven't solved self driving.

Fred Lambert: So m. We're uh, really on a, uh, on a show on efficiency. Very efficient EVs right now. We started with the Aptera, now we have the Cybercap, which you know, I think that the headline is the self driving part but you know it's, it's made to be super efficient ev and now we have the Lucid Cosmos that's uh, also you know Lucid is known for its efficiency and its luxury vehicle and they are trying to bring that down market now with these uh, these three uh, mid range evs in the fifty thousand dollar range that are trying to launch with the Cosmo being the, the flagship one as a kind of uh, you know, crossover SUV wagon that uh, meant to compete with the, you know, the Model Y and all the best selling vehicles in that very popular segment. And what happened this week is that um, thanks to some design patent filings with the European Union Intellectual Property office, we get you know the, the, the most official best look at the design. We've seen some prototypes around. Just a few weeks ago we even had one right next to the Model Y which gave us like a pretty good idea of the, the, the, the size of it even though it was, was camouflage. But now you, you see, you see what? You know I guess I would describe that as kind of a shrunk uh, uh, gravity. What do you guys think?

Jamie Dow: Mhm. Yeah, kind of like the R2 version of the R1.mhm. You know it looks a little less minivanish in the back possibly.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, that profile looks very much gravity but the size of it makes it look less minivan. Like the fact that it is smaller.

Jamie Dow: I just feel like the back of the Gravity is more straight. Like it doesn't curve down.

Fred Lambert: Mhm.

Jamie Dow: Like just a slight amount. But I don't know.

Fred Lambert: I mean I had a gravity here. Last week Bastion was doing the, the review that it's gonna post probably next week. A full, full review for Electric. And when, when it's, the suspension is down for me it's like it's a wagon. It's not even a Mini M, it looks like a wagon. And I, I pray that this thing actually gets popular and they fit. You know the, they iron out all their software issues which I'll let Bastian do the full review. But from his experience he was extremely impressed by the vehicle other than the, the software problems that come with it. And uh, you know they're releasing their FSD competitor at the same time there's, they're gonna start releasing the, the lower price versions of it. So I, I, I, I'm still hoping to see uh, what they can come up with in terms of uh, volume, uh, and profitability though I think the profitability will only come if this Cosmos is successful and we're supposed to see that thing in full quite soon. I think it's coming in the end of the Year from what I understand, they actually going to start production of this in Saudi Arabia and then bring in the U.S. but I've heard. Okay, I don't know if I.

Jamie Dow: That's wild.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, because they have a factory in Saudi Arabia now. But I think it's mostly like, like the same thing that Tesla was doing back in the day in the Netherlands, you remember, like they were like shipping cars there, right? Just.

Set Winchell: Yeah, yeah.

Jamie Dow: Ah, yeah.

Fred Lambert: But well, to produce ones from scratch there.

Jamie Dow: Given the Saudi's reputation on labor issues. I hope that is not the case, but we won't get too deep into that.

Fred Lambert: Yeah.

Jamie Dow: I will say that Lucid, of the cars that I've driven, I think Lucid is the only one that I would put on the same tier as Tesla in terms of how I like the, the way the pedals feel, the way the steering everything, the way it all works, the drive, software, drive feel. Uh, those are my top tier and everything else is at least a half a tier below, including Rivan that I really like.

Fred Lambert: Uh, I mean I've only driven the, the, the Air, but the Air for me is like it's on par if not better than the Model S. Uh, I, I really enjoy driving that car. It's really a driver's car. It makes you. That's not true. I drove the Gravity last week a little bit just for like, like 20 minutes or so and it was a blast. I don't think there's a car that makes me feel more confident driving it than a Lucid. So quickly like I start driving in, I'm like, oh, this is uh, I feel very confident in, in this car.

Jamie Dow: I felt the same. I, I only did a test drive with Gravity 2 like 20 minutes. I felt the same. Seth.

Set Winchell: Yeah, so it's interesting because uh, Lucid has all these problems with deliveries and, and setup and some software issues. But like once everything's working out, people seem to love them.

