Aptera insider talks about IPO, Interviews Aptera Co-CEO and staff, and Windshield Wiper Coverage

ODed to AB Tera the most efficient vehicle on the [Music] [Music] planet [Music] Terra cruising wingless flly I love of Terror It Feels So Right GL down the high Hello friends new and old my name is Rich Rodriguez and welcome to my app Terror Journey this channel is about the thrill of the all-wheel drive aptera on a twisting curving Mountain Road in the rush of adrenaline with sub4 second acceleration time and the pleasure of charging your car from the Sun and on some models the confidence of up to 1,000 miles of range but we don't have an aptera yet despite that there are some things I would like to share with you today first though a little about me I'm a trained electrical engineer so I understand how EVS work I'm an EV owner with over 50,000 miles of experience so I get range in charging I have an MBA in finance and I have been mentored by an investment banker in Venture Finance in my day job I read and analyze financial statements every day so what attracts me to the aptera the awesome styling yes is it the sub4 second 0 to 60 acceleration time yes is it the solar charging yes though I live in the Rainy Northwest or is it aptera amazing efficiency for me it's all about efficiency because with apter's efficiency all those other things are possible well with the preliminaries done today's video will have three parts Part One Current financial market conditions this matters for when aptera does their IPO part two interview with aptera including Chris Anthony and Chris mcam part three aptera financing and that pesky single windshield wiper first a huge shout out to Nikki and Kate at transport evolved we were driving from Seattle to Portland and stopped for charge and walked over to Starbucks for a break I looked up for my coffee or was it a phone and noticed a Ford Lightning backing into a parking stall well who came into the Starbucks in walked Nikki Gordon Bloomfield and Kate Walton Elliott presenters on the YouTube channel transport evolved it was a lovely encounter and Nikki and Kate were so welcoming and gracious if you're not familiar with the transport evolved Channel I encourage you to check it out there you will find an abundance of News and Views about cleaner Greener safer and smarter Transportation it's one of my favorite channels so let's get right to today's program part one Current financial market conditions Chris Anthony attera Co CEO has said that aptera would like to have an IPO around the time production starts and ramps Financial market conditions determine how receptive the market is to an IPO and in part determines the pricing of shares so market conditions matter I follow the 20 Bond Municipal index to see where interest rates are heading I look at market conditions every week the 20 bond has dropped from a recent high of 4.12% to today 3.34% that is a dramatic drop just remember though the FED has not changed rates at all the FED has simply indicated that they are at the top of the current interest rate cycle the recent declines that we are seeing is simply Market expectations of a future rate cut by the FED at the most recent fed meeting the signaling was that rates won't likely be lowered until after their next meeting in March so that puts us at the beginning of May for a possible first cut in rates by the FED meanwhile the economy shows more signs of crumbling another New York Bank New York community band Corps seems to be teetering on the edge this sent a 56 billion warning through bank stocks from New York to Tokyo what is the 560 billion warning that's the amount of commercial buildings that need to be refinanced by the end of 2025 we know the pandemic hit the commercial real estate market with substantially lower vacancy rates and lower valuations and with interest rates still so high and Vac encies so low we're about to see the default train leave the station I think it's going to get a bit bumpy from here with rates still so high it's not a good time to go public but it's a great time to start and grow a sustainable orientated startup like aptera Motors as a long-term investment in the Future Part part two interviews from EPA including EPA co-ceo Chris Anthony and Chris mum I happened to know that bill of the YouTube channel chasing aptera linked below was going to San Diego and APPA headquarters for the electric vehicle association annual meeting I had a zoom call with Bill and we talked about aptera and his experience in San Diego be looking for that video interview soon so I asked Bill if he would take some questions to aptera for me and perhaps take some video sure enough he did first Bill asked aptera co-ceo Chris Anthony a question I had about financing so let's watch that video I use it on mine too what's up rich um this is his question and I don't know what it means so you'll uh he has a financial background have you considered syndicating the regulation B offering uh we have and we're talking with some banks right now about doing that the great thing about doing a regd accredited offering is it keeps it kind of off the books of the regulation a