Financing Elio Motors Development And Production

[genebee]

According to several Elio Motors statements, they purchased the GM tooling, and owned it..... even before the building lease was signed.
"
Elio Motors
1. When GM abandoned the plant, they left the necessary production tools behind. They are in our possession, and we have not fully started tooling the plant at this time." The 'Engine Making' tooling will be an added expense.

Paul also said in a early interview that the tooling left by GM may be different than what is required to build the Elio,
which makes sense, because the plant was set up to make Hummers and trucks which are mostly spot welded, where as the Elio is almost all mig welded.
There is also bending equipment for the frame rails and the upper curved tubing.
I own a cnc machine and I can tell you that I spent a lot more on tooling than on the cost of the machine.

 

[RUCRAYZE]

I think by April of 2015 if NOTHING is going on at the GM plant you can kiss the Sept. '15 production goodby.
Another think I don't look for anything to get done until Elio has 60,000 buyers PLUS on the books.

60,000 buyers? right now he has zero buyers! none of us have "bought" anything There are only about 7500 of the 30,000 who put up 1k. Many others who with $100 could easily walk away. Pointing no fingers, and not to look for any blame, the flame will diminish with further delays, we "the true believers" -I included myself 1k all in, will stay the course, but the prospect of getting another 30k to "sign-up" will be much more difficult than the first 30k. BTW I will be my happiest (since my divorce) to secure a elio, but not too disappointed if it doesn't happen. I would consider my 1k as an investment in the future.

 

[Jambe]

There are only about 7500 of the 30,000 who put up 1k.

Hey, dielk, you are little behind the times. There are over 10,300 production numbers issued.

 

[RUCRAYZE]

Hey, dielk, you are little behind the times. There are over 10,300 production numbers issued.

thanks CRS keeps gaining on me. With those numbers, I still stand by my comment. I continue to hope at my age, (71) that I get the car, before they take me to the home.

 

[nthawk68]

I have heard that the Chinese have redesignated 2015 as the Year of the Elio, so it has to be in production bythen LOL
I have a lot of faith in EM getting the autocycle out as quickly as possible, but their first priority is a quality product and I am willing to wait a few more quarters for a great product

 

[Truett Collins]

Hey, dielk, you are little behind the times. There are over 10,300 production numbers issued.

And growing every day...........

 

[Jim H]

thanks CRS keeps gaining on me. With those numbers, I still stand by my comment. I continue to hope at my age, (71) that I get the car, before they take me to the home.

There are a lot of hoping the same.

 

[RogWild]

For anyone wondering about this timeline this is based on something I was told that I can actually share. The exact parts for production need to be finalized about 3 months prior to production to give the suppliers time to finalize their assembly process in order to deliver these final parts on time. Also EM needs about six months or so of testing to finalize the hardware parts selection process. This is 9 months total so as long as they have the first E-series vehicles by the end of this year they have a shot of getting production online by the end of the 3rd quarter of 2015 even if it is a tight schedule. Software programming and tuning can continue pretty much until production starts up.

So knowing this timeline if we know that a running P5/E0 exists by mid-November and the production of the E-series is underway by the end of the year then this is what we need to see and if we don't then we have an issue which likely means another production delay. So everyone should just relax a bit and enjoy the ride as we still have two months or so before mid-November and the first trouble sign deadline.

From what I know EM only needs to get the first of the E-series vehicles completed by the end of this year in order to meet their 3rd Qtr 2015 projection so I can reiterate my earlier comment about the schedule being tight however 3rd Qtr 2015 is still possible. Frankly from what I know I don't even need to change that opinion unless we dont see anything about the engine and P5/E0 by about mid November and we don't hear about further E-series builds by the end of the year.

Where did you see that it took Technosports 3-4 months to complete the P4? The fact is that they began building the bare P4 frame at the beginning of December 2013, started covering it on their blog two plus weeks later on December 18, 2013 and it was completed for the reveal on January 18, 2014 which is only about six weeks from start to finish. Also this was a nearly completely hand built prototype which is important as the P5 will be built using many parts from EM's OEM suppliers so it should go together even faster.

I hope your 'timeline' and calculations are correct, but they will have to conduct the most 'critical testing', to insure meeting the 'Crash Safety Rating' and the 'MPG' goals FIRST, in case any DESIGN CHANGES are required. So more than a 'couple' "E" Series vehicles will be required (do they even have the ENGINE 'castings' for these vehicles yet?) The 'endurance testing' and 'comfort' areas can be evaluated later.

As far as 'about six weeks from start to finish' for the P4;
Elio Motors states (back on 6, Sept , 2013) “25 prototypes are under construction in Detroit" (Only ONE, the P4 was completed in Jan 2014.... maybe the 'others' can be used for parts to speed up the "E" Series build!) ;-)
Sept 2013 to Jan 2014 = 4+ months.
What " many parts from EM's OEM suppliers" will be 'different' on the HANDBUILT "E" Series..... than on the P4?

 

[Hightech]

I could of swore there was a video posted about ~3 weeks ago where Paul stated that [not verbatim]
Funding is no longer an issue, although it could go one way where it will be about 2 weeks while if it went the other it could be about 2 months.

Now that's its been 2+ weeks with no major news I wanted to watch it again and exmine the comment more closly to see what the it was

 

[goofyone]

I could of swore there was a video posted about ~3 weeks ago where Paul stated that [not verbatim]
Funding is no longer an issue, although it could go one way where it will be about 2 weeks while if it went the other it could be about 2 months.

Now that's its been 2+ weeks with no major news I wanted to watch it again and exmine the comment more closly to see what the it was

I am not sure about the video however there has been some major news out just today:

http://www.elioowners.com/threads/0...producing-new-vehicle-at-massive-shreve.3481/