WilliamH
Elio Addict
Fair enough. Here's why.
Why ATVM loan expected last September? Because the Elio team mentioned somewhere around the middle of last year that, although they didn't know exactly when, they were on track and hoping to hear an approval by around September. That much I recall clearly.
Last September, I noted, the StartEngine thing popped up, I noticed specifically to produce 25 prototypes. No mention of loan approval, oddly, but an eagle-eyed elioowners poster noted that in the SEC filing there was a mention that the ATVM people had made a requirement that they produce and test full production prototyes before the loan process could continue. Odd, that that happened when we were hoping for loan approval at any moment, and certainly the Elio people were saying that was the case. But instead, they needed immediate funding for prototypes they'd never said they needed before. Production was expected as a next step, not crash prototypes without production. So, conclusion, the DOE people had invented an unexpected step and tossed it at Elio rather than the loan approval.
The Elio team also said that the ATVM people politely requested that we not lobby them for approval, so the team passed that along as a request to us. It implied, and the news from the Elio team seems to reflect this, that the process was not open to the public and that talking openly about it was not productive for them. So, they can't talk about the banana peel the DOE tossed under them.
DOE concerned about ability to raise funds, couple of things. Paul Elio mentioned in one of the many interviews that he had spent a year talking to angel investors (2014-2015) and found that VC people were not interested in a startup with such a long payback period and such low returns. He said that they wanted major cash in months, not years. He said further that it had been, my phrase, a waste of a year, and he'd given up on the VC people.
Another point about investors, my own: Aptera. What happened there was that they brought in an outside manager - a former auto executive - who promptly fired the two founders and designers of the vehicle, and at the point they'd been ready to begin production stopped everything and redesigned the vehicle, wasting a at least a year and producing a bloated mess that popped a door during a public exhibition. There is more, but bottom line is don't let outsiders gain control of your company. Their goals aren't yours.
Paul Elio has stated (I've been told but not heard from his own interviews) that some of the investors that *are* interested want too much control. He's a former executive, and I trust him on that judgement and what it implies. Those he has already I assume he trusts.
Isn't this interesting?
........"The Elio team also said that the ATVM people politely requested that we not lobby them for approval, so the team passed that along as a request to us. It implied, and the news from the Elio team seems to reflect this, that the process was not open to the public and that talking openly about it was not productive for them. So, they can't talk about the banana peel the DOE tossed under them."......
If the mob did this it would be called blackmail and extortion.
When an Executive Branch of the government does it we accept it as business as usual.