offering the regulation a offering is for for basically anybody uh to invest in an amazing idea like ours but the regulation D you need to be credited you need to have 2 million in the bank or make more than 600,000 year as a couple and 300,000 year as a individual I think but um you know it's a more limited audience for the accredited offerings and you know the SEC says okay you've got a lot of money so you know how to use your money so um but uh yeah I uh we're talking about that as we speak um and I think we're having a lot of positive movement in some areas hopefully be able to sign a debt deal pretty soon and then uh then work on those other investment deals and get to production have an IPO have a big celebration take our picture at the stock exchange everybody's happy so thanks rich thank you thank you Bill thank you Chris Anthony for being so open to a financial question now Bill asked Chris mccum some questions from his viewers and some I asked Bill to pose for me so let's watch that question and answer video so so you're the perfect person to ask this yes open pilot okay uh any uh time frames do we know how soon after the launch edition yeah comes out um so well we're obviously focusing all our engineering resour resources on the launch edition but after that we're going to make a small tiger team that makes the hardware for open pilot and uh we have the connector up there um so it's all you know pre ready to go even on the earliest vehicles um so I would guess it' probably be another quarter or so after the vehicle comes out that we have an official aptera open pilot integration but in the meantime you know it's right to repair you can just hook up the like a off the shelf comma device pretty soon after delivery and it works that's great someone uh on the channel asked um if they had a buy item to to to to transport yeah could you drive it with the back hatch open sure you lose some mer on there yeah you'll get a little more you know you get a little warning that's like you know trunk open but you can drive it absolutely yeah and and how about um is there a schedule for when the uh um crash testing uh will be done and and completed yeah it's it's tough to say because we're still waiting on the body and the frame from Italy so you know once those come back we have to start making our first Pi Vehicles once those are complete then the next phase of like the first three are basically not crashed they're other important systems like more important range and things like that I think the second threeyear crash so it's hard hard to give a timeline until we we kind of know what we're working with with their their timeline so you've never been asked these questions before right I actually never been asked either of those before in that way yeah so those are great so there's a a APPA ambassador named Rich Rodriguez I love Rich Rodriguez and we we became P Pals I guess cute because I I created a channel called I originally named my channel Maya par Odyssey yeah and he has one called May par Journal Journey yes and he did not like the fact that I picked the name I picked I agreed to change it he became friends after that oh cute so he had a whole bunch of questions yeah we'll see if I I'm the person you can so the steering system you know you've got uh Motors in each of the wheels so how does the steering system work uh so it's power steering it's a it's a mechanical linkage so it's very traditional like a normal vehicle where you have the push rod that that tilts the the wheels in either direction so there's there's really nothing uh abnormal about the steering system it's just like any other car it's it's not like a drive by wire or anything like that okay that's good uh and the cooling system you talk a little bit about the design of the cooling system uh we're GNA be doing some videos on the cooling system in the probably next month or so um I was talking with the thermal engineer the other day actually about it it's it's pretty unique uh it's a little different than what we've shown before uh we've had to make a lot of packaging differences to make sure it fits in the very small body but I think uh people will like it yeah you'll see that soon okay um I don't think you can really address this but he wanted you know wanted to talk to somebody about the inot infotainment system design I can talk a little bit about it I mean I've seen it you know I've seen the the real one oh is it finalized uh it's pretty close yeah like what we what we showed on the video and we have upstairs is is you know it's maybe on the video is like 70% of the design at we're probably at like 95 or something like that it's really really something else and it's you know designed by a really good designer who designs other big EV infotainment systems right to put it that way so we really have like the best of the best working on it um it's pretty cool you know dark mode only everything is really easy to access and uh you know we're hoping for eventual integration of the of your you know plugging your phone in and and having things show up on the screen so that's uh it's nice that it's all you know software upgradeable