I sent a letter to Edison2 just before they started winning the competition, on how much I liked their engineering. Very fortuitous of me yes?
I even gave them a strong argument on the thought about a one or in-line two passenger vehicle as a low cost/high efficiency commuter product. The gentleman thought that had merit to it. That's about as far as cooperation goes between competing players. (not that I'm competitive about it)
These three things are very hard to get push into the same direction, the Vision/Concept, the Team/Plan, the Funding. Different players all compete for those things, and differ strongly in the content and game plan to manage them.
As soon as, but also 'only after' someone (Elio) succeeds, then it begins to look obvious to everyone that a new product line was a 'no brainer.'
Now add this one more item, 'for the public good' versus 'for great profit'. Great personal benefit has been the grease that puts together the 'three things' in the commercial world. Intentionally putting together 'for public good' -even- with 'for great profit' is a rarity.
I grant that 'some good for the consumer' is a requirement to even hope for a profit, but typically the 'good' is kept to the minimal effort for low risk success. So 'profit' was usually before 'good' even at the conceptual level. They even try to reserve some 'good' for later expansion.
I think Elio Motors has placed 'good' ahead of profit at least at the conceptual stage. And some of Paul's determination that keeps investors regulated is fixated on keeping 'good' within their product concept firmly in place. This works well since the plan is to get the initial sales volume high enough to reach viable benefit for both consumer and investor.
This all should be seen as existing at the level of mystical heroism. Win or loose, this effort should be a movie one day.