[NeilBlanchard]

Another update from Oliver Kuttner (say KOOT-ner!) on Facebook:

Last weekend we had a great meeting I would like to share with you. In the end this is what it is all about.

Because three of our team members live in the Long Beach area we all flew in to meet there. The mission of the meeting was to agree on the fundamentals of the VLC 4.0. This version will be the definitive pre-production prototype.

This car will fully incorporate bumpers, proper final glazing and all the details we require on a car sold in the USA today. We all had our own ideas of how to polish the VLC and to meet those requirements. Coming in we expected to give up some of our efficiency as a trade.

I am happy to report that the meeting was a definitive success. We feel strongly that we will be able to retain perhaps all the efficiency virtues we proved available with VLC 3.x (the X Prize cars). The main differences will be the emergence of bumpers, larger more comfortable door entries, A somewhat radical approach to a catastrophic accident that promises to give the VLC an edge with heavier cars and a new treatment of the A Pillars. In effect we will substitute the A pillars with a central spine of substantial nature, we call it the Alpha pillar.

The Alpha pillar will provide a new approach to safety while giving opportunity for better aerodynamic efficiency.

We can not give too many details. What we can say is that the 4.0 is promising to be almost as much of a leap the VLC 3.0 was. As I predicted the X Prize cars are now essentially obsolete.

The weekend included a new member in our team, Jason Hill known from his work on the Porsche Carrera GT supercar and the Aptera will join our ranks as the refinement automotive industry insider.

Other members of the meeting were Barnaby Wainfan (aerodynamics, Peter Barnett (ergonomics and industrial design specialist from Northrop Gruman), Ron Mathis our chief designer Brad Jaeger who has become a bit of a specialist in FMVSS besides the other hats he wears and Alex Wolfden our composites and plastics specialist as well as myself.

It was a powerful weekend in good company, I am very proud of my team and we promise you that we will change the [paradigm], we know how to -- with real numbers...
Regards Oliver

(Minor editing: adding some paragraphs, etc.)