Jamie Dow: Mhm. Agree.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. Um, all right, a quick word on Rivan. We talked a lot about Rivan last week which sets uh, R2, uh, first drive. But uh, you know, they're doing the rounds right now with a little press tour around the R2 and Rivan. Uh, CEO Arin gave a very interesting interview with um, Wired last week. I recommend you go check it out. I linked it in this, uh, this article here. But I thought you had an interesting point about self driving. So we, we spent a bunch of time on last podcast talking about that because of um, you know, said at a good point where he's He's a, he's a R2 buyer but not right now because of the um, L3 capabilities only being available uh, hardware wise with the vehicles coming later this year. So Wired talked a little bit about you know, more details of Rivian's approach to not, not just self driving but just uh, autonomy in general. And he had an interesting point about that I've been making actually for, for, for a while that he doesn't see the capability to charge for these, you know, um, point to point driving that is not real level four, just like what FSD is right now, um, for a meaningful looking forward for any kind of midterm capabilities. He uh, he sees as a window right now where the offering is limited, where you can actually charge for it. And Riven is charging $2500 for their, their autonomy plus package or $50 a month. But he admits that he doesn't see Riven be able to do that going forward. He actually linked it, sorry linked the, the uh, the features to the advanced driving feature, to airbags and, and other safety features that you uh, know you used to charge for that you used to have to pay to get airbags in your car back in the 80s and 90s. Now, now it's included and um, actually it's mandated. And he thinks that the same thing is going to happen with this point to point driving technology uh, in the future. Which you uh, know I agree because we've seen it in the, in the east, we've seen it in China already. Uh, all these FSD competitors there, BYD's got eye, uh, expand VLA, um, Xiaomi, Huawei, all have very similar technology to what FSD offers and they are all included in the price of the vehicle to some degrees. Uh, and um, and we are not seeing that right now in North America because Tesla is I think the only one that has at least in term of capabilities. They, they are on, on the level of their own. But I don't think that's going to last that long. I think, I think people are catching up fast and Rivian aims to have you know, be on par with FSD by the end of the year and then go further than that next year with a, through level three system where you can actually you know, start paying attention for meaningful periods of times. And uh, I think that that's where you actually had value when, when there's, you take responsibility for the system however for where specifically or for how long then you actually add a lot of value and then you can charge for that. But for actual you know, FSD level two advance that they want to call it Level two Plus now that's what they are. Uh, like

Jamie Dow: we have six levels to work with and we're having them come up every, everyone's in level two so we have to differentiate them somehow.

Fred Lambert: Huh huh. Yeah. But in China they're loving that the level two plus, it's really becoming a thing now. Uh, that I think he's right. I think we don't, we won't see them charged for that. Looking forward, I don't see it happening.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, that makes sense. And the reason it's not doing it in the US is even if there are other companies that have something, some sort of capability on their car, it's harder to use, it's not marketed, so nobody knows about it, all this kind of stuff. So it feels like Tesla is the only one.

Fred Lambert: Mhm. But I should say RJ had a good point too. He's like, it doesn't mean that you, you should not work on it and try to deliver the car because when it becomes, you know, standard then if you don't have it, you're, you're behind anyway. So you m still need to work on it. It's just, it's not going to be what Elon Musk has been selling to Tesla shareholders for a long time. It's going to be a big, big, you know, margin driver and it, it has been for a long time, but I don't think it's going to be in the future. And we already see it. He's already been proven right by Elon himself who said that the uh, price of FSD will keep going up and you know, it reached $15,000 for the package at some point. It's been down now to $8,000 now they remove the ability to buy it all together and just, it's just subscription. But I don't see it and it's already, I didn't, I didn't even know this until uh, a friend of mine, Paul, just got a new Model three and uh, he, he started paying uh, the subscription, uh, because I have fsd, but I have, I paid for it like years ago. He's charging us a subscription in Canada. It's a hundred dollars a month which is the same in the U.S. yeah, I don't know if you guys know this, but the Canadian dollar, nothing great. It's like uh, on the uh, on the US dollar right now. So it's 30% cheaper in Canada than the US. We have the exact same product right now. Um, and then you have to look at hardware 3, which you know, those are the people that are really getting screwed because they are also paying $100 a month for now, a very inferior product to uh, uh, what we have on order four.

Jamie Dow: My primary experience using FSD and my mom's model three is uh, every like five minutes I cut off FSD. It asks me for a 15 second clip of what, of why I did it. I press the button and I say 15 seconds worth of things that I cannot say on this broadcast about why it won't stop changing lanes.

Fred Lambert: I'm sure your, your mom's all three has already been blacklisted. Now. They're blacklisted.

Jamie Dow: Exactly.

Fred Lambert: And to be fair, your mom is on hardware three. Hardware four.

Jamie Dow: Uh, uh, yeah, it's, well it's one of the first uh, uh, Model three. It's the one that I reviewed when we, when we first got it. So it's VIN 2500 or so.

Fred Lambert: So is it 2.5 or was it upgraded to 3?

Jamie Dow: It was, yeah, it was 2.5. It got the upgrade. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: The. On the Super N, another very cool little EV that we won't get in North America, but they just launched it in the UK and it started at the equivalent of $25,000 for a little, little odd hatch, a little four door hatch. Um, kind of reminiscent of like the K car. Even though I don't think, I don't think it would fit the category officially. But uh, you know, very reminiscent of that.

