by "Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
Published 01/05/2017 at 00:27
by "Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
Published 01/05/2017 at 00:27
Tags: Elio
STARS: 4
Firstly, I ended up taking Little Black Coupe’s suggestion and used some Tuff Stuff. Wowzers that thing cleaned like a boss! Pics later. Thanks LBC!!! :) Now for our main course, Elio’s crap is finally hitting a fan. They’re delaying the car again, this time almost 2 years.
http://710keel.com/could-the-end-of-elio-motors-be-in-sight/?trackback=tsmcl
And simultaneously, they’re also losing their factory.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
I never thought the Elio ever had a chance if the company’s CEO never took is head out of his rear... He never did, and instead doubled and tripled down.
Seriously, he tried to argue “my car is not a car because it doesn’t have 4 wheels, so it shouldn’t have to meet emissions or be crash tested.”
He also tried to argue “my car is not a motorcycle because it has more than 2 wheels, so owners should be exempt from motorcycle endorsements and helmets.”
Ultimately, the feds (ETA, they might: https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201510&RIN=2127-AL15 ) say that the classification of a three-wheeled vehicle will depend on what the vehicle mirrors most. If a three-wheeler is basically just a car minus a wheel, crash tests and emissions. If a three-wheeler is more like a motorcycle, then motorcycle regs. There is no cheating the system and getting neither.
Then, his absurd business plan. He thinks he will be selling 250k+ sold Tesla style a year, starting year 2. Not to mention that without getting the federal loan meant for EVs, he couldn’t produce the car in the first place. Elio also sold “shares” and nonrefundable deposits, when he barely had an operational show car. It’s basically the worst Kickstarter ever.
Maybe he’ll pull a miracle and actually build it, but most likely... No. :(
Don’t get me wrong, I love the car and want it to succeed. We need cheap utilitarian transport...just wish the company wasn’t run by boneheads.
Here’s their stock offering SEC filing... :O
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1531266/000121465915007920/partiiandiii.htm
Here are all their filings, most of them crack pipe dreams; have fun!
http://www.secdatabase.com/CIK/1531266
"sdwarf36" (sdwarf36)
01/05/2017 at 00:58, STARS: 1
Haven’t we been here before?
http://jalopnik.com/murder-transsexuals-and-the-price-is-right-the-story-464820740
"HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles" (hondasfordsvolvo)
01/05/2017 at 01:02, STARS: 1
So basically a cool idea fails because lawmakers can’t wrap their heads around it, or don’t want to. The worst part is this car makes more sense than most EVs but doesn’t get government support because it has a combustion engine.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/05/2017 at 01:32, STARS: 2
Another factor is... in 2008, when Elio started up, I think their concept made a lot more sense than it does today, in 2017.
In 2008, while EVs did exist, popular opinion was rather strongly against them - really, it wasn’t until the Tesla Model S and the Supercharger network that that was fixed. The “hydrogen economy” was well into the future, as well. Vehicle energy efficiency was seen as best achieved by burning smaller amounts of fossil fuels, not by eliminating them entirely.
With that in mind, Elio could blow away even the most efficient hybrids - the Gen 1 Insight, and the Gen 2 Prius - by simply being smaller , even if the low price meant that there wasn’t room for technology in the budget. Not to mention, in 2008, there was a lot of concern that hybrid technology wasn’t cost-effective to own, that batteries would fail left and right, FUD about the environmental impact of batteries, and we had just gone through a redesign of the EPA fuel economy test cycles, to account for hybrids not meeting their claimed numbers with normal drivers. (The rampant battery failures were a thing for the Honda hybrids of the time...) There was huge perceived value in making something that got great MPG without having to be a hybrid.
Also, in 2008, Elio had no competition for highway MPG - the closest you could get was the Gen 1 Insight, and that was quite a ways off (for city MPG, OTOH, the Insight beat it). So, it was competing less against used cars than it is now.
In 2017, the market is far more accepting of hybrids and EVs, for starters. Much of Elio’s high MPG target market has moved onto PHEV and EV products, so their remaining target market consists of Luddites that worship the Geo Metro as the best high MPG car, and see the Mitsubishi Mirage as its spiritual successor. While accessibly priced transportation is important, now, Elio is competing against used cars, with the Nissan Leaf being a real car that you can get for similar prices on the used market, and the Leaf’s more efficient on the highway, while absolutely curbstomping the Elio in the city.
I really don’t think Elio was ever a scam , contrary to some accusations out there - I really think Paul Elio wanted to build this. I’ve wanted to see it come to fruition... but I also think he never really had a viable business model, and the only money I’ve ever spent on anything even remotely Elio-related was on fuel, to drive to an Elio event to sit in P4.
