Investor Question Answered...

[Snick]

There would naturally be a lot less criticisms if EM had not let the time line slip again.

Does anyone know how I can get on the "paid shills" list? and do they pay by post or per word? and is this a full time position or more of a paid contractor situation? I hate having to fill out a 1099.

Ask some of these rabid fans that take it personally that EM is in severe doubt.

 

[bowers baldwin]

There would naturally be a lot less criticisms if EM had not let the time line slip again.


Ask some of these rabid fans that take it personally that EM is in severe doubt.

Can't really type right now, I am on a religious site telling the people there that there is no god and making fun of them... I wonder why they are so hostile to me?

 

[outsydthebox]

Can't really type right now, I am on a religious site telling the people there that there is no god and making fun of them... I wonder why they are so hostile to me?

LOL, now you've done it...He HAS to come back and say that YOU likened Paul to GOD! I know that wasn't your intent, tho.

 

[outsydthebox]

There would naturally be a lot less criticisms if EM had not let the time line slip again.


Ask some of these rabid fans that take it personally that EM is in severe doubt.

I think YOU are in doubt. When EM goes into production, you LOOSE your PAYCHECK.

 

[Brainmatter]

"When it comes to credibility, practically no one here seems to even have a fundamental grasp of business, let alone any kind of understanding of how and what it takes to build a large complex volume automobile business, which is really much less about actually making the vehicles than it is creating an entirely new driving platform the mass market is not likely to adopt, all of which is practically impossible without massive funding." blah blah blah....

Some of the folks can be a little 'rabid' I suppose. And some of us are fully aware Elio is fighting an uphill battle here. Like almost vertical! But that doesn't mean I am going to root against them whether I have skin in the game or not. When your kids' or neighbors kids football team is losing 28-0 in the 4th quarter do you stop cheering for them? Hmm... bad rhetorical question. Maybe you do.

One thing about this site in my opinion: There is very little false information presented on this site that isn't corrected. There are a ton of opinions. I think everyone here is capable of figuring out the difference between opinion and fact. What some people choose to hear or believe is their prerogative. How they interpret direct quotes from Elio is also up to them. It just seems to me that whenever someone brings up the possible pitfalls here they do it in such a way that really turns people off. Change your approach, you'll get better results. you actually do more harm than good because people just ignore you.
But yeah... it must be difficult for you to express your thoughts to all of those who are so beneath you.
Do you really think you are the only one who understands the risks? Do you really think no one here has weighed the risks except you?

 

[Dustoff]

Brainmatter, Well said.

May I add:
Why would someone with sooooooo much business experience be wasting everyone's time over something that has absolutely nothing to do with them?
Maybe it does.
It may be that when the Elio is a big success they stand to loose big money, or their "employers" do.
Another thought is that they have personal vendettas against Elio and its board members. Maybe they were denied a seat on the board.
All in all, a case of sour grapes.

 

[AriLea]

When it comes to credibility, practically no one here seems to even have a fundamental grasp ...SHILLS by Elio ... when HIGHLY likely it isn't going to happen......Elio needs 200M to launch, they have @55M, period, end

Well, there is a lot here to look at. Calling everyone who is enthusiastic a Shill, kind of reverses the slander. Yet a lot of this (pro or con) would seem to be good points, but it's all poor analysis if it sticks to the past quoted stats given to the public. But frankly, I admit everyone here (on earth) has extremely limited real data. That limited data IS something I'd like EM to correct, yet doing so and changing it later is very problematic when dealing with the public. So maybe just keeping that silent is good for project discipline, but gives you and me FAR too much fuel to feed the arguments, silly or not.
The 200m requirement was actually named on the basis of a possible 225mil production level, and includes buying all the parts up front. The current production expectation that I heard of is now somewhere between 30k and 70k units per year. If you also figure out some 'order now, pay on delivery' contract everything shifts again. I don't think anyone but Elio Motors knows the actual minimum $$ needed to produce a minimal rate that still gives a $7k product. The best guess out there now is 30k units, but like I say it's pure conjecture among the uninformed.
One thing is very true, any of us who puts out money is flying on trust. My trust level is three cars, all in. I AM an enthusiast.
For my part, (as an actual automotive technologist) I've looked very deeply into this since 1980, and I know it's possible to hit a that retail price point(but extremely difficult below $7K in current USD), and I felt I knew that the public would respond. I just couldn't prove either point to naysaying bean counters. Well, Elio has proven beyond doubt there IS interest. So now we're all sitting on the edge of our seats for evidence on the prior point. To claim an actual factual conclusion as to success and intent, either way, is total BS. My best guess is, they have intent, they know what they are doing, and they will succeed. It is only a guess based on what is visible right now.