Jamie Dow: And it's 2400 pounds.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, it's uh, it's not heavy at all.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, that's hot as heck. That's hot. That's hotter than most hot hatches. Right? Hot hatches are £3,000 normally around.

Set Winchell: What's hilarious is like every time there's a super cool car that I want, it's never in the U.S. m. Yeah, never.

Fred Lambert: And I'm sure it would be popular too. Like not crazy popular obviously, but you have a small 47 kilowatt hour kilowatt motor on this. But then they talk about boost, uh, mode that brings it to 70. It's like almost double the capacity. But even with the boost mode, like don't expect uh, to win a drag race with this thing because it's 0 to 62, 100 kilometers. Uh, an hour is 10 seconds.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: But uh, you do win almost five seconds if you're just driving it in standard mode. So that, that, that motor is really optimized for efficiency obviously is they don't want you to Use that boost too, uh, too long. For too long. Look at the interior.

Jamie Dow: That's like, that's kind of like the best tuned pony, which is a Chinese electric car that I drove that's $4,000. And it had a boost mode and I could not tell the difference because it was like, it was like the difference between 30 and 36 horsepower or something like that. Just like you would feel it with

Fred Lambert: this one because it's like 5 seconds, 4.5 seconds faster on the 62. It's that, that you feel for sure. Um, so we're talking about the Aptera 44 kilowatt hour battery pack in there. Cybercap, uh, 48 kilowatt hour battery pack. This uh, on the Super N is 29.6 kilowatt hour.

Jamie Dow: I love it. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: WLTP of 128 miles. So this is kind of uh, we're back to like the, the Leafs day. Like the early Leaf.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. Give me some small battery pack options

Fred Lambert: as a city car. There's nothing wrong with it. Uh, yeah, uh, it's a beautiful car. I love it. I love the, the design of it. Yeah. That thing. Uh, now the, our friends in uh, on the other side of the pond in the UK can actually get that Good for them.

Jamie Dow: All right.

Fred Lambert: Another company that I put in a similar category as Aptera is Tello Trucks. Uh, and uh, they had a couple of update this week. Uh one they announced a manufacturing partner for, for the, the, the chassis for the body. So the body in white is going to be made by uh, a different company, Schwab's Indust. Based in Michigan, which is a tier one supplier. Uh so you know, for a small company securing a tier one supplier is actually a big accomplishment. So, so good uh, on them. But uh, my, my article today was more focused on the battery pack announcement. So first of all like the, the, the pillow is interesting for, for its design and engineering uh, of the, the actual form factor where you look at that wheelbase here vehicle, I think it's no bigger than a Mini Cooper.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, it's the length, it's the total length of a Mini Cooper. 152 inches long.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. Uh, but the still uh, has like a 5ft bed on it which is impressive. And then it's a four door full cab. Uh, you know it's a useful truck. And um, and in that form factor they're fitting 77 and or 100 kilowatt hour. There's two battery pack size. Um, 77 kilowatt hour for 260 miles. Of range or 106 kilowatt hour for 350 plus mile of range. So not only they won't win Jamie M. On that because they are big battery packs.

Jamie Dow: It's too big.

Fred Lambert: But, but it is impressive for the form factor itself. But what they're doing now with this pack that I, I found really cool is that they are solving the issue of you go 800 volt or 400 volt, um, what. You know, there's compromises between the two. And especially in North America where our infrastructure, our charging infrastructure is still very much 400 volt, it's not really optimized for volt. You, if you go with an 800 volt uh, architecture in your car, you will have serious compromise at those uh, 4 volt station and uh, and not charge as fast. So you can, you can advertise a crazy fast charge rate for this and short charging session but you won't actually get them most of the time. Sorry, I started my massage. Um, the uh, so they, they do a split pack now uh, where uh, they can, they can Both switch between 400 volt and volt system without having uh, to compromise uh, on either one or at least not compromised as much on either one. Which uh, I think is uh, you know, it's not completely novel. There's a few other companies that are doing that, uh, but for a vehicle like this, like I think they're just doing a lot of smart decision as a company for um, bringing this vehicle to market because you know, with this type of vehicle you cannot afford to, you know, make too many mistakes.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, it's already different enough that like they need to get it right, get it right the first time. I, I've talked to these guys a bunch of times and they do seem like they've, they're doing it right, which I, I really like. Uh, I did take a ride in this thing. Actually I didn't get to drive it, but I did take a ride in it. Um, that was the win when they first revealed the, that red one that you were looking at right there. They first revealed it to us in uh, Irvine. Um, and it was. What year was it? It was March of last year. Um, and it was, you know, it was pretty impressive. Uh, there's a journalist around here who's 6 foot 8 and they stuffed him in the car and he fit just fine.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, the design, utility of it, how they make it useful is really impressive. So when, when you didn't drive it, you rode in it last year. If you were to compare the readiness to production compared to Aptera this week. Where does it sit?

