Arjo van der Ham has spent months preparing the production of Lightyear’s first car. But the man behind the technology at the solar car start-up will also see the production line for the first time this Wednesday morning, together with the journalists present.
Van der Ham is sober about it. He can dream the whole building process. There, he points out, on one side of the hall, enters the ‘body’ of the Lightyear 0 – made in England. Then the wheels go underneath. “It’s a milestone, but it feels a bit like a huh-huh-finally moment,” says the enthusiastic thirty-something. In fact, he is actually much further along with his thoughts, with the next model that Lightyear wants to build. “It was almost: oh shit, I also have to go to Finland for the production start!”
Where the mainland of Finland passes through hundreds of islands into the Baltic Sea, the Dutch Lightyear started production of the first ‘mass market model’ on Wednesday. With a maximum of just under a thousand units to be built at manufacturer Valmet Automotive, this may not seem like a big step at first glance. But it is a crucial moment. It is often difficult for car startups to scale up from prototype to production for the market.
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Building cars is notoriously complicated. A model contains thousands of parts, and established names run on a sophisticated mechanism of purchasing and assembly. For a large number of electro newcomers, this has proved difficult to match in recent years. Companies such as Lucid, Rivian, Canoo and Arrival have all had to adjust their production goals and strategy on a regular basis. A few days ago, the top man of the British Arrival resigned due to ongoing production problems.
Tesla, now an established name, also had extreme difficulty getting the production of the Model 3 going around 2016. CEO Elon Musk then spoke of a “production hell”. At one point, the company built cars in a tent.
“I now understand a little better what that production hell entails,” says Van der Ham. He is one of the founders of Lightyear, which emerged in 2016 from an Eindhoven study project to build a solar car. The company revolves around a simple idea: an electric car that can partly charge itself with solar panels. A more affordable model from 30,000 euros should be available in 2025 according to Lightyear’s ambitious plans. This more expensive starter model, available at 250,000 euros, is necessary to learn the production process.
For Van der Ham, the past few months have revolved around preventing common problems that occur in the production of electric cars. That was intensive. “I think a box with the last parts went to Finland last week.” Of all those thousands of parts, sometimes one is missing. “It takes a lot of time and effort.”
More aerodynamic
This Wednesday morning everything is ready to be screwed into the car, from windows and steering wheel to sunroof – all designed by Lightyear itself. In a tour of the modest factory hall, Patrick Creevey of the company explains that everything is made in such a way that it is much more aerodynamic than with a ‘regular’ car. Every square millimeter has been considered, from the flat hubcaps to a ‘woven’ carbon door – a super light material. According to the company, a test performance would show that the Lightyear is the most aerodynamic car in the world.
Lightyear is not all about solar energy, the company mainly sees itself as a manufacturer of an ultra-efficient electric car that happens to have some solar panels. According to CEO Lex Hoefsloot, the solar energy that will charge the car on a sunny day will add a maximum of seventy kilometers to the range of the car: it will also be charged conventionally with a charging station.
According to Van der Ham, Lightyear (which has grown rapidly in recent times to 660 employees) agreed quite soon after its establishment to proceed with caution in mass production. “It was also exactly the time that Tesla was having such a hard time. So we decided: we’re going to work with a contract manufacturer and not build a factory ourselves, because then you get a lot of experience. And: we are going to build low volumes first.”
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Not such a striking choice, after all
In the Netherlands there was an idea that Lightyear would opt for VDL Nedcar, the Limburg car factory that is looking for new clients. But in 2021 the choice fell on Valmet Automotive (approximately 4,000 employees), located in the woods around the sleepy coastal town of Uusikaupunki. In June, Finland’s largest factory, Valmet, had to lay off 1,000 people after Mercedes decided to build fewer cars there. A planned IPO was called off this fall.
At first glance, Valmet seemed like a striking choice: the solar roofs that Lightyear builds in Venray now have to be transported all the way to the other side of Europe. The reason becomes clear in the small museum of the factory. In addition to the first car built there, a blue Saab 96, you will also find old electric models, such as the American hybrid Fisker Karma or the Norwegian electric city car Think.
Like Lightyear, Think and Fisker were start-ups that, looking for a place to build a car, ended up here in Finland. Valmet now also produces batteries. This is because the factory is partly owned by the Chinese CATL, one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world (other shareholders are the Finnish state and a private investment fund).
This electrical expertise of Valmet really matters, says Van der Ham. The Finnish Valmet staff, who walk this morning in blue overalls through the former storage hall, have that experience. They explain that building this car is something completely different from building a Mercedes, for example. Valmet has been doing it for years and it never caused any surprises.
Everything had to be learned with the Lightyear. For example, there are motors in the wheels – unique. It was a process of transferring more and more construction details and writing work instructions, until a first model could be built. But then it just started. Van der Ham: “You look at what is going well and what is not. If something isn’t right, name it as a’concern‘.” At the peak, some time ago, there were about a thousand concerns, Van der Ham outlines. “From a fuse that blown or a car that leaked water to a valve that broke off every now and then.”
The collaboration was very instructive for Lightyear, says Van der Ham. “It was healthy that there was some pressure on it. If you build a prototype, you can last minute adjust everything. But if you go into production and you have ordered everything three or four weeks in advance, you can throw everything away in the event of a change.”
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One car a week
The production start will take place according to schedule, Lightyear will start with one car per week. That should gradually increase to one per day – everything to avoid chaotic scenes. And things can always go wrong. If there’s a truck with’bodies‘ stranded from England, this quickly leads to delays, Van der Ham explains. With a large manufacturer, there are always several trucks on the road so that you can continue to produce, but this is not the case with small volumes.
And in the end, production is by no means the only challenge. Because who is going to end up paying a quarter of a million for a car? So far, 150 of the thousand cars to be produced have been sold, mainly to people who explicitly support Lightyear. The company is targeting Europe for further sales. But according to CEO Lex Hoefsloot, it’s not so much about the revenue. “This first production step is for learning. Also from the customers, how they deal with a solar car and what their experiences are.”
Those lessons are also necessary for the even more complex step of scaling up that follows. The company’s plans must include the profitability of the model that Lightyear wants to bring to market in 2025. From that year, thousands of cars must be made of the real mass model, Lightyear 2, which must be available from 30,000 euros. Van der Ham: “If you look at all the parts, we think it can be done at that price.” Lease company Leaseplan has already ordered 5,000, a production location has not yet been chosen. That’s what his head is mainly concerned with right now.
The guys from Lightyear won’t be celebrating their first car here in Finland for long. Tomorrow they fly back to the Netherlands. Back to work.