A Detroit show is like preaching to the choir - except the choir's broke and doesn't include a significant commuter market. The oldest truism in marketing is that you have to fish where the fish are. If you can't make regular shows in Texas, California, New York, and South Florida, you're ignoring probably 80% of your potential market. Be selective in your exhibits. Go where your potential buyers will be looking. Hit the big car shows, the ones the media cover. Hit the less obvious events with a smaller exhibit, for example industry shows that are exhibiting the latest technology. Even college engineering departments show here, demonstrating their high-mileage cars, alternative fuel vehicles, and styling exercises. Forget setting up in shopping malls and street-corner venues, you need to target your attendees to make the results worth the cost.
EM needs to schedule shows in America's largest commuter markets, with sufficient public advertising to attract potential customers to your exhibit. Let those folks get their hands on the product, allow them to experience the vehicle hands-on for themselves, and give them a solid delivery date, not one that keeps moving back. OK, if you sign this paper, you'll have an Elio in your driveway on April 1 of 2018 - or we'll refund your money. You can't keep teasing a release date for five years. The only way you are going to attract buyers is by building a product. OK, it won't be perfect, but it'll be a reliable product that won't kill it's owners. That's the bottom line for any vehicle.
It seems that EM is dumping a lot of cash into development articles and dozens of running changes while ignoring qualified and motivated prospects. OK, this is classic engineer behavior: perfecting the product while ignoring potential sales to already salivating buyers. At some point a decision has to be made to get into production - even if it's in a limited manner, and if everything isn't quite sorted yet. You just need to get into production, even if the tire size or the location of the gas cap isn't quite perfect yet. You need good, reliable products out there - even if only a few hundred - to get products before the public and into the auto mags and websites to attract attention - and better yet, get examples on the STREET. Right now it's more critical to get the first production units moving than to decide on options. Those early production units, out on the streets will be by far your best salesmen. Otherwise you're only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There's an old story of the fine craftsman who created the intricately decorated bronze doors for the grand cathedrals of Europe. His creative talent was glorious and his workmanship, superb, endlessly adding detail and polishing his work. When asked by a curious passer-by how he knew when his work was perfect, he responded, "It's NEVER perfect, finally someone just comes and takes it away."
/rant