Elio Motors Momentum V62

Inside Shreveport: A guided tour with Plant Manager Doug Frick

At Elio Motors, we’re making progress every day. You’ve heard about a lot of our major milestones recently – nearly $17 million raised through Regulation A+, opening the Pilot Operations Center in Livonia, Mich., and introducing the first E-Series vehicle, the E1A, the first of 23 vehicles to be used for testing and validation purposes.

We’re also hard at work down in Shreveport getting the manufacturing facility ready. This morning, we issued a news release about our Plant Manager, Doug Frick. He’s a former General Motors team member and brings more than 20 years of production expertise to the team.

We thought you might like to see some of the things underway down in Shreveport – and who better to take you on a guided tour of our future production line than Doug Frick himself? To view video, click here or on image below.



Click on image for a guided tour of our future production line.
A Familiar Face in Shreveport

Doug Frick is no stranger to the Shreveport facility, having worked there since 2000, first helping General Motors, then working as a project manager for Hunt, Guillot and Associates.

He’s also lived in the area for 16 years. His familiarity with the facility is important, but so too is his understanding of the Shreveport community. As production draws near, Doug will be in charge of building our world-class manufacturing team and knowing the people on the ground is a huge asset.

Doug has always had a passion for production. He earned bachelor and master of science degrees in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University and started on a career that was out of this world – literally. He had a four-year stint in Houston with McDonnell Douglas providing human factors support for its Space Station project.

Fortunately, his love of cars won out. His next stop on the career ladder was in Bowling Green, Kentucky, providing manufacturing for Chevrolet’s legendary Corvette sport coupe.

A change of millennium brought Doug to Shreveport to work in GM’s compact truck plant as industrial engineering manager through the end of production. He then worked on the decommissioning phase of the facility. Based on his love of things mechanical and his extensive 16 years of experience with the facility, it would be highly unlikely to find someone more suited to lead Elio Motors’ production operations than Doug Frick.

Over the next several months, Doug’s schedule will be getting even busier. Before commercial production begins, Doug will work with Gino Raffin, our vice president of Manufacturing and Product Launch, and our lead manufacturing partners, Comau, Paslin, Henkel, Deyco and Oakland Automation. They’ll be developing and installing our production line, setting up the general assembly and engine assembly areas, integrating the paint shop and body shop, developing the workforce’s operations procedures, then staffing and starting everything up as Elio Motors’ first vehicle-assembly enterprise. We think that’s quite a list for anyone to accomplish. But we also know Doug’s the right guy for the job.
Enjoy the tour!

Very interesting! They have a lot of work ahead of them to bring that factory on line, but I'm glad to see progress being made.

The white E1A unveiled buy Paul seemed to have a slightly more bulbous (softer curves) wheel pants than than the Red one pictured here. Both seem to have a longer streamlined nose that the older models. Wazupwidat?

The Red one is the P5 prototype. It does have different front end and wheel cover styles than the older Creamsicle (orange) P4 prototype. They modified the nose for better aerodynamics. The wheel fairing shape was modified to match the angle of the back of the body. Probably other small changes, too.

It is possible that the styling was modified a bit between the Red P5 and the White E1A. I don't recall anything specifically mentioned in regards to body styling, though. Maybe just different viewing angles?

Different colors also have an effect on how our eyes view shape and dimensionality.

Sethodine said:

Different colors also have an effect on how our eyes view shape and dimensionality.

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<ding-ding-ding, we have a winner!> Absolutely correct, color and lighting in pictures will play tricks on you about size, depth and texture as you see it.
Remember how the P4 looked yellow driving down the freeway at night?
Just the color of something will make it appear as a different shape.

Sethodine said:

Different colors also have an effect on how our eyes view shape and dimensionality.

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That's what I keep telling my wife. It only looks small because of the lighting.

bunchathrees said:

That's what I keep telling my wife. It only looks small because of the lighting.

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THAT'S FRIGGIN' HILARIOUS!!!
Saving that quip for the right situation.

bunchathrees said:

That's what I keep telling my wife. It only looks small because of the lighting.

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LOL