Respectfully disagree with you. Car loans are being handed out to folks today which rivals the danger of 2008 when mortgages were given to people that couldn't afford them. People today have bad credit, they want/need a car, and are given a car loan with a huge interest rate and thus monthly payments they can't afford for long.
It's much much more than 25% of reservations for the Elio are all-in... IIRC, it's about 90%. And most of the all-ins are $1k. About 10% are the refundable, folks can correct me if needed.
Not really seeing anything fall apart, per se. And I believe that further delays are inevitable. I'm seeing hints that the target for production may no longer be Sept 2015. EM's Facebook folks are now saying that production will start in 2015, leaving off the '3rd quarter' that they always used to say. I hope those hints that I see are me just imagining things. But at any rate, if delays happen, they will not jeopardize the project, IMO.