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I Think I Finally Found The Fabled '$1,000' Profit Per Autocycle Sold Claim...

Rabrandt99

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Ever since Ty mentioned it in the "Not Encouraging News For Eliocoin" thread, where he stated seeing something about a $1,000 dollar profit from Elio itself, I've been trying to find it because I could have sworn I had read it myself...

Well after two months of searching, I found it! The reason people couldn't find it is because it's really obscure and if it was talked on this site, it would've been WAAAAY back in the day, as it was first mentioned in 2013. It's probably here on Elio Owners somewhere, but the search function is terrible, because I tried searching here and couldn't go back further than 2017. In fact, the two articles that discussed it aren't even available on the net anymore, as the sites (CleanTechnica and Gas2) give errors if you follow their links.

Found the article headers on Google, got errors and only found these versions due to the internet's best friend, The Wayback Machine via the Internet Archive.

In case you want to read the archived articles, here's the CleanTechnica one and the Gas2 one. Be forewarned, since they're cached versions, the formatting will be more than likely messed up.

But, both sites had an active link to the file they were basing their claims on, an Excel Spreadsheet from Elio Motors. So here's the link to that file, which is still online.

The numbers as a whole are fascinating, but the relevant bit for the $1,000 dollar profit can be found under the "Vehicle Cost" tag on the bottom of the screen, in-between "Volume- Labor, Plant, Retail" and "Retail Store Cost".

These are numbers as they were listed back in 2013, so since a lot has changed in the 6 years since this was put up, their margin for profit (which is listed as $1,000) probably isn't the same anymore.

Still, fascinating reading.
 
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84mpg

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I remembered the $1,000 figure too. Thank for finding and verifying we weren't dreaming ;)

If they doubled or tripled that profit margin, would it generate the required investment?
 

Samalross

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I remembered the $1,000 figure too. Thank for finding and verifying we weren't dreaming ;)

If they doubled or tripled that profit margin, would it generate the required investment?
The selling price needed to make that profit level would cost way too many sales.
 

slinches

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If the vehicle production cost was really $10k, they wouldn't have locked in so many reservations at the $7300 mark. With inflation and redesigns, they may not have much margin left on those, but I think they should still be able to get $3k profit per Elio around a $10k base price.
 

Samalross

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If the vehicle production cost was really $10k, they wouldn't have locked in so many reservations at the $7300 mark. With inflation and redesigns, they may not have much margin left on those, but I think they should still be able to get $3k profit per Elio around a $10k base price.
Elio pulled the price out of their butt. It was based on sales of 250k, own engine and glueing the panels on a frame. They gave no supporting evidence to justify the projected unit cost.
 

84mpg

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Elio pulled the price out of their butt. It was based on sales of 250k, own engine and glueing the panels on a frame. They gave no supporting evidence to justify the projected unit cost.
Just asking..... has any manufacturer ever given any information (evidence) to justify their projected unit cost? Maybe they have? I’m unaware of any....
 

RSchneider

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Great find and now we know the facts and can go from here.

I got some good news and bad news.
Good News: Elio will make $1K per car and that's a huge amount.
Bad news: The Elio has a sticker price of $5959. So locking in at $7K was a bad decision because I'll be paying less for my Elio than you will.
 

Ty

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Elio pulled the price out of their butt. It was based on sales of 250k, own engine and glueing the panels on a frame. They gave no supporting evidence to justify the projected unit cost.
They did, actually. They had priced out something like 90% of the vehicle parts with their suppliers to come up with the price. The other 10%, they used best estimates based on prices for similar items.
 
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