 

[AriLea]

Can't really type right now, I am on a religious site telling the people there that there is no god and making fun of them... I wonder why they are so hostile to me?

LOL, that is such a cool come back!

 

[whattheelf]

Well, there is a lot here to look at. Calling everyone who is enthusiastic a Shill, kind of reverses the slander. Yet a lot of this (pro or con) would seem to be good points, but it's all poor analysis if it sticks to the past quoted stats given to the public. But frankly, I admit everyone here (on earth) has extremely limited real data. That limited data IS something I'd like EM to correct, yet doing so and changing it later is very problematic when dealing with the public. So maybe just keeping that silent is good for project discipline, but gives you and me FAR too much fuel to feed the arguments, silly or not.
The 200m requirement was actually named on the basis of a possible 225mil production level, and includes buying all the parts up front. The current production expectation that I heard of is now somewhere between 30k and 70k units per year. If you also figure out some 'order now, pay on delivery' contract everything shifts again. I don't think anyone but Elio Motors knows the actual minimum $$ needed to produce a minimal rate that still gives a $7k product. The best guess out there now is 30k units, but like I say it's pure conjecture among the uninformed.
One thing is very true, any of us who puts out money is flying on trust. My trust level is three cars, all in. I AM an enthusiast.
For my part, (as an actual automotive technologist) I've looked very deeply into this since 1980, and I know it's possible to hit a that retail price point(but extremely difficult below $7K in current USD), and I felt I knew that the public would respond. I just couldn't prove either point to naysaying bean counters. Well, Elio has proven beyond doubt there IS interest. So now we're all sitting on the edge of our seats for evidence on the prior point. To claim an actual factual conclusion as to success and intent, either way, is total BS. My best guess is, they have intent, they know what they are doing, and they will succeed. It is only a guess based on what is visible right now.

Even most of the so-called naysayers would still consider themselves to be enthusiasts, and even buyers, including me, should it happen, and I'd like it to happen in a perfect world.

Its easy to like it, want it, but thats where emotions overtake the realities of what has and most importantly; hasn't happened, all this time so far, plus the substantial risks over the next year that are well beyond what happens or not in manufacturing operations.

Now a few of the genuine enthusiasts with some fairly obvious experience from the manufacturing area do demonstrate what are the innate risks to production, and they know there is a big difference between that and mass production, and what economies of scale need to happen, how a design must mature including the process/methodologies/equipment.

However, before anyone can even talk production and all those risks, not even counting the absolute true absurdity of building an entirely new combustion engine that is fraught with a thousand unknowns and what will be a few thousand guaranteed very expensive and changes causing even more major delays, all of which by itself is a death sentence for any privately funded operation, because a public one would have major coffers to pay for those guaranteed mistakes and missteps (why they go public in case people don't know), there is the bigger question about the business in general.

What I do believe, is that EM missed their window of opportunity, this is a vehicle that had a great chance say they were in production launch 5 years ago. The market was wide open at that point for something like this to attract major private investment, meaning the 200M (if not more) to get to production launch and probably 6 months or more beyond that. I have seen estimates by others that estimate that to build a new vehicle from scratch and into the market it takes $1B, at a mininum, thats the barrier to entry.

