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Does The Elio Make Sense As An "and" Car?

RSchneider

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But the only vehicles I know of that ever topped EMs numbers were Teslas.
No matter what we may think of their ability or lack thereof to bring this thing to fruition...
65,000 for something that never even got to a finished pre-production prototype...
Obviously there were some who didn't find the vehicle all that repulsive.

Remember, it took 52 months to get to 65K reservations. If 65K would have happened in 2013, then that would have been a great boost for the company to get proper funding. That comes down to 1,250/month or 15K/year. Then it went to a trickle. Remember, we now have the beginning of people that put money down 6 years ago. So, it makes me wonder, how many of those 65K reservations will actually be done because by the time Elio gets to production, it'll be over 7 years. That's something which is a reality due to death, illness, family, jobs and changing tastes. Just because someone put down $1K, 6 years ago doesn't mean they will buy it come June 2019 or later.

When you look at Tesla Model 3, they got 325K reservation in a month (they were refundable). 143 weeks after they took the first reservation they have only delivered just over 63K. Remember just 6 months ago how upset people were that they didn't have their car? Even today, Tesla has only scratched the surface of the reservations. So, when people were expecting June 2014 to be the start of production, I have a feeling many in the early stages gave up and went elsewhere. If they were fuming at Tesla, they had to of not be pleased with Elio. The longer you go, the less of those 65K reservations will be fulfilled. So, that becomes another issue that investors have to bring up.
 

Maurtis

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Unfortunately I have not had the chance to sit in one yet, how easy is the back seat access? 20% of my trips are with my son as a passenger and on those trips where he is not with me I often swing by the grocery store to pick up items to make for dinner, toilet paper, whatever. So I plan on using the back seat for storage quite a bit too.

Do you have to move the front seat to get easy access to the rear? And if so, does it remember the previous settings? I had an older two door car years ago that had a lever on the passenger seat the folded the front seat and slid it forward at the same time to allow rear set access. Then when you pushed the front seat back it would return to the original position so no need to readjust it. Hopefully the Elio would have something like that since having to reset my seat settings every time I had to access the rear would be a HUGE pain.

Or if they offered a memory electric seat option, press a button for rear seat access then press another button to return to your pre-saved settings. That is an option I would spring for too.

Or maybe the Elio 2.0 would offer a small suicide door to access the rear seat?
 

Rickb

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Remember, it took 52 months to get to 65K reservations. If 65K would have happened in 2013, then that would have been a great boost for the company to get proper funding. That comes down to 1,250/month or 15K/year. Then it went to a trickle. Remember, we now have the beginning of people that put money down 6 years ago. So, it makes me wonder, how many of those 65K reservations will actually be done because by the time Elio gets to production, it'll be over 7 years. That's something which is a reality due to death, illness, family, jobs and changing tastes. Just because someone put down $1K, 6 years ago doesn't mean they will buy it come June 2019 or later.

When you look at Tesla Model 3, they got 325K reservation in a month (they were refundable). 143 weeks after they took the first reservation they have only delivered just over 63K. Remember just 6 months ago how upset people were that they didn't have their car? Even today, Tesla has only scratched the surface of the reservations. So, when people were expecting June 2014 to be the start of production, I have a feeling many in the early stages gave up and went elsewhere. If they were fuming at Tesla, they had to of not be pleased with Elio. The longer you go, the less of those 65K reservations will be fulfilled. So, that becomes another issue that investors have to bring up.
EM didn’t need additional reservations to show investors interest, but rather needed the Reg A+ promised tested and validated E’s to offer public and private investors a test drive to include the DoE’s ATVM loan approval committee. EM burned through plenty of R&D funding, but unfortunately didn’t use it for R&D needed to justify another round if investor funding when production funds ran out. The day EM announced they had secured a manufacturing plant, is the day I thought EM was sure to deliver and placed my refundable reservation deposit. Was I ever wrong!
 

