Brazil and Argentina sparked some excitement on Sunday over the possibility of a potential “currency union“, though the two countries are unlikely to ditch the real or peso any time soon. So what is the plan all about?

WHAT DID THEY SAY?

In a joint letter, new Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentine leader Alberto Fernandez said they wanted to “advance discussions on a common South American currency” to be used for financial and trade flows.

That sparked off chatter about a European Union-style zonal currency for South America, though officials have since played that down and analysts say a full-on currency union is a distant prospect.

Lula has since said that early talks are focused on developing a shared unit of value for bilateral trade to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar.

Brazil’s Executive Secretary of the Finance Ministry, Gabriel Galipolo, told Reuters that the “regional unit of account” would come alongside expanded credit to support exports to Argentina through banks that operate in the country.

He said that Brazil’s government would offer guarantees to banks that helped provide financing, while Argentina, a major grains exporter, would have to provide collateral via hard assets like grains, gas or oil.

Under the plan, the Brazilian real and Argentine peso would continue to exist, with the new tender targeted narrowly at trade. That’s very different from, say, the euro, which is used for all kinds of transactions within the European bloc.

The tender would be used in clearing houses to execute trade payments between the two countries, helping in part to trim reliance on the dollar. That is key for Argentina, which is grappling with low foreign currency reserves after years of debt crises.

“This currency would not circulate within Brazil or Argentina. It’s specifically to be a common denominator of trade exchanges,” said Fabio Terra, professor of Economics at the Federal University of ABC.

How the new currency would be valued is still to be debated, but the Brazilian government is looking at stablecoins as a possible reference, Galipolo told Reuters.

Digital stablecoins, pegged to an asset like gold, or major currencies such as the euro, pound, and U.S. dollar, have emerged as issuers seek to expand uses for digital currencies, which are generally unregulated and volatile.

“It is obvious that the real will have the greatest weight in the equation because it is the most liquid currency we have in the international market,” Galipolo said.

In the late 1980s, Brazil and Argentina discussed the idea of a shared currency for trade called the ‘gaucho’, which fell by the wayside due to challenge implementing the idea. In 2019, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro touted plans for a currency union, which also never materialized.

The economic team of Brazil’s government, however, now thinks a combined trade-focused tender and beefed-up financing could help the South American country claw back trade with Argentina it has lost to China in recent years.

Wall Street surged on Monday, led higher by technology stocks as investors embarked on an earnings-heavy week with a renewed enthusiasm for market leading momentum stocks that were battered last year.

All three major stock indexes extended Friday’s rally, gaining momentum as the day progressed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was out front, boosted by a 4.9% jump in semiconductor shares (.SOX).

“This is a remarkable rally in many of the names that did badly last year,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut. “No one wants to be watching from the sideline with a bunch a cash as the market gets away from them.”

The session marks a calm before the storm in a week jam-packed with high profile earnings reports and back-end loaded with crucial economic data.

Investors are all but certain the Federal Reserve implement a bite-sized interest rate hike next week even as the U.S. central bank remains committed to taming the hottest inflationary cycle in decades.

Financial markets have priced in a 99.8% likelihood of a 25 basis point hike to the Fed funds target rate at the conclusion of its two-day monetary policy meeting next Wednesday, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 328.17 points, or 0.98%, to 33,703.66, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 55.93 points, or 1.41%, to 4,028.54 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 232.84 points, or 2.09%, to 11,373.28.

All 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 were higher, with tech (.SPLRCT) up the most, jumping 2.8%.

Fourth-quarter reporting season has shifted into overdrive, with 57 of the companies in the S&P 500 having posted results. Of those, 63% have delivered better than expected earnings, according to Refinitiv.

Analysts now see S&P 500 fourth quarter earnings, on aggregate, dropping 3% year-on-year, nearly twice as steep as the 1.6% annual drop seen at the beginning of the year, per Refinitiv.

This week, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Tesla Inc , along with a spate of heavy-hitting industrials including Boeing CO (BA.N), 3M Co (MMM.N), Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N) Dow Inc (DOW.N), Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N), are expected to post quarterly results.

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) surged 7.8% as Chief Executive Elon Musk took the stand in his fraud trial related to a tweet saying he had backing to take the electric automaker private.