At this point however, the mass market has been flooded with a plethora of alternative choices, with announcements of choices and serious progress in new technologies being press released practically daily. Even Musk has released his patents this week, is likely collaborating with BMW, and the pace of change going on within the auto industry is fierce, they all know the race is on for future market share, and the transition to alternatives, and its unstoppable now.

The point is this pace of progress and change within the mass market, is enough to stall private investor interest, nomatter how cool the Elio may look, but its coming way too late, and it will be even another year or likely more until the first production units hit the road. PE is not interested in adding yet further risk or substantial delay on ROI from their investment, it scares them to death. So bad timing despite a great design may well be the culprit in the demise of EM, like so many other enterprises that failed to see the window of opportunity when it was red hot.

On top of that you have limited press from Elio, and even if/when it looks so adolescent, unprepared, and over-optimistic, that investors see right through how weak their position has become. However, most early adopters and reservation depositors don't consider such details, they are too caught up in what they want or they simply lack the business acumen to understand this is not going to happen.

As PE has said also, the Elio is an "and" vehicle, saying you keep your SUV. This means they are targeting customers with more dispensable income, to own one, and now with so many choices right now, and SO many more ahead its crazy, the market will be to parsed to support forecasting mass production demand for the Elio. So I am not expecting launch to be nearly fully funded.

Will it mean they won't go to production? I don't know, possibly, they may try to get creative, make concessions, creative partnerships with suppliers if possible, anything to keep the operation afloat, while minimizing burn rate, while praying to the car gods the mass market comes.

By that time however the mass market will have moved on years earlier.

Again, its a business, not about if it can be made, or how cool it is, when you are vying for mass market mindset, the big automakers can simply drop price to not lose market share also on something cool, and can influence politicians to crush EM, similar to how Tesla has been harassed in the past with the non-dealership model.

As for the believers with snarky comments and cute little pictures and such, they have no clue how much they continuously humiliate themselves in replies, clearly sitting around trying to think up something they think will sound clever or provocative, while "saying" they get the risks, and clearly they don't, as so few of them demonstrate almost any level of knowledge on any of concerns and risks, its just embarrassing, and thats the behavior that actually works in reverse in attracting others to blindly "believe".

I'm watching the evolution of all of this, its likely to make great lessons learned content in a future grad course.

 

[Ty]

The Elio, as an "and" vehicle will actually cost me LESS money than NOT getting one. I'll spend less money a year by owning my truck AND and Elio than I would have spent just owning my truck (I can't NOT have the truck as I move quite often and I have a large trailer that I use when I move. Maybe the "and" market isn't very large but I also see a lot of parents looking for a car for their kid to drive to school/college... at least I don't have to worry about a bunch of kids in the car distracting my daughter when she drives...

Your point about the well wishers seeing only the good is a valid one. That goes both ways, of course. There are people who, even with vested interest, only see doom and gloom. For instance - you could say "Elio has picked a team with an incredible amount of experience in the auto industry" or "The people on the board worked for a failed car company." Well, 2/3 of ALL auto industry professionals that were working when GM and Chrysler went under worked for failed companies... It comes down to perception, of course. The hard thing to do is see the very point you are trying to make from the other point of view. Is it possible that Vassallo and Raffin are the best available people for the jobs they are undertaking? Sure. Is it possible they've never done this before? Absolutely. No one has. Is it possible they'll fail? Absolutely. Could they succeed? Of course.

It seems that Elio is making strides in the right direction. There are, of course, parts of the operation that they either won't show yet (like seeing the P5 under construction) because it either undermines public perception or doesn't show favorably... Now, you can't bash them for that... Johnsonville brats doesn't have commercials that show the bad stuff... "Meet Orville... Orville is one of the many Johnsonville pigs. Meet Steven. Steven works at this slaughter house... See that bat with the spike that Steven is holding? Let's see your sausage being made." Nope, not going to happen... in almost any industry. Anyway, when you cast that cloud of doom over the forum, try to look inside and make sure that cloud isn't of your own making.

And that is, of course, just my opinion...