The drivetrain in the P5 and pre-production vehicles are supposed to be pre-production versions of the actual IAV/Elio engine and whatever transmission they have decided to use in the vehicle. We have heard Aisin mentioned a fair amount as the transmission supplier, even from direct Elio sources, however this has never been officially confirmed. I do suspect the first vehicles will have manual transmissions as the AMT's may take a bit more work to make ready.
Thanks for the writing compliment! You are actually not the first person to have commented on my writing. I suspect it has something to do with all the proposals and reports I have to prepare for the government projects I have been involved in over the last decade.
Thanks G.O., I stand corrected.It sounds like the P5 will be done at some point, and we may not know when it's done, and perhaps when the tooling is set up and the 24 pre-production vehicles are close to completion, the P5 "might" go on tour?
No worries, it takes a lot of work to keep track of all this information and sort through what we know for a fact, what is semi-confirmed, and what is purely speculation.
I expect EM to let us know once things really get rolling however they do tend to delay information to make sure everything works out. I know they have suffered some delays waiting for the engine to be completed however I do hope they begin building the P5 as expected in the next few weeks.
I do expect to see the P5 and/or pre-production units eventually hit the tour along side the P4. My guess is that when these vehicles become available we will see the P3 retired from the tour just like the P2 has been retired.
