The Elio Automatic Transmission

[goofyone]

oh so it's in a vehicle and cold weather testing is being done like other OEM's on a complete vehicle? Lab is only part of equation. Need to test whole vehicle in cold and hot climates.

We know for sure the engine is built and testing in a lab at least as we have seen pictures (These have since been removed as they were not supposed to be released to the public). We also know that the plan is to build about two dozen test vehicles this year which will be driven in all kinds of conditions for full vehicle testing and will eventually include crashing a good number of the vehicles for full crash testing purposes.

 

[raybonz]

Wondering how good this AMT really is? From the article it was jerky which could be messy driving to work with my coffee! Have never driven a jerky automatic and not sure I want to.. Has anyone here driven a car with a jerky AMT?

Ray

 

[DBN477]

So where are they going to send them for cold weather testing, since they missed out on North America's winter?


Even VW did cold weather testing on their high mpg car.
http://www.inautonews.com/volkswagen-xl1-spied-testing-in-cold-weather

 

[goofyone]

So where are they going to send them for cold weather testing, since they missed out on North America's winter?

They will do most of the testing this coming winter and there are plenty of places where winter come early for them to ensure they get the testing information down. Getting lots of road miles on these vehicles is most important for finding bugs and suspension tuning and that will happen later this year. The winter testing is really most important for proper ECU, TCU, and stability control system tuning than for anything else so as long as they get it done before production begins they will be just fine.

 

[DBN477]

Which is just one of the reasons why it will be delayed again. This isn't some little week long testing, get on a laptop and reprogram everything. All kinds of different systems from different manufactures, and getting it to work together. Not as easy as people think. Less than 1 year of testing complete vehicle before production. If the OEM's are testing these systems years before production, what makes Elio think they can get it done faster? When did 2015 Mustang break cover? November 2013. Going into production late 2014. How about 2015 ZO6? Shown January 2014, into production 2015. Initially Mustang will only come out with engines already in the 2014 Mustang before releasing 2.3l ecoboost later. But Elio is going to do all this in less than a year?

 

[goofyone]

Which is just one of the reasons why it will be delayed again. This isn't some little week long testing, get on a laptop and reprogram everything. All kinds of different systems from different manufactures, and getting it to work together. Not as easy as people think. Less than 1 year of testing complete vehicle before production. If the OEM's are testing these systems years before production, what makes Elio think they can get it done faster? When did 2015 Mustang break cover? November 2013. Going into production late 2014. How about 2015 ZO6? Shown January 2014, into production 2015. Initially Mustang will only come out with engines already in the 2014 Mustang before releasing 2.3l ecoboost later. But Elio is going to do all this in less than a year?

When a car is shown has nothing to do with what stage of development it is as prototypes are routinely presented. Amazingly the industry veterans at Elio Motors have also chosen to emulate this industry standard pattern by building and showing off prototype vehicles. Less than a year from pre-production build to final assembly is very common today as most of the design process takes place using computer simulations to save money and the pre-production process is just used for detail tweaking and systems programming which is exactly what Elio Motors is also doing.

Flagship sports cars like the Corvette and Mustang are well known to take longer to develop due to the very specific requirements for these vehicles yet taking the 2015 Mustang example you used if you actually read about the new mustang development you will quickly find out that the first pre-production models were not even completed until May 2013. This gave them only one year before everything had to be ready for the factory to be reconfigured for production this summer. If a high performance model of a much more complex vehicle can be made production ready in this time period I doubt Elio Motors will have a problem with a very simply designed sub-compact vehicle.

 

[Ty]

When a car is shown has nothing to do with what stage of development it is as prototypes are routinely presented. Amazingly the industry veterans at Elio Motors have also chosen to emulate this industry standard pattern by building and showing off prototype vehicles. Less than a year from pre-production build to final assembly is very common today as most of the design process takes place using computer simulations to save money and the pre-production process is just used for detail tweaking and systems programming which is exactly what Elio Motors is also doing.

Flagship sports cars like the Corvette and Mustang are well known to take longer to develop due to the very specific requirements for these vehicles yet taking the 2015 Mustang example you used if you actually read about the new mustang development you will quickly find out that the first pre-production models were not even completed until May 2013. This gave them only one year before everything had to be ready for the factory to be reconfigured for production this summer. If a high performance model of a much more complex vehicle can be made production ready in this time period I doubt Elio Motors will have a problem with a very simply designed sub-compact vehicle.

And, what you didn't say was that those cars carry a lot more expectation than the Elio does. If the Mustang has a couple of misfired in the cold, it'll probably be back at the dealer. I think the Elio will be given a little more leeway... It is more likely to have a squeak in the dash or bounce over potholes but I think we all expect that and it won't take years to test it to "good enough" state. If it runs in the cold and hot and is reasonable, great. As to "working out all the bugs", this isn't exactly the same level of complicated as other vehicles. It will be far easier to meet expectations here.

