I have a bit of a different perspective on this. It could actually be that EM has a group of investors lined up, but short of actually making a public offering, they would either have to file a 506b offering under regulation D which would restrict investor participation to a private offering with no "general solicitation" or file a 506c, which provided the opportunity for them to open the investment to any "qualified" investor. Since EM has stated before that they would provide the reservation holders with an opportunity to invest, the 506c was probably their only real option. Unfortunately, that does restrict the potential investor pool, but it also simplifies the process of keeping track of all the investors, since there will be fewer of them. This could actually be a good thing, since a sudden requirement for additional capital could signal their readiness to start tooling up the factory to build the next prototypes.