Baker Hughes Co (BKR.O) missed quarterly profit estimates due to inflation pressures and ongoing disruptions due to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The oilfield services company’s shares were off 0.9%.

Cloud-based software firm Salesforce Inc (CRM.N) jumped 3.1% following news that activist investor Elliot Management Corp has taken a multi-billion dollar stake in the company.

Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) joined the growing list of tech-related companies to announce impending job cuts, shedding 6% of its workforce as rising interest rates and the looming possibility of recession continue to pressure growth stocks. The music streaming company’s shares rose 2.1%.

On the economic front, the Commerce Department is expected to unveil its initial “advance” take on fourth-quarter GDP in Thursday, which analysts expect to land at 2.5%.

On Friday, the wide-ranging personal consumption expenditures (PCE) report is due to shed light on consumer spending, income growth, and crucially, inflation.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.53-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.95-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 11 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 66 new highs and 14 new lows.

The 72-year-old suspected gunman in Saturday night’s mass shooting at a Los Angeles-area dance studio had been a regular there, giving informal lessons and even meeting his ex-wife at the venue, according to friends and media reports.

Authorities say Huu Can Tran killed 10 people when he opened fire during a celebration of the Lunar New Year at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, popular in the predominantly Asian American city of Monterey Park, east of Los Angeles.

Tran went to another dance club in the neighboring city of Alhambra soon after the massacre, police say, but a patron there wrestled away his gun, which may have thwarted a second attack. Later, Tran died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Sunday as police approached a van he was driving.

It is exceedingly rare for a person over 70 to carry out a mass shooting. While authorities have not identified a motive, some details have emerged about Tran’s background.

Adam Hood, who said he was a longtime tenant of Tran’s who spoke to him frequently, told Reuters Tran was an angry, aggressive, distrustful person who did not have many friends but liked ballroom dancing, his main social activity.

“He was a good dancer,” said Hood, who met Tran in the early 2000s. “But he was distrustful of the people at the studio, angry and distrustful. I think he just had enough.”

Tran complained that people at the studio were talking behind his back, Hood said. Tran, who was divorced, never remarried and did not have a girlfriend, Hood said.

CNN reported, citing an unnamed friend, that Tran complained the dance instructors said “evil things about him” and that Tran was “hostile” to a lot of people at the studio.

Tran had an active trucking license and previously owned a company called Tran’s Trucking starting in 2002. He lived in San Gabriel, near Monterey Park, from the early 1990s until around 2014, records show.

Tran moved in 2020 to a mobile home in a private, gated senior living community with a nine-hole golf course in Hemet, about 90 minutes from Monterey Park. A Hemet police spokesperson said there was no record of any complaints involving Tran.

It was not clear whether he continued to visit the Star Ballroom studio in recent years.

He met his ex-wife at the studio about two decades ago, she told CNN in an interview. Tran introduced himself to her and offered her free lessons.

While Tran was never violent, he was quick to anger, for instance if she missed a step while dancing, she told CNN. They divorced in 2005.

Efforts to interview the ex-wife at a house listed in records as her residence were unsuccessful on Monday.

A database of 185 mass shootings between 1966 and 2022 maintained by The Violence Project, a nonprofit, includes only one carried out by someone 70 or older: a retired miner killed five people in a store in Allen, Kentucky in 1981.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by three former Whole Foods employees who said they were illegally fired for opposing the upscale grocery chain’s alleged discriminatory discipline of workers who wore “Black Lives Matter” masks.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston, in a 28-page decision, found little evidence to refute Whole Foods’ “legitimate business explanations” for strictly enforcing the dress code, and no significant evidence it targeted the plaintiffs by firing them in the summer of 2020.

“The evidence demonstrates only that Whole Foods did not strenuously enforce the dress code policy until mid-2020, and that when it increased enforcement, it did so uniformly,” she added.

Whole Foods, part of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), has long maintained that it enforced its dress code uniformly and intended the code–which also covered visible slogans, logos and ads–to foster a welcoming and safe shopping environment.

“This holding is not about the importance of the Black Lives Matter message, the value of plaintiffs’ advocacy in wearing the masks, the valor of their speaking out against what they perceived to be discrimination in their workplace, or the quality of Whole Foods’ decision-making,” Burroughs wrote.

