Misinformed Reviewers

[84mpg]

awesome response EKH…. hats off to you.

 

[Ekh]

Thanks, fellow Elio fans. I haven't checked for a "letter to the editors" link; I will, and if there's a way, I will post this letter -- not that he'd publish it. I just don't like it when someone says "brutally honest" when their selection of facts is slanted, whether through malice or laziness. Grrrr.

If any of you feel compelled to answer bad reporting, feel free to use my letter as you like.

 

[JEBar]

"brutally honest" in expressing his opinion .... there is an age old saying about opinions that seems applicable here .... with some of the internet reporting the writers are said to be compensated by the number of views, comments and such that they generate .... I can't help but wonder if his interest is in generating hits and not in reporting the news

 

[Ekh]

"brutally honest" in expressing his opinion .... there is an age old saying about opinions that seems applicable here .... with some of the internet reporting the writers are said to be compensated by the number of views, comments and such that they generate .... I can't help but wonder if his interest is in generating hits and not in reporting the news

I don't wonder about that at all!

 

[Neal]

He is not reporting facts. He has a lot of the facts wrong. Credibility ruined. He would be better off saying this is an editorial/Op Ed piece instead of trying to pretend it's a fact based report.

 

[Coss]

Thanks, fellow Elio fans. I haven't checked for a "letter to the editors" link; I will, and if there's a way, I will post this letter -- not that he'd publish it. I just don't like it when someone says "brutally honest" when their selection of facts is slanted, whether through malice or laziness. Grrrr.

If any of you feel compelled to answer bad reporting, feel free to use my letter as you like.

I wonder if it would be worth finding out who his boss is and send him a copy of his reply to you, along with the letter you just wrote.
Funny how people change their tone when upper management is getting reports about them.

 

[larryboy]

I wonder if it would be worth finding out who his boss is and send him a copy of his reply to you, along with the letter you just wrote.
Funny how people change their tone when upper management is getting reports about them.

Before you finish dealing with this knuckle head there are a few other areas in which he gets it really wrong. The most egregious is his comparison of the Elio with some other three wheel vehicles. I did not bother to look up all of them but I am familiar with the tuk tuk. Comparing a tuk tuk with an Elio is like comparing a Yugo with a Cadillac. The tuk tuk has a top speed of around 1/3 that of an Elio, no safety equipment whatever, and is air conditioned by having no doors or windows. It's tires are wheelbarrow sized and it is sprung accordingly. It would not be street legal in the US and is not imported here. Probably some, or all, of the other 3 wheelers he mentioned are as inappropriate to compare to the Elio. I am not going to take the time to look them up but some of you guys probably already know the details on them. Good luck in getting in his face. Larry

 

[Ekh]

Before you finish dealing with this knuckle head there are a few other areas in which he gets it really wrong. The most egregious is his comparison of the Elio with some other three wheel vehicles. I did not bother to look up all of them but I am familiar with the tuk tuk. Comparing a tuk tuk with an Elio is like comparing a Yugo with a Cadillac. The tuk tuk has a top speed of around 1/3 that of an Elio, no safety equipment whatever, and is air conditioned by having no doors or windows. It's tires are wheelbarrow sized and it is sprung accordingly. It would not be street legal in the US and is not imported here. Probably some, or all, of the other 3 wheelers he mentioned are as inappropriate to compare to the Elio. I am not going to take the time to look them up but some of you guys probably already know the details on them. Good luck in getting in his face. Larry

Send him a letter about the TukTuk. don't be shy!

 

[WilliamH]

I have sent the following letter to Mr. Torchinsky in response to his letter to me. You may find this useful in dealing with other grossly ill-informed people you may meet.

Mr. Torchinsky:

I appreciate your responding to my letter. Unfortunately, since your whole piece is predicated on the $3500 investment, "fixing it" means rewriting much of the article.

I'd like to respond to several of your assertions, play them against known facts, and see if you still feel they are unbiased evaluations.

Let's start with this assertion: "First, the design itself is both much less new and innovative than most people would think, and, even so, it's still too unusual for most car buyers." How do you know this? 39,351 people seem undeterred by the 3-wheel design. Some people think the car is beautiful, and some think it's ugly -- I think it's both, depending on the angle of view -- but you're claiming a numerical evaluation with zero numbers. In what way is that a "simple evaluation"? "Most" implies surveys, etc -- and you evince no factual basis for your claim.