Jamie Dow: I, uh, think they were both kind of in a similar position. It was a rough ride, a noisy ride both times. Uh, you know, probably, except I would say that the, the fit and finish of the Tello was higher.

Set Winchell: Okay.

Jamie Dow: Um, already than the, than the outera was for sure. But in terms of drive feel and all that stuff, I think they both had similar issues in terms of suspension and so on and so forth. Now that said, I rode the Tello and I drove the Aptera, so I don't have the exact um, same uh, comparison there. I was actually the first one to ride in the Tello.

Fred Lambert: A lot of firsts.

Set Winchell: It's an interesting vehicle. It's funny that the, it looks like the front wheels actually extend further out than the actual chassis of the car.

Jamie Dow: That's real. That's real. They said that they could, they could technically like climb a wall with it or something like that.

Set Winchell: Well that's because if the front wheels are going and they hit a wall, it'll just like start and then uh, you know, obviously it's an Irvine where Rivian is. I wonder if they share any uh, engineers. And then also I was thinking, uh, it's funny but you know who'd be a good buyer for this company would be Mini Cooper. Like they m. Could basically. They already make a car that size. They could just, you know, use this,

Fred Lambert: you know, frame and a little design accents from them and.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go.

Fred Lambert: Because they're going to need money. That's the same thing with Aptera. Like they, they were actually pretty good at raising money compared to after a pre, uh, going public. They're not going public yet, but yeah, about $30 million. But I think they're not necessarily as. Doesn't mean that this position as good as Aptera because it is a full car. It's a full passenger truck. And the certification process, the validation process for that is a lot higher, more difficult, more costly than it is for the uh, what do you call the uh, atera, uh, category?

Jamie Dow: Uh, they call it an auto cycle. I call it a motorcycle because I think it's roughly the same. But they call it auto cycle to differentiate from motorcycle.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. So the uh, the process for that for an auto cycle is uh, is a lot less costly and, and long than it is for a passenger vehicle.

Set Winchell: Yeah, I think the Aptera will actually have a motorcycle plate on it when does. And it. And that's good because it has such an aerodynamic back that it doesn't have much room for a regular.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, exactly. You couldn't fit a normal. You could do the European plate, but you could fit, couldn't do the North American, the tall plate.

Fred Lambert: All right, let's uh, go real quick over the, the, the Jeep, um, Recon. Is that how you pronounce that? Recon.

Set Winchell: Recon.

Jamie Dow: Recon.

Fred Lambert: Recon. Um, because uh, we're already an hour in and we have a lot of questions from people here that I'm seeing. My comments. So yeah, this thing has just been made fully available. So The Jeep recon EV at $67,000 is coming to the US so know, had Stantis Jeep have had, uh, um, they, they haven't been super willing to bring their electric offering to the US they have. I think the only the Wagoneer right now is available. Uh, so the, the Recon is adding to it 250 miles of range on 100 kil battery pack. So that uh, balances out with all the efficient evs that we've been talking about. It's uh, not that efficient. Uh, that's for the normal version. Then you have a Moab version that gets only 222 miles of range.

Jamie Dow: That's crazy. For 100 kilowatt hours. That's crazy.

Fred Lambert: Is that because the Moab doesn't have doors?

Set Winchell: Yeah. Doors would maybe help.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. Oh, that doors are very useful.

Jamie Dow: That's.

Set Winchell: How many times have you been driving an SUV and you're like man, these doors are just pissing me off.

Jamie Dow: Jeep drivers are a different breed though.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0 to 60 in 3.6 seconds. 250 kilowatt, um, motor.

Jamie Dow: Man, with power like that, that's enough to blow the doors off this thing.

Set Winchell: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: So it's the same in the back.

Set Winchell: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: That's pretty powerful. Yeah. Ah, interesting offering. I'm willing to give it a try. I'm willing to drive it. Uh, but uh, we'll see uh, how popular it is at $67,000. I think in that price range you have a lot of option. Uh, and obviously with the R2 coming out the term of adventure vehicle, you know, it's, it's a different offering but uh, it's going to be tough to compete I think.

Jamie Dow: I mean I have a feeling this would maybe compete more with the R1 despite size differences, I presume, uh, just in terms of being a true off road vehicle because the R2 is kind of like a, like a glamping off road vehicle. You know what I mean?

