The Founder’s Mind: Thoughts from the Pen of Steve Fambro

1. the state or quality of being efficient; competency in performance.
2. accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort: The assembly line increased industry’s efficiency.
3. the ratio of the work done or energy developed by a machine, engine, etc., to the energy supplied to it, usually expressed as a percentage.
4. Freedom

When I’m out, it’s not uncommon for people to stop me and ask, “Just what do you guys at Aptera mean when you talk about efficiency?” For some, they hear the word efficiency and think of being thrifty or miserly. But to me nothing could be further off-base. I see efficiency as a means to freedom in so many ways.

To be efficient, in the context that we use it at Aptera, is to look at our available resources and consider their potential value before they’re ever consumed.  This applies to everything from the way we do business and heat our building to the design of our vehicle.

Because of our focus on the 2e’s efficiency, it uses an average of 10 times less fuel to move people. With the average consumer in Los Angeles spending about $160 a month on $2.50 per gallon gas, or about $1,900 per year, our vehicle frees people from a significant financial burden. When that price creeps back up to $4 per gallon, the same LA driver will be saving about $250 a month, which is an entire car payment.

If the same consumer drove an Aptera 2e, their electricity costs would be about $18 per month; a savings of $232 per month. Over 10 years, those savings would accrue to almost $30,000, which happens to be about 3.7 years of tuition at UCLA. So if a mom or dad starts commuting in an Aptera 2e when their child turned 12, six years later they will have saved nearly enough money for a degree at a terrific university. How’s that for financial freedom?

Even with a traditional gasoline engine, the aerodynamically-efficient design of the Aptera reduces freeway energy use by more than 50 percent, making it gasoline-energy-efficient. And because we import most of the energy we use for transportation in the US, it becomes a national security issue when we’re wasteful with the energy in a gallon of gas.

You see, efficiency is not an abstract idea at Aptera, but something that’s very real and can have profound, positive impact in our everyday lives. As the old saying goes, waste not, want not: freedom to live.