but yeah you we'll show the final one I'm sure at some point soon so windshield wiper coverage yeah do does it will it cover the whole windshield or well there's one and it kind of sweeps like this so the you know it's not the end of the world the passenger probably won't get a full coverage but it's enough coverage to have great you know you can great visibility for the driver % 80% I don't know how to how to give a percent with it but you can see it just it's only one wiper and it goes that way um yeah I know some people you know want more visibility for the passenger side but the to add a two uh two wiper approach made it extremely complicated and it's really tough to package because there's so much stuff jammed in the nose so there's a lot of struggles in that in that area you know how to package everything all right um I don't know manufacturing aspects of production I don't know CPC is doing some great work over there I'm sure we'll show more of it soon that's that's what I'd say on that um it's not and so the the so until open pilot yeah um what is there any kind of cruise control it'll be just like a yeah basic cruise control basic control so so it's not like you're you're totally driving at any kind of yeah yeah and I mean of course you still have the ultrasonic sensors for parking you still have the backup cameras so it's easy to navigate at low speed you know like you still have some of that again thank you Bill for asking those questions I will talk about epa's windshield wiper coverage again later in part three of today's video these videos from Bill are insightful and even if only by video it was good to see both chrises once again part three epar financing and yes that pesky windshield wiper coverage first I want to remind my viewers about a financing option for aptera that I presented in an earlier video some months ago let's watch that clip their reg D private placement it went from $2 million to 20 million so I suspect that we're going to see a big initiative here in getting that private placement fully subscribed and here's how I think that might play out we should be looking for a private placement offering underwritten by a company like so I was really heartened to hear Chris Anthony say in the video that bill took that aptera is talking with investment bankers now about a possible syndicated reg D offering I thought this was a positive development I was though a bit concerned when Chris Anthony talked about a debt offering in an emerging Growth Company free cash flow from operations is difficult to come by it took Tesla many years after production to achieve this you certainly don't want Debt Service payments coming before your cash flow is positive from operations so any possible debt deal for aptera at this time should be in the form of venture debt Venture debt often comes with stock purchase warrants granted to the lender or perhaps convertible debt well done Chris Anthony and considering a syndicated regd offering and presumably Venture debt before we leave the topic of Finance I would like to return to the amount of capital needed to enter production in the near term if it takes two to three billion to build a factory and as Chris Anthony has stated it takes one1 of the capital to build an aptera versus a traditional car and I agree then aptera needs to raise another 100 to $200 million this is for inventory warranty service support working capital and so on while some of this may come from an IPO there are still some serious fundra ring that lays ahead is a series C stock offering round just around the corner the last item I want to touch on today is that pesky windshield wiper you heard Chris mcum say earlier the passenger probably won't get full coverage and I know some people want visibility for the passenger side oh yeah did you notice Chris hedged on providing a percentage of windshield wiper coverage did you know a surprising number of cars have three windshield wipers also a surprising number of cars today have electronically synchronized wipers this eliminates the need to have a mechanical connecting arm between the wipers in fact the evi drive today has a two wiper motor synchronized system so my challenge to the aptera team fix the windshield wiper coverage it's doable and it matters that's about it for today's show and remember I have a link in the show notes and a QR code up here where you can save 30% off your app Tera $100 refundable pre-order deposit for every 10 referrals I receive I'll pick a random viewer comment and send that winner a small gift so if you haven't reserved your app Terra car yet consider doing so using my referral code and thank you well that's all I have for today's show I look forward to sharing time with you again soon and reading your comments below until then stay well do good work and charge on Cru wingless flight I love teror it feels so bad the future is now protect Mother Earth keep her healthy for what it's worth what's your pleasure Luna a soul let's save the planet we're on a road Glides down the highway taking out from the sun no more can't you see we're [Music] done EP Tera J Terror you know that it's [Music] right