Burroughs said the three former employees, Haley Evans, Savannah Kinzer and Christopher Michno, could not claim protection from retaliation under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Whole Foods did not immediately respond to similar requests.

Last June, the federal appeals court in Boston upheld Burroughs’ February 2021 dismissal of a proposed class action over the dress code, on somewhat different legal grounds than hers.

The Black Lives Matter movement started after police killed several Black people in the United States.

A video showing the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police officer sparked nationwide protests about racial injustice.

Whole Foods had employed Evans in a Marlton, New Jersey, store, while Kinzer worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Michno in Berkeley, California.

The case is Kinzer et al v Whole Foods Market Inc, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 20-11358.

A jury on Monday convicted four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group of seditious conspiracy, handing the Justice Department another major victory in its quest to prosecute supporters of then-President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The verdict marks the end of the second major sedition trial against members of the extremist group, who were among the hundreds who attacked the Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 presidential election.

The 12-member jury found Oath Keeper members David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo guilty of seditious conspiracy.

All four were also found guilty of other felony and obstruction charges.

Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted Civil War-era law that prohibits plotting to overthrow or destroy the government and carries up to 20 years in prison.

A jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another Florida-based leader of the group guilty of seditious conspiracy in a separate trial in November.

Three other members were found not guilty of that charge, but all five defendants in that trial were found guilty of obstructing Congress from certifying the election.

Prosecutors have brought criminal charges against more than 950 people following the assault. Four people died during the chaos, and five police officers died of various causes after the attack.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta split the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case into two separate trials due to space limitations and the risks of COVID-19 contagion.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida (R) shakes hands with newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the US Capitol on January 7, 2023.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz was a key player in the House speaker vote fight.
• Kevin McCarthy’s other antagonists received new committee assignments and leadership gigs.
• Gaetz appears to be trying to reinvent himself after waiting out a sex-trafficking investigation.

While other House speaker vote rebels got tangible perks like plum committee assignments or chummy leadership roles after getting out of Kevin McCarthy’s way earlier this month, precisely what Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz gained from the grueling ordeal remains hazy. 

In the weeks since he and 19 other House Republicans forced McCarthy to endure 15 ballots before allowing his historic bid to proceed, Gaetz has bragged plenty. He’s taken credit for a rule change that allows any member of Congress to call for a vote to oust McCarthy, the release all of the security camera footage recorded during the January 6 siege at the US Capitol, and securing the same amount of resources and staff for the Judiciary Committee’s new “weaponization of the federal government” panel as House Democrats devoted to the January 6 select committee. 

But many of those priorities were also championed by far-right House Freedom Caucus members like Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado — all of whom landed coveted committee posts after wearing down McCarthy. 

Gaetz’s responsibilities in the 118th Congress, at least so far, appear to be static. Which has some Republicans on and off the Hill wondering if the scandal-plagued Gaetz was more interested in rehabbing his image.

“Last year, everyone was focused on the federal investigation around him regarding sex trafficking of minors. And now, because he held his vote out and negotiated so long, he somehow looks like a temporary power broker,” Ron Bonjean, a former GOP leadership aide and now a partner at political consulting firm Rokk Solutions, said of the timely rebranding effort.

“Some people could be fooled into believing that Gaetz is a much more serious player than previously thought,” Bonjean added. 

In March 2021, news broke that federal investigators were looking into if Gaetz violated federal-sex trafficking laws by allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old. Investigators ultimately declined to press charges.

Aides for Gaetz, McCarthy, and various Freedom Caucus members did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment about side deals cut during the speaker vote deliberations. 

The unencumbered warrior

Gaetz’s self-styled crusade against McCarthy rubbed many colleagues the wrong way. 

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who serves with Gaetz on the House Armed Services Committee, lunged at him on the House floor as the speaker vote fight dragged into its fourth day. 

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used to delight in needling McCarthy on Gaetz’s social media channels but is now firmly in the California Republican’s camp. She has since snubbed Gaetz online.  

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who also serves with Gaetz on the Armed Services panel, lashed out at him amidst all the chaos, declaring him a “fraud” for stoking the political unrest purely for profit. 

“Every time he voted against Kevin McCarthy last week he sent out a fundraising email,” Mace said January 8 on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” 

Cashing in on congressional dysfunction is classic Gaetz, a GOP aide asserted. 