 

[Lil4X]

Odd problems are found in prototype testing. Example: While developing that big electric drilling machine, our LA plant did a beautiful job of packaging the product to make service access simple . . . except that they never stood it up on end - the way it would hang in the customer's derrick. Most of our engineers and line workers had never visited a drilling operation, so consequently one or two of the large access panels hinged in the wrong direction, making service really difficult because they pivoted UP instead of down. One of the first changes we made on the first "production" model was to hinge those heavy steel panels at the bottom so that they could be opened easily, swung down and then used as work platforms while the machine was hanging 40' in the air. It seems like a small oversight, but inverting those doors made maintenance of the first production units (Ser.# 8-10) much easier.

But that's not unusual. We get used to looking at something in a certain context and become blind to obvious errors. I worked on the development of many products and one of my tasks was to get to know the drilling and maintenance crews (since I was NOT an engineer I could ask stupid questions without jeopardizing my professional credentials) and ask three questions: 1. What do you like?, 2. What do you NOT like?, and What would you change if you could? Answers were sometimes rather foolish, considering the intended mission of the product, but by and large they pointed up problem areas, addressed practical concerns, and in many cases provided an insight to rather simple solutions. I'd come back from a rig call on a new product that might last two days to a week with pictures, video, and a yellow legal tablet or two covered with pencil notes from drillers, roughnecks, even rig electricians and mechanics I'd interviewed over coffee down on the mess deck. In time, even the most brilliant engineers had to recognize the value of this user information. We had a saying, "the product is only going to be as successful as the customer is willing to LET it be". When you make those customers a part of your team, you take advantage of their enthusiasm and address their inputs. If they feel they are being heard and respected, they will make both the product and the company successful. My hat's off to these guys from the North Slope to Abu Dhabi who made their living with those machines and really made the products perform. They may not have had a long string of letters after their names, but they were as much a part of the products' final form as any of us.

The first Elios will likely go through this same revision process once it is released in limited distribution. Running changes will probably be minor, but if they address real-world issues they will make the vehicle a far better product than the engineering and assembly technicians ever would have believed. Not every suggestion is a good one, but somewhere within a user's analysis often a clear bit of wisdom will show itself. It's up to the engineering and manufacturing leadership to review and interpret this constructive criticism and use it to their advantage.

 

[Jerry]

Well, it would be nice to be able to actually drive a car with the auto tranny before deciding on that option. As others have said, the Smartcar implementation is not good. I bought one in 2010 and owned it 6 months before I dumped it on someone else. Shifting was BAD. It would shift into 2nd gear in the middle of a left hand intersection turn and the delay was such that a car behind you would be right on your ass. Scary. That and the fuel economy wasn't very good at all for such a compromise of a car. I bought the new 2012 Focus in May of 2011 when they first came out, it has the double-clutch auto 6 speed that works just fine. I average 35mpg combined and at 60mph on flat ground I get 42mpg (has the louvers that close automatically in the grill area to improve economy). That's better than the Smart ever was. The auto in the Focus gets higher mileage than the manual. If the auto in the Elio gets more mpg and doesn't suffer from the similar issues as the Smart I'll probably go with it. But ultimately I'm treating this vehicle as an enclosed M/C so a manual would be fine (would NEVER own an auto M/C). One other thought, my 86 Chevy Sprint got 47mpg avg and about 53 on the highway. Later model years of the Geo metro never did as well for me, in the high 30's, even though they were FI. I've always whined about why someone can't bring back a Sprint-like vehicle when it had Prius-like economy... Conspiracy theory?

Really looking forward to the initial release of this bike-car

 

[Ty]

Well, it would be nice to be able to actually drive a car with the auto tranny before deciding on that option. As others have said, the Smartcar implementation is not good. I bought one in 2010 and owned it 6 months before I dumped it on someone else. Shifting was BAD. It would shift into 2nd gear in the middle of a left hand intersection turn and the delay was such that a car behind you would be right on your ass. Scary. That and the fuel economy wasn't very good at all for such a compromise of a car. I bought the new 2012 Focus in May of 2011 when they first came out, it has the double-clutch auto 6 speed that works just fine. I average 35mpg combined and at 60mph on flat ground I get 42mpg (has the louvers that close automatically in the grill area to improve economy). That's better than the Smart ever was. The auto in the Focus gets higher mileage than the manual. If the auto in the Elio gets more mpg and doesn't suffer from the similar issues as the Smart I'll probably go with it. But ultimately I'm treating this vehicle as an enclosed M/C so a manual would be fine (would NEVER own an auto M/C). One other thought, my 86 Chevy Sprint got 47mpg avg and about 53 on the highway. Later model years of the Geo metro never did as well for me, in the high 30's, even though they were FI. I've always whined about why someone can't bring back a Sprint-like vehicle when it had Prius-like economy... Conspiracy theory?

Really looking forward to the initial release of this bike-car

Conspiracy theory? Maybe an emissions theory. I don't have any AMT experience but from what you say, if it is that bad, give me a clutch!