Ty

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Nope, but I have a small 2 seater car. I have no opportunity to sit in one. Again, you would buy it for that feel, but a lot of people don't like that tight feel.
It wasn't a tight feel. shoulder to glass, it had more room than my F350, believe it or not. It had more cockpit space than my Dad's Mazdaspeed Miata which didn't even have a single cup holder! The Elio doesn't have an airline style tight feel. It feels bigger than it should and it was especially neat being able to look downwards to the sides and see the road right by the car on both sides. It was basically a nice, generously appointed cockpit. (I'm 6'3", pretty fit but by no means skinny)
 

Ty

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Unfortunately I have not had the chance to sit in one yet, how easy is the back seat access? 20% of my trips are with my son as a passenger and on those trips where he is not with me I often swing by the grocery store to pick up items to make for dinner, toilet paper, whatever. So I plan on using the back seat for storage quite a bit too.

Do you have to move the front seat to get easy access to the rear? And if so, does it remember the previous settings? I had an older two door car years ago that had a lever on the passenger seat the folded the front seat and slid it forward at the same time to allow rear set access. Then when you pushed the front seat back it would return to the original position so no need to readjust it. Hopefully the Elio would have something like that since having to reset my seat settings every time I had to access the rear would be a HUGE pain.

Or if they offered a memory electric seat option, press a button for rear seat access then press another button to return to your pre-saved settings. That is an option I would spring for too.

Or maybe the Elio 2.0 would offer a small suicide door to access the rear seat?
the front seat is all mechanical. You can lean it forward to get access to the back just like 2-door cars in the 80s used to do. I believe Elio will offer an electric front seat as an option. Access to the back looked about like what you'd get in a Mustang.
 

RSchneider

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The day EM announced they had secured a manufacturing plant, is the day I thought EM was sure to deliver and placed my refundable reservation deposit. Was I ever wrong!
That would have been January 3, 2013. I guess you watched this video and were excited especially at the 8:34 mark and then the next minute which got you excited. 18 months that they will be doing it and by the end of the decade, they will be exporting them.
 

Sega

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That would have been January 3, 2013. I guess you watched this video and were excited especially at the 8:34 mark and then the next minute which got you excited. 18 months that they will be doing it and by the end of the decade, they will be exporting them.

Well, he didn't "prove it to us". The car is a great idea, the company sucks.
 

slinches

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If you think the car is a great idea and you could do better, then do it.

Seriously, there's nothing stopping you. Elio didn't patent anything on the vehicle. There's no novel technology to invent and he even got many of the regulatory hurdles out of the way for you. It should be much easier to accomplish than when Paul started.

You get a 3-wheeled Sega to market with similar capabilities and cost and I would be interested.
 

RSchneider

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Well, he didn't "prove it to us". The car is a great idea, the company sucks.
Not really. What it shows everyone is that with social media and the internet, it's hard to back away from what you said. This becomes something that ends up being where an investor will look at this and then ask today, "What happened?" and "Why should I invest in you?" If it was Paul talking about ACME Motors and a cellulose powered truck that never got far at all and he decided to start a new company two years ago called Elio Motors, then it looks much different. It is where you learned what not to do and did a change of business plan. When you watch it today, not much has changed. Same car and the same business plan. Only just a few details have changed. That becomes a tough sell six years later. It's not an impossible sell but much harder than if it was only two years old and he already had a failure of a business plan to where he took those life lessons and vowed not to repeat them. This is why i think that going electric and having a more realistic sales number might be the way to show that there's a major shift in the business plan to make it attractive for those large investors which they need.
 

RSchneider

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If you think the car is a great idea and you could do better, then do it.
I could do it and would in a heartbeat. On the other hand, I don't want to ruin my life on something that I don't see that would be successful in the long term. I could easily see a divorce in my future and me living in a trailer just trying to hope I get this thing going. I've watched too many others that have gone through this with their business plans, to realize that something on this order of magnitude takes way more than what I'm willing to sacrifice. It's great that Paul has been at it this for as long as he has but spending 9 years of frustration is not the way I want to live.

Just look at Bob Lutz. He found out that retiring with a golden parachute, writing books and getting paid to speak about being the foremost expert on car production, design and future trends has done nothing to get his beloved car company off the ground. He's has been doing this since he retired in 2010 but it's obvious he knows enough that he will not go broke and ruin his life trying to get it going thus why it's all been about flashy marketing and that's about it. They are going after a niche of a niche and even at that, they fail. Why? Because there's a number of established niche manufacturers out there (especially in Europe). So, we can see he will just put it on hold until someone else is going to fund it. My guess is he's 86 years old and it's never going to happen. Time is not on his side.
 
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