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida talks to fellow members-elect during the second day of elections for Speaker of the House at the US Capitol Building on January 4, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“As he wanted it to be seen, it was him against the establishment,” Maura Gillespie, a former House GOP leadership aide who most recently worked for newly retired Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, told Insider. 

In order to present himself as the “true hero of his DC story,” Gillespie said Gaetz tends to focus on GOP base-baiting activities like obstructing, fear-mongering, and trumpeting conspiracy theories. 

“He doesn’t know how to govern and is not interested in acting in good faith for his constituents or his conference,” Gillespie said. 

One former House staffer turned GOP strategist, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely because they consult on congressional campaigns, said Gaetz appears to be doing what he does best. 

“I don’t think this guy’s looking to be a policymaker,” the GOP strategist told Insider. “I think he’s looking for a platform to monetize MAGA. And to put himself out there as an unencumbered warrior for their cause.”

Doug Heye, a former House leadership aide turned GOP strategist, said the jury’s still very much out on Gaetz’s motivations and his endgame. 

“I can understand and explain the Marjorie Taylor Greene story of where she was two years ago —  not on committees for instance — compared to today. With Gaetz, I don’t think we know where that story is yet,” Heye told insider. 

He said that figuring out Gaetz may take some more time. Or, it could be as easy as believing that guy who donned a gas mask to ridicule a House vote on COVID-19 relief is committed to troublemaking.  

—Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 4, 2020

 

“Maybe the guy just likes attention,” Heye said. “Because here’s the thing. If you say enough crazy stuff, and you wear gas masks on the House floor, you’re gonna get a lot of attention.” 

Not a workaholic

A former House GOP leadership aide said Gaetz’s reputation precedes him on Capitol HIll. 

“Everyone has always viewed him as a showman, as someone who’s there for political theater, as someone who has shown no interest in ever legislating,” the aide, who requested anonymity in order to avoid political retribution, told Insider, adding that Gaetz hasn’t garnered “a lot of respect among his fellow members.” 

An Insider review of Gaetz’s legislative history shows that the four-term Floridian hasn’t authored anything that’s been signed into federal law since getting sworn into office in January 2018. By comparison, non-voting DC delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton had two bills signed into law over the same horizon.  

In total, 725 House bills have become law since Gaetz arrived in Washington. 

Gaetz has cosponsored 37 proposals that eventually became law. Still, that’s mostly a mix of renaming post offices, honorary acts like commissioning commemorative coins, and overwhelmingly bipartisan priorities like the CARES Act.

“Having to actually be held accountable for legislation would be terrifying to a Matt Gaetz,” Gillespie said, adding that his focus has always been on “abolishing, defunding, investigating, and restricting” political opponents. 

‘Everyone is a Joe Manchin now’ 

Given that McCarthy can only lose four GOP votes on any given issue in the narrowly divided House, it’s more than likely McCarthy and others will be forced to humor Gaetz, whether he wants actual input or just publicity.

“This is the beginning of a very long two years,” Bonjean said, noting that Gaetz could inject himself into every high-profile negotiation from here on out. 

“He might be there every time working on transforming his brand,” Bonjean said. “Everyone is a Joe Manchin now and can negotiate things that they want.” 

Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, is one of the swing voters who Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has had to work closely with in recent years to get President Joe Biden’s agenda through what was a 50-50 Senate. 

The former House staffer turned GOP strategist said even without any new committee assignments Gaetz could pop by panels that interest him just long enough to record a buzzy Instagram post. 

“There’s nothing to prohibit him from dropping in on a committee if McCarthy blesses it,” the GOP strategist said, adding that Gaetz has “the kind of cachet where they’re not going to deny him five minutes of questions.”

In past recessions, there was plenty of empty warehouse space from the start causing low prices to get lower. This time, that’s not the case.

Jacobs Stock/Getty Images

• Prologis, the largest holder of US industrial real estate, beat Q4 expectations last week.
• As the rest of the real estate market faces layoffs, warehouses are bucking the trend. 
• Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam said warehouse demand will stay high as other markets crumble.

The last year has brought a downturn in home sales, investor losses, and multiple rounds of layoffs to the titans of real estate — but not all of them.

“The bottom line is that conditions remain healthy,” said Timothy Arndt, the chief financial officer of real estate firm Prologis on an earnings call last week. 