Fred Lambert: Well, the, the specs on it are really not bad for the off roading specs I think.

Jamie Dow: Uh,

Fred Lambert: but uh.

Jamie Dow: All right, I know the R1 is just like the best off roading vehicle ever made, so maybe, maybe my bar is just high.

Fred Lambert: All right, let's jump into the comment section.

Set Winchell: All right. Dean, welcome. Jamie, thanks for reviewing the Aptera. What struck me most about your video and article was how much the Aptera still seems like a prototype rather than a production intent vehicle. Yeah, it is a little.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, a little bit. Mhm. A little bit. It's. I mean it's better than the last prototype but it's, you know.

Set Winchell: Yeah. Are they making, are they improving fast enough to get to a point.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Set Winchell: Before the cache dries up and I guess that's always been the case. I29 MATO says BYD installed flash charger in Zagreb, Croatia this week. Showed 1.5 megawatt charging at 10C current on blade 2.0 LFP battery. Oh wow. LFP battery.

Fred Lambert: They don't know any other word.

Set Winchell: 10 to 97 in nine minutes.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, this thing is, I mean I, I know these are real. I've seen them, I've seen them in person, I've seen them run. But every time I someone mentions it, it's just, just, it's nuts to me. And uh, we talked about it last week that uh, the deployment rate of BYD or maybe two weeks ago, but the deployment rate of these things uh, is absolutely insane. They are popping up everywhere so fast.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, they said they're going to have like 10,000 of them in Europe by the end of this year or something.

Fred Lambert: Uh, not that much but I think it's 6,000 internationally by the end of next year. Uh, and most of them in Europe. The rest I think it's going to be like a few like Asian market. And Canada, it's coming. Canada, you know, exclusive last week from Electric. It's coming to Canada.

Set Winchell: Nice. Maybe we can jump up to Canada, get a charge and come back down before.

Fred Lambert: I bet there's gonna be some places around the border that's gonna make more sense doing that than uh, going to.

Set Winchell: Just gotta go through customs M. That's all.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, well they won't let you do it because they're the Michigan uh, congressmen are trying to ban the cars from coming over here on vacation.

Fred Lambert: Well that's the thing too. Like we're talking about the, the chargers. But one of the reason that we don't have these kind of chargers in North America is that we don't have the cars to Take the capacity anyways.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Set Winchell: All right. Skeptic says I've been an Aptera cheerleader for years, but I don't see a path of viability. They should have stuck with the original plan to hand build hundreds of cars instead of trying for mass production.

Jamie Dow: M Probably, uh, you know, they may end up handing build hundreds of cars anyway because that's, you know, they don't, they can't do mass production right now.

Set Winchell: Dan Overstay says I've rented a slingshot which I think is a similar three wheeled car. So I know with two wheels you can see around all potholes. With four wheels you can straddle many potholes. With three wheels you can hit every pothole you encounter unless you're quick. Yeah.

Jamie Dow: I know a guy who was, who was thinking about doing an Arcimoto, using Arcimoto as a uh, uh, camera vehicle for film shoots and they decided not to because the middle, the third wheel means that they hit more bumps in the road, you know. M All right.

Set Winchell: William Pisano says my problem with Aptera is how long it's taking and the Slate is almost ready to go. He's got kind of a diatribe here. The one thing that tells me Aptera might never come this for last 10 years, everyone hates the stupid windows. And I pair refused to just do a split window. Might give you five miles of range,

Fred Lambert: but I mean that's what it's about. Efficiency.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Fred Lambert: Have people complain in your article and your, and your videos in the comments, have they complain about the windows?

Jamie Dow: Uh, I don't know that I've seen that many people.

Set Winchell: It's pretty low on my priorities list.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's also I, I think if you're in a little pod, you want as many metal bars as you can, you know, somewhere to help dissipate some energy in case anything happens. That said, it's made of carbon fiber, which is a very strong material, not, not, you know, a carbon reinforced material. So I, I have a feeling the trash crash structures will be okay, but not, it's still, you know, you still don't want to hit a Rivian.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, it's a light vehicle, but I don't get the comparison to Slate too. Like who's cross shopping a Slate and an Aptera solar car?

Jamie Dow: Yeah. Different car. Well, you know, similar price range maybe once the Aptera gets the thing down. But also Slate's got a lot of money, you know, so money buys you speed and all kinds of things.

Fred Lambert: M All right.

Set Winchell: Skeptic says the Public charging infrastructure has gotten so much better since Aptera started pitching this vehicle. Having onboard solar isn't nearly the selling point it was back then.

