What's Up

[jjtjr]

I use to check in often to see the latest news on the production start date and as time goes by I checked in less frequent, now its about every 3 months then it will go to twice a year, and as the years tick by I still see the same news, no real start date. I guess what I'm saying, if I were to start a car company as others did in the past , cars were be built on a small scale with a limited build crew, and produce 25 to 100 per year, they were built slow at first, but when the company got to be know, they scaled up production.
The big question is why is elio not doing this. It gives us all confidence the company is committed to being a real car company.
Yes, I know with limited numbers the car would cost more then the quoted price, but that's ok with me, it shows me they can do it.
Or as a option, offer it as a kit car, so we can build it ourselves which would be faster.
Whats your thoughts ?

 

[W. WIllie]

It's all about the LACK OF MONEY!

 

[Karg]

I'm beginning to think Elio never had any intention of building cars, except for a few prototypes, just to show the investor "something was happening". They simply sold and marketed an "idea" (A big payday for them, with no commitment)

 

[booboo]

I'm beginning to think Elio never had any intention of building cars, except for a few prototypes, just to show the investor "something was happening". They simply sold and marketed an "idea" (A big payday for them, with no commitment)

Becoming a big deal was Paul Elio's dream. He/They have taken all the steps to that end, except one.
ENOUGH$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

 

[Watashiwah]

Becoming a big deal was Paul Elio's dream. He/They have taken all the steps to that end, except one.
ENOUGH$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Yup. Almost everything that doesn’t end up like you want it to is because somewhere there wasn’t enough money. But few things, particular in business, that succeed are 100 percent funded. Just as nine women can’t make one baby a month, projects build and grow by good management and investment of resources and money, that creates more opportunities, interest, investment, and more money.

Not to belabor this, but ‘not enough money’ is a disingenuous excuse. Paul had ‘enough money’ at certain crossroads to continue. By definition, Paul must have had enough money to continue or else continuing while impossible AND asking for more money would be unconscionable and fraudulent. Paul made poor decisions, spending money on questionable engineering services, not following a publicized plan, not being forthcoming and transparent; the money sources dried up and the money stopped coming in.

That could be summed up as ‘not enough money,’ but it’s not so simple.

 

[Ace]

I use to check in often to see the latest news on the production start date and as time goes by I checked in less frequent, now its about every 3 months then it will go to twice a year, and as the years tick by I still see the same news, no real start date. I guess what I'm saying, if I were to start a car company as others did in the past , cars were be built on a small scale with a limited build crew, and produce 25 to 100 per year, they were built slow at first, but when the company got to be know, they scaled up production.
The big question is why is elio not doing this. It gives us all confidence the company is committed to being a real car company.
Yes, I know with limited numbers the car would cost more then the quoted price, but that's ok with me, it shows me they can do it.
Or as a option, offer it as a kit car, so we can build it ourselves which would be faster.
Whats your thoughts ?

It comes down to the fact it was designed to be built in a large factory, with big equipment, and in big numbers. As designed, the production of the chassis and body parts still takes big equipment. If the chassis was a hand welded tubular chassis and if the body was fiberglass, then maybe you could get it in kit form for $20,000 minus running gear and other donor parts.

 

[3wheelin]

Yup. Almost everything that doesn’t end up like you want it to is because somewhere there wasn’t enough money. But few things, particular in business, that succeed are 100 percent funded. Just as nine women can’t make one baby a month, projects build and grow by good management and investment of resources and money, that creates more opportunities, interest, investment, and more money.

Not to belabor this, but ‘not enough money’ is a disingenuous excuse. Paul had ‘enough money’ at certain crossroads to continue. By definition, Paul must have had enough money to continue or else continuing while impossible AND asking for more money would be unconscionable and fraudulent. Paul made poor decisions, spending money on questionable engineering services, not following a publicized plan, not being forthcoming and transparent; the money sources dried up and the money stopped coming in.

That could be summed up as ‘not enough money,’ but it’s not so simple.

Very well said. And it's unfathomable to even entertain the idea now of a startup wanting to build the ELIO from the ground up, build a brand new engine "specific" to it, plan to mass produce in big numbers and hope to sell and somehow make a profit in an untested market for an unheard off price of slightly over 7K all while needing in my estimation close or over half a billion by now to get things moving. Well, myself included with the rest of the 65K+ reservation holders (I don't know if these numbers are still correct) think PE can pull it off and provided the support for a future American made trike but at present desperately hanging to hope of VCs to come in and save PE's noble cause of an affordable means of transportation.

 

[Rickb]

Yup. Almost everything that doesn’t end up like you want it to is because somewhere there wasn’t enough money. But few things, particular in business, that succeed are 100 percent funded. Just as nine women can’t make one baby a month, projects build and grow by good management and investment of resources and money, that creates more opportunities, interest, investment, and more money.

Not to belabor this, but ‘not enough money’ is a disingenuous excuse. Paul had ‘enough money’ at certain crossroads to continue. By definition, Paul must have had enough money to continue or else continuing while impossible AND asking for more money would be unconscionable and fraudulent. Paul made poor decisions, spending money on questionable engineering services, not following a publicized plan, not being forthcoming and transparent; the money sources dried up and the money stopped coming in.

That could be summed up as ‘not enough money,’ but it’s not so simple.

There was plenty of money to build a validated base model production Elio that would have generated the additional funding to tool the available manufacturing facility and hire the workers.

 

[RSchneider]

Best thing to do is go to the Elio Motors website and look through their Investor Relations page. You'll see that when they first released their financials back in August 2015, the money going out was exceeding the money coming in. Not enough people doing non refundables to keep the company going, thus the next option, an IPO. It looks like to me that sometime in 2015 they came to the realization that what they had been showing and telling everyone since 2009 wasn't going to work (mostly the chassis and body). In 2016 the R&D costs skyrocked which makes sense because they had to design a complete new chassis, body and interior (because they went from tube frame to unibody and composite body to steel). Then the number to get to production went up $64M just because some equipment suppliers want to be paid up front. I would venture to guess they looked at the financials too.

The only way to pay for this new chassis and keep the company going was an IPO since the VC's were nowhere to be found. They did that and then released an all new chassis which for most was a total surprise. They burned through all of their cash in 2016. Thus the reason why they waited until May 2017 was that they didn't want to release the bad news that they were out of money and work came to a halt. Not enough coming in from non refundables, the IPO money was spent and no VC's (which they have been looking for since 2009). Three months later, they announce IPO #2 to raise $100M. Here we are 6 months after that announcement and hoping that those VC's which Elio couldn't find for the last 9 years, will show up today. Top it off, it will take $531M but they are banking on an additional 100K non refundables and make a good profit on the initial batch of cars to reduce that number to $376M.

If you all remember back from 2009 to 2012, Elio went silent for a while but they discovered that crowdfunding was a way to finance the project, thus the reservations started in 2013. In the end, Elio has been trying all avenues to raise money. It's never been enough and there were some bad decisions made in the past that were mostly due to make the company look good at the time but has drown them in debt today.

The only thing that is keeping them going is Stu. He's the hero here because he could easily call in all of that debt that Elio Motors owes, which would finish the company off.

Here's the link for the info on their financials dating back to 2013 (the 2015 reports show 2014 and 2013):
https://ir.eliomotors.com/all-sec-filings

 

[jjtjr]

so from what was all said it looks like the people who gave $1000.00 will have call it a loss with no car.
if that's the case why can't the drawings be made available. for the frame, body and under carriage, there are many engines that will do the job. There are a lot of talented people that are car and motorcycle builders.