That’s not the tune most real estate executives have been whistling lately and that’s because Prologis deals mostly in warehouses, not homes or offices.

Counter to past periods of economic uncertainty, demand for warehouses is holding up even as the rest of the economy wavers. Prologis actually expects rents in its portfolio to grow 10% in 2023, while some experts expect the housing market to hit bottom early this year. 

Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam’s customers are retailers, industrial companies, and e-commerce logistics firms. Though these companies still feel the economic slowdown, they’re not hurting as badly as others.

“You do hear the headlines of the weaker retailers, but I think if you look at it overall, it’s actually pretty positive. It’s more positive than the headlines,” Moghadam said.

Cooling economy, but still no space 

Whether or not there’s a true recession coming, Moghadam said he expects “close to 0% GDP growth for a while.” That may lead individual companies — say, Amazon — to pull back on investing in new warehouses. But the state of the market entering this slowdown is a key difference from similar moments in the past. And it could keep Prologis and its competitors in warehousing insulated, according to the CEO. 

In past recessions, there was plenty of empty warehouse space from the start, causing low prices to get lower. This time, that’s not the case. Vacancy in Prologis’s portfolio is around 3% now, and the company expects it to rise to no more than 4% this year. That’s historically low, and it’s been that way through most of the pandemic as e-commerce spiked — especially in cities with prime conditions for logistics.

“If we look back to previous recessionary cycles, usually, we get declines in consumption which drives lower demand for industrial space. But we’ve also never started a cycle with the kind of persistently low vacancy like we have right now or tailwinds from e-commerce and supply gain reconfiguration,” said BTIG analyst William Thomas on the same call. 

High retailer inventories are also contributing to keeping empty space low, even as online sale exit frenzy territory. 

No more FOMO

Low vacancies mean it will take a pretty serious shift in demand for the warehouse market to take a hit anywhere close to the housing market. Prologis execs said that’s unlikely, since warehouse leases are cooling slightly, but they started at a boiling temperature. 

For the last few years, warehouse renters, especially in the e-commerce business, have been suffering from FOMO, Moghadan said, leading companies to frantically grab up space. 

That’s over now, said the CEO, but retailers are still eager to modernize their e-commerce supply chains, which means online sellers other than Amazon are making long-term plans to catch up. Warehouse space thus becomes an investment in future success. Plus, these deals move a lot more slowly than house purchases — so it can be harder to hit the brakes.  

“While our macro forecast assumes a moderate recession, which may put headwinds on demand, our business is driven by secular forces and long-term planning,” Arndt said. “We expect 2023 to be a year where headlines continue to be disconnected from our business.”

Elon Musk says the $420 share price wasn’t a joke when he made the popular weed reference in his 2018 tweet about wanting to take Tesla private.

Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images

• Elon Musk testified in a civil trial Monday that he wasn’t joking about taking Tesla private at $420 a share.
• He said the price was a roughly “20% premium” over Tesla stock when he tweeted about it in 2018.
• The “420” popular pot reference has been a theme for Musk, who bought Twitter at $54.20 a share.

Elon Musk denied before a jury on Monday that his infamous 2018 tweet about possibly taking Tesla private at a share price of $420 was a joke for the benefit of then-girlfriend Grimes.

But he does see significance in the number, which is popular in cannabis culture.

“There is some, I think, karma around 420,” he told Nicholas Porritt, an attorney at Levi & Korsinsky LLP who is representing Tesla investors in a civil class-action lawsuit over his tweet in August 2018, in which he’d claimed he had “funding secured” for a potential deal to take Tesla private. 

“I should question whether that is good or bad karma at this point,” Musk added, doubling down on his reference to a concept in Hindu mythology about the consequences of actions in a past life. 

He insisted however, that the number was not a joke, as financial regulators had alleged at the time. He testified on Monday that the number was a “coincidence,” saying it represented a roughly “20 percent premium” over Tesla’s stock at the time. The day of his tweet on Aug. 7, 2018, the company’s stock rose to $371.15.  

“I don’t know if she found it funny or not,” Musk testified, referring to his girlfriend at the time, the musician Grimes. “But the 420 price was not a joke.”

