Welcome to Cleantech Open!

We’re in!

Hello Freedom Fans,

I am proud to announce that Freedom Motors was selected into the CleanTech Open 2018 Cohort for the US Western Region.  Only a small number of companies are selected into this prestigious program that is essentially a business accelerator/incubator for environmentally conscious technology start-ups.  Each year they accept about 100-150 companies in the US into the program, and we are happy and exited to be selected for this year’s cohort!

The organization moves very quickly – I will be attending a mixer in Oakland next week with other accepted companies and the corporate mentors that we will be working with over the course of the program.  On the weekend of June 8-10, I will be attending the 2018 Academy West, which is their mandatory “business bootcamp” for all participants.  It will be an awesome learning experience with  industry experts.  The program will drive Freedom Motors to develop a compelling business model and introduce our organization to a large community of investment entities looking for the next big thing in environmentally clean technology.  The program will take place over the next 9 months, so watch the blog for exciting updates!

General Updates

Of course we cannot have good news without disappointing news.  We did receive notice from ARPA-E that they are discouraging us from submitting a full application to the OPEN 2018 for our compound engine research program, as it would be unlikely to be funded at this time.  It was always a long shot, but still it was disappointing to miss that opportunity.  Still, onward and upward!

We have a lot happening at the moment with the biogas generation system, as I had hinted last week that we sold one engine.  This is an active project but I will only be providing more details in the coming weeks as we hit significant milestones.

Our fundraising initiative is still in progress, and I had hoped to launch at the end of this month.  However, it has been delayed a few weeks as we work through financial reporting requirements.  But it should not be too much longer before we go live.

We have another group from China visiting us next week, primarily because they are interested in the engines for automotive applications.  There is a another China group interested in working with Moller International on aircraft technology, but we are still trying to arrange those meeting dates.  We were visited by a group from South Asia last week and they are also interested in the engines, primarily for aircraft, and we are  just waiting to see if they come forward with any response to a proposal we presented them with while they were here.

I should be hearing back from the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative on our Venture Day application by June 5th, so we are keeping our fingers crossed.  We will travel to Washington for a pitch & development conference on June 25th if we are accepted to that program.

We have some fun stuff happening with the Skycar as well with product placement in a music video and a movie as well.  These are confidential at this time, but I will share with you more information when I can.   I also fixed one of our Skycar models yesterday – this 400 model was custom built based on our schematics and has a remote control for manipulating the wings and nacelles.  One of the wings was broken, but luckily it was an easy fix with just a bit of epoxy.  (My son is the one playing the piano in the background.)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Best Regards – Dave

Update

Hi everyone, I forgot to mention that Wednesday we got back our 530cc engine housing from the machine shop in Santa Clara, they did an awesome job for us in getting the trochoid grind done and fixing the dowels that are used to align the engine end-housing and central ring gear.  The result is in the picture below, the middle housing.  The 530cc housing on the left is a finished version (from an engine which has run before), and the right is one of our 150cc housings.  The last step with this housing is getting the inner surface honed to our engine specifications, which is required for proper operation (friction levels & rotor sealing).  We own a Gehring machine that can do this work, but it’s tied up in storage for the moment, so we will send this part out for that finishing work (probably to Gehring itself).  Once done you will see a shiny surface similar to the other two housings in the picture.  This machine shop did a great job, and we plan to use them as we continue to develop our vendor chain for manufacturing.