Fred Lambert: Fair.

Jamie Dow: While that's a fair point, there are lots and lots of people who either beach like people who live near the beach and have street parking. They don't have off street parking. That's very common where I'm from. Uh, and that would be ideal for a solar person because they live in a sunny area or apartment people, people who have apartments, uh, or who live in like dense areas, they have to find a place on the street to park. Uh, that's a possibility because then you're always charging the car a little bit every day. You don't. Maybe you have to supercharge every couple of weeks or something, you know.

Fred Lambert: Exactly. Yeah.

Set Winchell: All right, Carl, in San Diego, most people don't drive more than 40 miles a day on average. That's just not Aptera's magic estimate. It's transportation industry knowledge. Yeah, it's a good point.

Jamie Dow: And that's most people. Some people drive less than that. So, you know, you can have a, a car that charges up with an extra 20 or 30 miles a day and maybe it's enough for you.

Set Winchell: Yep. Jamie, did Chris Anthony give you any sense of his confidence in being able to raise the hundreds of millions they still need?

Jamie Dow: They were talking about doing a raise. They said something about needing 40 million, which is, uh, seems a little low. But you know, it's not a car, so they have, it's fewer costs. But, um, uh, they didn't have any real details on the raise. And they did say the fact that we're listed on NASDAQ does open up more options for us, which is true. Uh, but who knows what happens if they try to raise 40 million when they are 80 million valuation, you know, because then you're, you're giving away half the company, literally.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, if you can do the Math, that's a 50 dilution. But I think 40 million it can get to selling a few, few vehicles at least and I don't think.

Jamie Dow: And then get revenue.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, yeah, I don't think they become financially sustainable with that, but at least they, they get there and then, you know, maybe the stock, you know, pumps a little bit and then you, you, uh, you do another raise and then you can maybe, you know, with some extreme, you know, financial, uh, tightness like being like very on the, on on the, uh, your expenses as much as possible, you can maybe get, get there. I see, to quote Lis, I see a Path, but it's a very narrow one.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Set Winchell: All right. William San AT could just announced that they're going to have FSD next year and the stock will jump 20%.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, I hear a uh, million Apteras on Mars just around the corner.

Fred Lambert: Well, sun driving to go back to reality here. I remember back in the day, but that was like long ago. Talking about using Open Pilot from Coma AI.

Jamie Dow: No, they're using it, yeah.

Fred Lambert: Oh, that's cool. That's cool.

Jamie Dow: And they talked about that. They said they're using a Snapdragon 845 processor which only draws 8 watts. And that's their FSD computer basically.

Fred Lambert: And it runs hardware and then just uh, uploading Open Pilot in there.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, yeah, well no, it's a, I mean the processor is a Snapdragon 845, so it's a smartphone processor basically.

Fred Lambert: But that is the comma, because you can buy the comma1 but you don't have comma1 in there. So they have their own camera, their own processing, and then they use the Open Pilot software in there.

Jamie Dow: I'm not clear on what cameras uh, they're using. Um, but they do have a, they do have side and rear cameras anyway because they're doing that for uh, for their.

Set Winchell: Mhm.

Jamie Dow: Yeah. So you know, it wouldn't be that hard to just add a front camera and call it a day.

Fred Lambert: Mhm.

Set Winchell: All right. Uh, Carl says when I hear about Honda pouring money to solid state battery company, Heck, can't help but think they would be better spent partnering with Aptera. Uh, I mean manufacturing would help would be nice, I guess.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, that's a uh, reference to the Quantum Skate deal that Honda this week

Jamie Dow: and they already tried to partner with Sony so might as well.

Set Winchell: Uh, Dan overstay notes that you only get 13 miles per hour of charging on level two on a Silverado Lightning

Jamie Dow: Hummer that gives like six times more efficient, you know.

Fred Lambert: Mhm.

Set Winchell: Didn't they say, uh, one of the things Aptera was known for was it it had the same coefficient of drag as the uh, rear or the side windows on a Ford F150. Just the mirrors.

Jamie Dow: So they, they didn't tell us about the drag, uh, because they, they sent the car to Italy. This actually, this was maybe the only like skeptical part of the trip is when I, when I talked to them, uh, they said they sent the car to Italy. They did that wind tunnel thing. I asked them did you ever get results back? And they said no, we didn't really get good results back from that. Because it wasn't a rolling tunnel. And so like we had to raise the rear wheel and it wasn't representative and all that stuff. To me it sounded like they were saying our CD was lower than we wanted it to be and we didn't want to tell anybody, so.

Fred Lambert: Interesting.

