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David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Promising cheaper, greener homes, Rialto-based Plant Prefab is seeing demand soar, as housing prices are hitting new highs.
Last week, Plant Prefab opened its second factory, in Ontario, and on Tuesday announced that it raised an additional $30 million for a third highly automated factory. The homes are priced lower than new construction – a key selling point as the cost of housing skyrockets to levels not seen in decades.
Prefabricated housing construction has exploded in recent years, as L.A. has looked to the dwelling style as a way of diversifying its housing supply and tackling the housing crisis.
Plant Prefab says its forthcoming third factory will allow the company to cut waste by up to 30% while saving 10% to 25% on cost and reducing construction times by 20% to 50% compared to traditional building methods.
Prefab also claims their homes are 30% better than the average home built in California in 2020 under Title 24 energy efficiency standards. Both new plants, including the one that opened last week in Ontario, California, will simply allow the company to do more volume, too. As the 94-person company closes in on completing its 100th building, founder and CEO Steve Glenn says their focus will remain on urban settings where the customization options offered by Plant Prefab make it an attractive option for developers building where space is at a premium and often irregular in shape. But before Plant Prefab got its start six years ago, Glenn says the combination of high quality, sustainable, and custom prefabricated homes wasn't the norm.
"If a company existed and it had the right technology and processes, we could solve the problems of hundreds of thousands of individuals and affordable housing nonprofits who need a better way to build, particularly for cities, which is where most custom projects were built," he said.
Prefabricated construction offers a number of advantages that makes it appealing for builders who are trying to reduce waste, save money and lessen the environmental impacts. Building in a factory rather than onsite eliminates variables like weather, allowing builders to work all year round without concern for rain or snow. Factories also allow for much greater precision and easier recycling.
"When you see a site-built house, there are dumpsters filled with debris. Most of that debris can be recycled in a factory. Drywall is recycled, the wood is recycled, metal is sent back to the metal workers," said Sheri Koones, an expert on prefabrication and author of "Downsize: Living Large in a Small House."
Koones also points out that when you're building indoors you don't have to worry about closing the structure up quickly, which allows for more careful application of insulation and energy savings over the lifetime of the house. Items like windows and flooring can be purchased in bulk and delivery trucks only need to make one stop, which burns less fuel than visiting multiple sites.
"[Plant Prefab] have always been very environmentally friendly and they've always looked for innovative ways to make their houses green," she said.
For Glenn, who had abandoned his childhood dreams of architecture in college and entered into the world of tech—prior to Plant Prefab, he was CEO of PeopleLink and a VR imagineer at Disney — the return to architecture, albeit on the business end, is a welcome one. After all, he explains, if he can't be an architect himself, he can still work as a developer and hire talented architects and "let them do great things."
And that experience in software has proven plenty valuable.
"I'm a big fan of a lean startup approach," he said. "It reflects something that software engineers learned in the '80s, which is if you spend too much time on design up front, it turns out you don't really know enough about the problem."
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Santa Ana-based aircraft startup Overair has raised $145 million to develop and fly its flagship vehicle, a prototype electric airplane called Butterfly, by the second half of next year.
The investment was led by South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, which holds a 30% stake in Overair and has now poured a total of $170 million into the startup, according to TechCrunch. The funds specifically came from two of the conglomerate’s divisions, Hanwha Aerospace and Hanwha Systems, Overair said in a press release Tuesday.
Butterfly is part of a class of electric aircraft, known as eVTOL, that are capable of vertically taking off and landing and do not require a runway. Such aircraft require less space to operate and produce fewer or no carbon emissions, and have increasingly been floated for potential use as air taxis and for regional flights.
With the help of electric motors and battery packs provided by Hanwha, Overair said the six-seater Butterfly prototype should be ready to take flight by the second half of 2023. The startup was spun off in 2020 from Lake Forest-based, military-focused aerospace manufacturer Karem Aircraft.
“Our technology was meant to drop Navy SEALs into hot zones, and we’re going to use it for urban air mobility (UAM) so that you and I can go to a Rams game from Orange County,” Overair head of business development Josh Aronoff told TechCrunch.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Performio, an Irvine-based provider of sales commission software, has raised $75 million in new funding.
The company announced Tuesday that growth equity firm JMI Equity led the funding, with JMI chairman Paul Barber and vice president Jack Duane also joining Performio’s board of directors. The new investment will go toward advancing the company’s technology and meeting the needs of its growing client base, it said.
Performio’s cloud-based sales performance management platform allows companies to oversee and automate their incentive compensation—a task that many firms have traditionally managed manually on spreadsheets. Its customers include AstraZeneca, ChargePoint, Johnson & Johnson and Vodafone.
Founded in Australia in 2006, Performio built up its business in the Asia-Pacific region before opening its global headquarters in Irvine in 2017 and subsequently growing its North American customer base. The company said it grew its revenues 77% year-on-year and more than doubled its number of employees globally in 2021. Last month, it announced the appointments of former Salesforce executive Neil Graham as chief revenue officer and former Datometry executive Dmitri Korablev as chief technology officer.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Rivian pre-order holders took to the forums over the weekend to share news of the latest, delayed delivery windows for the electric automaker’s R1S sports utility vehicle.
After already pushing back its original January 2022 delivery date for the SUV to this summer, Irvine-based Rivian recently informed customers of yet another production delay. As Autoevolution reported on Monday, many of those who had pre-ordered the R1S received emails detailing new delivery dates ranging from August to December of this year.
The newly delayed delivery windows are based on supply chain issues and service infrastructure, Rivian said in its emails—noting that customers’ updated delivery dates will be based on their pre-order date, delivery location and vehicle configuration. The automaker said it has looked to “prioritize deliveries in locations where service infrastructure is in place so that we can provide the full ownership experience to Rivian owners from day one.” Rivian currently operates 19 service centers across the country, according to its website.
It’s not the first time this year that the company has irked pre-order holders. Rivian’s attempt to raise prices on both the R1S and its R1T pickup truck were met with a fierce backlash from customers that prompted a quick reversal and a public apology from CEO RJ Scaringe. Rivian is also familiar with supply chain issues; Scaringe blamed material shortages for the price hikes while also warning that they would hinder the electric vehicle industry at large in the years to come.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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