Musk has shown his penchant for “420” marijuana references on other occasions, as the number was also built into the $54.20 share price at which he purchased Twitter last year. Musk had made it something of a brand, smoking weed in an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2018. 

Electric vehicle startup Aptera released new details about its debut solar-powered model.

Aptera

• Electric vehicle startup Aptera released details about its first model. 
• It will have 400 miles of range and be able to travel 40 miles per day using built-in solar cells, the firm says. 
• It needs more funding but plans to start production in 2023. 

Lots more car buyers would consider an electric vehicle if only charging wasn’t such a hassle. 

EV startup Aptera may have an innovative solution — if it can raise enough funding to get production underway. The California-based company unveiled in January its Launch Edition solar vehicle, its first model that will hit customer driveways. 

Aptera Launch Edition vehicle.

Aptera

Aptera is taking a markedly different approach to EVs than fellow startups. While Rivian focuses on rugged utility and Lucid Motors prioritizes luxury and performance, Aptera’s mission centers around efficiency. The result is unlike anything else on the road: an ultra-aerodynamic, super-light, three-wheeler blanketed in solar panels that turn the sun’s rays into driving energy.

Aptera first unveiled the general concept and a preliminary design back in 2020. On Friday, it revealed key details of its first production model during a virtual event. 

Aptera Launch Edition vehicle.

Aptera

All 5,000 or so Launch Edition Aptera vehicles will be identical in an effort to streamline production and reduce complexity as manufacturing gets up and running. The vehicle will target 400 miles of range and will have all-wheel drive provided by three motors integrated into the trike’s wheels. It’ll sprint to 60 mph in a brisk four seconds on its way to a 101-mph top speed, Aptera says.

Aptera Launch Edition vehicle.

Aptera

The Launch Edition will come with 700 watts worth of solar panels on its hood, roof, and rear section, which Aptera says is enough to provide 40 miles of solar-powered driving per day in ideal conditions. Future models will offer the option for fewer panels.

Owners can also charge by plugging in. Aptera Launch Edition vehicles will come with a Tesla-standard charging port but, curiously, no ability to plug into DC fast-charging stations. They’ll be able to add up to 57 miles of range per hour when hooked up to a Level 2 charger (fast-chargers like Tesla Superchargers are Level 3), Aptera estimates. 

Aptera Launch Edition vehicle.

Aptera

Inside, the vehicle will have two seats, a semicircular yoke steering wheel, and a large touchscreen that houses most settings and features. The rear-view and side mirrors are digital. A big hatch reveals 32 cubic feet of cargo space, more than double a Honda Civic’s trunk. 

One detail that’s still a mystery about the Launch Edition: price. Aptera said it won’t know how much to charge until it’s closer to production. 

Down the line, Aptera plans to release more models in more colors and configurations, including one with 1,000 miles of range. But first, it needs to start production. 

Aptera Launch Edition vehicle.

Aptera

Aptera’s leadership said they need an additional $50 million in funding to kick off manufacturing, on top of the $85 million they’ve already raised. The company aims to begin production by the end of 2023, but as the tribulations of other EV startups have demonstrated, making new cars from scratch is no small feat.

Aptera knows this all too well: It first made a go of things starting in the late 2000s before hitting financial trouble and closing up shop in 2011. 

Yanet Borrego.

Courtesy of Yanet Borrego

• Yanet Borrego is a full-time career coach who used to work as an engineer at ExxonMobil.
• To make the transition, she reinvented herself and developed coaching skills on the job.
• She knew she was ready to become self-employed when she had an established client base.

I spent seven years at ExxonMobil and two years at Accenture before quitting my corporate career in 2021 to pursue my passion and become a full-time career coach. Even though the actual transition to self-employment happened in a week, I had been balancing both a nine-to-five and my own business for eight years.

My mom and I immigrated to the US from Cuba when I was 12 years old. After settling in Puerto Rico because we had family there, I earned a chemical-engineering degree, interned at Marathon Oil and ExxonMobil, and was recruited to become a process engineer at ExxonMobil’s Texas headquarters. At that moment in my life, I thought, “I made it! We made it!”