Next point: Elio has it wrong on the cost of making the car safe, making it more difficult to hit the $6800 target. Right now they are $400 over cost, and the delta is decreasing. They may not make it, but 400/6800 is about a 3% miss -- hardly a deterrent. And they're not done squeezing the nickels,.

Regarding the engine, Elio's rationale for doing their own engine (not just a tweak of the Metro) is very clear: They want the car to deliver on its promised mpg at 65 mph. Existing engines don't develop enough torque for this, and they need longer stroke. (Source: Jerome Vassallo, Elio VP of marketing) Additionally, the Elio engine is very specific for the needs of THIS car. It's light, strong, and cheap to manufacture. Elio's analysis showed they could in fact do it for less than it would cost to buy engines, and that the supply would be more certain. A phone call from you to Elio motors would have given you the same information. There are both technical and financial reasons for doing their own engine. Lastly, they simply want their name on the car. It's a matter of pride. Toyota is not an American product, and the Elio is intended to be, in so far as that is even possible today. Your unwillingness to actually ask informed questions and listen to the answers has led you to write 8 paragraphs with are argumentative but ill-informed. This is not "brutal reality." It's just weak research and heavy opinion.

As for the used car market section of your piece, your logic is flawed, and you have again overstated problems. Do you know of a single used vehicle for $6,800 that comes with a 36-month, 36,000 mile warranty? You are assuming people will prefer driving beaters to work to new cars that cost less money. Do you have any factual basis for this claim? Why would ANYBODY want to buy a used, no-warranty (or scanty warranty) car that gets at best half the mileage, costs more to insure, repair, and operate than the Elio (assuming that 2 seats is OK -- this isn't an SUV or minivan, wrong market altogether). And do your comparable used cars have 5-star safety ratings?

Americans may be skittish, but they're not truly stupid. If you need a single-person or commuter car, one that gets the best mileage of any gas-powered car by far, at a very small price, AND which has a 5-star safety rating, AND which is warranted, AND which can be locally serviced (Pep Boys), that's a value proposition that's hard to beat. Even Fred Flintstone could have figured that one out. So far nearly 40,000 Americans HAVE figured it out, and have made reservations. Used cars are truly not competitive with a new Elio.

Finally, you question whether "a $6800 Elio, with its three wheels, tandem seating, possible motorcycle helmet requirements in many states, and so on, will be able to compete with, say, a $4500 2007 Scion xB?" Once again, lack of research has informed your writing and promoted your bias. The Elio faces helmet requirements in just 4 states ... and 8 more require helmets for drivers under 21. The link below shows you which states. You could have found it by going to "support" (where questions are answered) and entering "helmets" as a search term. Not hard to do -- but you chose the road of lower effort and lower integrity.

http://blog.eliomotors.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1-Elio_HelmetMap_Vblog-300x239.jpg

The following link would have given you not only the map, but an accurate (though optimistic) analysis of where things stand on this matter.

https://eliomotors.zendesk.com/hc/e...ntinues-Legislative-Update-Helmets-10-17-2014

This map is current as of 10/17/2014. Legislatures are reported to be cooperating in defining the Elio as an "autocycle," a three-wheel, enclosed vehicle, and exempting it from helmet laws. You claim that "many" states require a helmet. 4 state do; that is not "many." Eight additional states require helmets only for a small percentage of their drivers, those under 21. Your claim is at best qualified, at worst ill-informed. If you knew these numbers, why didn't you use them? "Many," in the context in which you used it, is plain misleading, another example of bias.

That takes care of most of the points you have made. You have a far ways to go to persuade me that your article is "brutal reality" and "simple evaluation" It may be brutal; but it is not brutally honest. You have ignored inconvenient facts and slanted others. I stand by my original contention that you are a lazy journalist, more eager to sensationalize than to report fairly.
​

I took the time to forward the entire letter to [ mark@boingboing.net ] Mark Frauenfelder, the co founder of Boing Boing.
Don't know what good it will do.

 

[Jim H]

Just read a fairly negative review of the Elio at http://boingboing.net/2015/02/04/40000-people-have-paid-thousa.html where the writer states that over 40,000 people have put down $3,500 on an Elio. Where do people get these "facts"??

The Brian Williams School of Journalism........LOL