We've now added over 1,200 new Aptera equity owners, over 50,000 Aptera followers, and grown our engineering team from just 15 two months ago to over 60 talented people now.
The final tally is in on our crowdfunding and we are VERY thankful for the more than 1,200 people that put their support firmly behind our vision for transportation efficiency. This fully funds our efforts to build our development vehicles this summer and use the knowledge learned from them to develop our production-intent vehicles. Never fear if you missed out on this round. We will likely open up an equity offering in the future to let people support our ramp into production.
We also have an ever-growing following on social media and through our newsletter. This will help us spread the word of our future developments and hopefully bring in more people who would like to pre-order an Aptera later this summer.
And we're growing our team of professionals VERY quickly. We had just 15 people two months ago and now have over 60 people all over the world supporting our efforts. We now have shops and people in Reno, LA, San Diego, Michigan, Washington, Canada, the UK, Slovenia, and New Zealand. And they are all working hard to get these first vehicles on the road and production units ready. We are very close to releasing our full-body structure with the suspension not far behind. Along the way, we are working with some new generative design tools that have REALLY helped us to cut some more metal weight. The first part we did was our upper door hinge. See the pic of the part evolution below. And now we are about to finalize all our larger suspension parts utilizing about 40% less metal across the board. This saves us weight and in turn increase our range.
AND we've signed up with some amazing new firms for product and engineering support. One of the most notable is Munro and Associates. They are experts in lean manufacturing and build methods that produce the most reliable and cost-efficient parts possible. They have experience with some of the most advanced aerospace, automotive, and industrial products around.
They also break down many of today's most compelling electric vehicles to learn what they are doing right and wrong. This knowledge will help Aptera build vehicles with not only a focus on efficiency but also manufacturability and profitability. We have just started reviewing systems but our intent is to work with Munro through our production ramp and through to our continual improvement programs in the future.
We will try to keep everyone up to date on our progress as we have our heads down for engineering and will plan an investor call later this summer to share our direction and timing. Thanks, you for all the continued support!