Jamie Dow: But I, I'm sure that it is, I mean, it's shape. The mo Teardrop is the most aerodynamic shape and it's the closest thing we've ever seen to a teardrop. Uh, the reason, you know that the teardrop is an aerodynamic shape is if you drop a drop of water, it looks like a teardrop because that's the natural shape that the air goes around it. So if you can make a car that shape, you've done it and you

Fred Lambert: can screw it up pretty easily. It's just like something, uh, misdesigned and then.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, it's the, it's the two front wheels and the suspension thing that's the worst part of the aerodynamics. So all of their development has been focused about reducing the complexity of the suspension, of the, the things that, that run out to the wheels. Uh, because if you have less disturbed air at the front of the vehicle, that gives you gains all the way to the back of the vehicle.

Fred Lambert: Yeah.

Set Winchell: All right, we're going to jump through a little because we're getting late. Um, in your opinion, between Tesla, Tesla, Slate and Aptera, will any of them be released to the public in the next six to 12 months and will any of them be out of business by the end of 2027? I don't think any are coming in six to 12 months.

Fred Lambert: A slate. Slate. The uh, slate could do 12.

Jamie Dow: 12 maybe.

Fred Lambert: Okay, maybe I've tear up. Uh, good, good. Deliver something next year. I think if they, if, if they raise enough, uh, I think it's doable. Like, no, I'm not talking about, you know, ton of deliveries, but a handful of cars. It's possible.

Jamie Dow: It's possible.

Set Winchell: Lucid needs to get to work on their software. It's about time for me to replace my air. But I won't buy another Lucid with the present os.

Fred Lambert: I don't get it.

Jamie Dow: Honest.

Fred Lambert: I don't get. Especially now, like we're in a. AI. I'm not on board with, for AI, with everything. But for software, it's getting so good. Like you cannot have like a small team of, of smart people like producing some very, very good software and just going through bugs at a high speed. I don't understand why they're falling so far behind on on that. It's just uh, I, uh, hope that like the new CEO coming in, I, I the hope that is addressing that right away because they are losing a lot of customers just to that. Because the hardware is impressive as it gets. Especially when you compare it to the software. You're like what's looks like two different companies.

Jamie Dow: The hardware is almost too impressive on the lucid.

Set Winchell: Yeah. Um, I'm still waiting for an invitation to order an R2. So far it looks like that just a tiny trickle of orders are being allowed by Rivian.

Fred Lambert: It's ramping up this week. I've seen, I've seen a lot more people getting or ability to to order right now.

Jamie Dow: It has been only 10 days.

Fred Lambert: Yeah. Have you got any set?

Set Winchell: I have not.

Fred Lambert: No.

Jamie Dow: Seth, did you drive one? Oh, you drove one at the event. Of course. I knew that.

Fred Lambert: But you, you owner too, so at the same time I thought maybe you are faster up the list.

Jamie Dow: Fred, did you get a test drive yet? I went down and test drove it day. The day they opened.

Fred Lambert: I didn't even check, but I'm not in Montreal right now. Maybe when I'm back in Montreal I'll see if. If they, they have one to test, but I don't know uh, I don't know if they made it to Canada. Always a little bit late with Canada.

Jamie Dow: Yeah.

Set Winchell: All right. I'm just going through a couple toy with massive liability means it will be withdrawn. See, it's great that you are highlighting more efficient vehicles here. This is the direction that we need to go. Moving away from being dependent on other countries and smoggy, inefficient vehicles. That's what, yeah, the, the era of the uh, Hummer ev. I feel like is needs, needs to

Jamie Dow: end, but I'm already still more efficient than a Prius.

Fred Lambert: Yeah, that's my point. I mean my point has always been I, if I see someone driving an Armory V, especially here in Quebec, I, I don't care. I know this has been powered by hydroelectricity. If you're doing at home and you're doing with solar, it's like it's exactly pretty good. It's like especially like batteries are recyclable. I, I don't, I don't think my

Set Winchell: thing is you could, you can build four Chevy bolts.

Fred Lambert: Yes.

Jamie Dow: That's where the amount of lose. Yeah.

Fred Lambert: But I always say it's a lot easier to make more efficient vehicles, even if they're big than it is to, you know, convince uh, a pickup buyer to, to buy a Prius.

Jamie Dow: Are they slashing tires in Quebec yet of SUV's or is that not a thing that has happened there? Uh, they're doing that in London, right?

Fred Lambert: I haven't seen. Well, you're slashing people.

Jamie Dow: Okay, okay. Hey, America has more knife crime than London does. Really? That's true, by the way. Yeah. Per capita by like a large amount.

Fred Lambert: You guys are leading in a lot of things when it comes to now.