But within a year, I realized that it wasn’t fulfilling me. Even though I appeared successful and was making six figures a year, something inside me was missing. I decided to face the lack of clarity head-on and dig deeper into the long-term vision of who I wanted to be. I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Today, I work with driven, professional women aged 25 to 45 who are successful but looking for purpose and fulfillment. I also run a newsletter, podcast, and digital course. One-on-one coaching is my most lucrative income stream, followed by my digital course. My podcast and newsletter are free, but they give me the chance to connect with potential clients.

I’ve experienced many benefits since my transition to entrepreneurship. The first is flexibility with hours and work location. Last year, I spent three weeks in Hawaii for a personal-development workshop, and I took all my coaching calls from there. I work about the same number of hours each day that I did in my corporate roles, but I am in charge of my own schedule.

I also experience immediate impact from my work, and I receive immediate feedback. I get to launch services and products and directly see the transformation it has on my clients. The feedback is helpful to refine my offerings.

These are the three steps that prepared me for the transition from corporate work to full-time entrepreneurship.

I embraced the mentality that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself

I had spent almost a quarter of my life studying and practicing chemical engineering when I realized that it didn’t make me happy. I must admit, I had doubts and fears about reinventing myself.

So I started by asking the simple question: “Who do I want to be?” My answer was very straightforward: I want to be happy, fulfilled, and a firm believer that my career impacts the world for the better. This led me to the next question, “What do I have to do to be this person?”

Then I surrounded myself with people who were on a similar journey. I went to personal-development trainings to meet like-minded people, and my first training was Tony Robbins’ “Unleash the Power Within.” In 2015, I invested in the John Maxwell Team certification to become a leadership coach, and I attended many more mindset trainings after these.

It felt very empowering to know that I could lead people to trust in themselves and their resourcefulness to figure things out. I fell in love with the profession and knew I wanted to coach people to align their careers with what truly lights them up and find a way to generate income from their passions.

I used the job I already had to build crucial skills and find clients

Once I had clarity about my goal, I defined the list of skills I needed to be a better coach, and all of them had to do with personal development and behavioral changes, or understanding the human mind and how can we change habitual thinking to produce different results.

To leverage my full-time job at the time, I looked within ExxonMobil for opportunities to further develop those skills. I was very drawn to the supply-chain part of the business, because I could practice developing relationships with global suppliers and negotiating contracts. I made the case to a supervisor in the supply-chain division and to my manager in the refining division that I could use my skills in both departments since they were already interconnected. I had the technical experience and people skills to add value to the supply-chain department and optimize the relationship with the refining division. It was an internal loan first, which then became a full internal transfer.

The environment within the supply-chain team allowed me to give talks about mindfulness, behavioral change, inclusion and diversity, and similar topics that were aligned with my interest in coaching. Giving safety updates before each meeting was already a corporate practice, so I volunteered to do those. From there, I branched out into giving wellness and diversity and inclusion talks, and then incorporated mindfulness into my wellness talks. Different teams heard about what I was doing, and I was asked to give a talk to 200 interns starting at the ExxonMobil Campus.

After spending five years as a senior manager, I was ready for the next challenge. Consulting seemed to be the next clear step because of its emphasis on client service, the focus on people development, and the highly entrepreneurial work dynamic. I realized there were a few people I knew from ExxonMobil who had transitioned to Accenture, so I reached out to two of them, and I was referred. I received a call a few weeks later that started the interview process, and I ended up getting an offer. After researching Accenture, I connected with the company’s emphasis on the “truly human” element. I did meet with BCG, and I researched other consulting firms, but I didn’t see the human element I was looking for.

I loved my time in consulting. The environment allowed me to be even more transparent about what I was passionate about. Being authentic and expressing my aspirations in a corporate setting landed me my first paid-coaching client —a coworker I met through diversity and inclusivity initiatives. This is when my side-coaching business started blooming.

I allowed myself to let go of the security of a corporate salary

I decided to quit my job after a family member passed away. I didn’t hate where I was at Accenture, but it was a wake-up call for me to be 100% committed to my dream. I had a foundation built for my business, and it made sense to take the leap of faith.

My desire to create an impact and fulfill my purpose as a full-time career coach was greater than the security offered by my corporate job. I had established a base of paid clients and referrals while working in corporate, and I had a pretty good idea of my coaching structure, so I took the leap. I had enough savings to meet my basic needs while growing my business.

I was earning $160,000 at Accenture before I quit, and my goal is to keep growing my business to eventually exceed my former salary.