According to a recent post by Steve Fambro, co-CEO of Aptera Motors, the solar electric vehicle startup has received a shipment of carbon fiber bodies (BinCs) from Italy. According to Fambro, the BinCs will be cleaned and will soon become Aptera’s next three production-ready solar electric vehicles.
Solar EV startup Aptera Motors continues to strive toward its holy grail of scaled production, and it has moved another step closer in the process. After announcing the end of its crowdfunding campaigns, which raised $135 million from over $17,000 raised by investors, Aptera announced a partnership with financial group US Capital Global.
US Capital is leading a new investment round that includes up to $60 million in convertible notes from Aptera Motors Corp.
According to US Capital’s investor presentation for Aptera, the $60 million will give the startup enough money to build 10-12 validation prototypes, conduct crash tests, and then produce 10-15 production-ready vehicles to sell. Aptera has been dropping hints about its production-ready models for some time, particularly the PI-2, which is expected to feature Aptera’s production components in March 2024, according to a March 2024 company update.
In a recent post to XAptera CEO Steve Fambro released a similar update along with some images shown below.
Aptera is close to production intent for Build 2 to 4
Fambro has released the latest BinC images, seen above, along with the following progress update:
Two large boxes of BinCs for PI-2 to PI-4 arrived from Italy today. They will be cut to size shortly and then construction will begin!
As you can see in the image to the left, three BinCs were safely delivered to Aptera’s headquarters in Carlsbad and will lay the foundation for Production Intent (PI) builds 2, 3, and 4.
This is welcome progress as Aptera remains on track according to previously communicated timelines. If and when the $60 million convertible note round is successful, Aptera could have enough money to begin (very limited) production in 2025 before ramping up to 20,000 solar electric vehicles per year thereafter.
As always with Aptera, more capital will be required to truly meet production targets, but this is a welcome step that brings us closer to attempting a production-ready solar electric vehicle. And the thousands of loyal investors are closer to potentially getting a real production model one day.
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