Jamie Dow: A lot of things.

Set Winchell: Number one, usa. All right, a couple more question. Do you think there are any chance of us, uh, of Tesla bringing F back the FSD transfer incentive?

Jamie Dow: Look, if they tell you you can't transfer your fsd, you tell them yes, you are transferring the fsd. They didn't deliver that software. You bought the software, they didn't deliver it. They have to transfer it forever. I will, I will literally sit there, chain myself to a desk until they give me. I mean, I'm not buying another Tesla, but if they tried to pull this on me, they would never hear the

Fred Lambert: end of blows my mind that they are not doing it. I just, uh, I was talking about my friend Paul earlier that um, just got the FSD and he exchanged a Model 3, a 20, 21 Model 3 where in which he bought FSD and they didn't let him transfer it. I, I would have refused after. Yeah, uh, you know, you got enticed by the, the price of the Model 3 in Quebec right now, which, uh, to be fair, is extremely cheap. Uh, it's, it's cheaper than in the us which is extremely rare for us. So I get, I get it was too enticing for him, but I would have died on that hill. Like you have to transfer my fsd.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, I'd sue them. I'd do anything. It's. They, they have to do it. They didn't. You bought software, they didn't deliver it. You still have a license to software that hasn't been delivered. They need to either give you all the money back or give you that license, let you transfer it forever.

Fred Lambert: And that's it until they deliver it. Because, uh, I, I wrote an article yesterday about the effort that they have in Europe right now to a sue Tesla and a giant class action over the hardware 3. And I'm so glad I didn't talk about it in the podcast, but I guess I'll mention real quick, I'm so glad that the people behind this effort are smart enough that they are doing it. Zol Channel, where if you bought fsd, you get reimbursed fsd, but then everyone Whether you bought FSD or not. Also actually you get a bigger part of the claim. Uh, uh, for just having bottle car with Hardware 3 for the claim that you're supposed to have the hardware that enables unsupervised self driving. And uh, they're, they're going all in that. It's 7000 people right now and we're talking about you know, tens of thousands of dollars potentially per people. Uh, it's uh, Tesla needs to take this seriously and, and do something about it. I, they've been doing like the minimum, minimum like just using the FSD transfer window as an incentive to buy. Is this guy Tim Headen back the FSD transfer incentive. Like we shouldn't be referred to this as an incentive.

Jamie Dow: It's not an incentive and it's not their choice whether to bring it back. Yeah, you have that software, you bought that software. They didn't deliver it. They have to deliver it and if they don't deliver it they are in breach of that contract. Period.

Set Winchell: Yeah. What you should do is go to small claims court, get the money back from FSD and then buy it again.

Jamie Dow: People have done that. Yeah, yeah, people, people have done that. And you know, uh, it's unfortunate that they've had to do that because it's an extra hassle. Uh, but you can get all of the money back potentially by doing that.

Set Winchell: All right, we're at 520. Let's just do one more. Apparel could become as popular as the beetle in the 1960s. It looks so unique and is a significant paradigm shift to me more viable EV revolution weapon than a crossover that looks like ice. I do not think it's going to be that popular. Uh, it would be nice. Like everybody was very, it seemed like fun but when it comes time to pay 30, $40,000 for a two seater, I don't know that everybody that is in love with this thing is going to buy one.

Fred Lambert: You could buy was, was significant uh, improvement.

Jamie Dow: Yeah, you could buy a beetle for 50 bucks in the 60s. So uh, now, now let's also look at the name. Carl is in San Diego, which is where Aptera is. And also this in San Diego. This vehicle really makes a lot more sense. Someone living on the beach in Carlsbad makes so much sense. Like uh, I don't know if people who aren't from around here but in terms of the culture, in terms of like parking on the beach and taking your surfboards to the beach and all that stuff, like there's a lot of ways that this thing makes sense, but the same way that the Arcimoto made sense on in beach communities, then you got to sell it in Kansas or whatever and you've got a different calculus. So uh, how many cars can you sell? How many Mazda Miatas sell per year? You know, those are cars that only sell in California, Southern California, uh, that kind of thing. So it's, that's, you know, it is.

Fred Lambert: I think the comparison with the Miata in terms of volume, if you want to look at what kind of volume is possible with that Terra, I think like a Sunday drive car to see her is probably your, your best bet would expand it to like the efficiency nerds like us too that just like want to drive as efficiency as possible. But yes, we, uh, that's it for us this week for the Electric podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks for Jamie for. For joining us. Uh, it was a very fun. I think people appreciated it. Uh, we're gonna see you same time, same place next week. Have a good one.

Jamie Dow: Bye.

Set Winchell: Bye.