As far as the regulatory model, citation on the feds saying that if it resembles a car with a missing wheel, it has to meet car regulations? I’ve not seen that before, and there’s been plenty of three-wheelers that haven’t had to go through that. And, helmet and license regulations are a state thing, and Elio’s been (fairly successfully, actually) lobbying for those to change for enclosed (or sometimes open) three-wheelers directly.
Myself, I personally would like to see a quadricycle class ala Europe’s for things like this, though. Three-wheelers can make a lot of sense at human-powered scale (where there’s such a power deficit that the reduced rolling and aerodynamic resistance of a three-wheeler compared to a four-wheeler is critical), but at car-like scale, they’re fundamentally a legal loophole, and actually give up safety for the sake of meeting the letter of the law (that fourth wheel improves stability a hell of a lot). I’m also of the opinion that today’s driver’s license standards should be restricted to my quadricycle class, because normal cars present a huge risk to vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, and the like)...
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/05/2017 at 01:41, STARS: 6
More like, because executives plan a pie-in-the-sky business model that requires literally being the #7 best-selling car in the US, right behind the Ford Fusion, to make the economies of scale work.
For a three-wheeler that’s legally a motorcycle, even if they did successfully lobby for many states to add an autocycle class, that is never going to happen . Well, OK, it could happen after America loses WW3, much like Germany’s microcar market after losing WW2, but...
"415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)" (415s30)
01/05/2017 at 01:57, STARS: 1
Well the Aptera was the best of all and someone murdered that one.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/05/2017 at 02:21, STARS: 0
I actually think Edison2 had a more interesting plan (although they’re still actually around I think). Four real seats, four wheels, most of their architecture was really in the front and rear subframes (so their architecture could be adapted to really any powertrain technology - their electric prototype got 245 MPGe on the previous revision (as in the one used from 2007 to 2016, and rather similar to the 2017 version) of the EPA test cycle, and 114 mi of range on a 10.5 kWh battery), and they were actually looking at clever ways to solve the whole crash safety problem with a lightweight car. (tl;dr: Don’t have a flat surface in the direction of travel, so that the car naturally deflects off of nearly any kind of crash, imparting less crash energy to the occupants.)
There might’ve been a need for some regulatory changes or maybe waivers to allow Edison2's approach to crash safety to work, but...
"McMike" (mcmike)
01/05/2017 at 05:15, STARS: 3
Hurry up and get one while you still can.
http://www.eliowear.com/default.asp
"Stapleface" (patrickgruden)
01/05/2017 at 06:58, STARS: 1
I remember vividly the Elio “display” at the NY Auto Show last year. They had a fairly convincing looking model that they were showing off. But they had about the same display space as the guy selling Nu-Finish.
"Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies" (jordanwphillips)
01/05/2017 at 07:45, STARS: 1
I wonder if Elio or Faraday Future will become the next Dale.
"McMike" (mcmike)
01/05/2017 at 08:36, STARS: 1
I thought they may have had a chance to sell some of these. The price, the mileage, the use of motorcycle parking and carpool lanes?
........right up until they started fighting for it to be safe enough for drivers to go helmetless and that they didn’t need a motorcycle endorsement.
Pick one, Elio. You can’t do both.
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
01/05/2017 at 09:05, STARS: 0
Nah, lawmakers did wrap their head around it perfectly fine. The failing is all on Elio for trying to cheat the system. He knows it won’t pass a crash test, so he tried lobbying against that. He knows wearing helmets and getting a motorcycle endorsement would be a burden on buyers, so he lobbied against that.
Eventually he lobbied so much it essentially became him saying “I shouldn’t have to meet any federal requirement for any type of vehicle.”
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
01/05/2017 at 09:19, STARS: 1
As far as the regulatory model, citation on the feds saying that if it resembles a car with a missing wheel, it has to meet car regulations?
Whoops, looks like it’s still just a proposed regulation. There have been no new updates since it was created (funny it was created immediately after Paul lobbied the NHTSA).
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201510&RIN=2127-AL15
Unless they were to move and pass it within the next year and a half, Elio’s car would be either an autocycle or motorcycle in most states, so that’s not as bad as I thought. :)
"Bourbon&JellyBeans" (bourbonandjellybeans)
01/05/2017 at 09:23, STARS: 1
Goodbye Elio, I hardly knew ya.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/05/2017 at 09:40, STARS: 0
Oh, right, I forgot about that.
It’s certainly not good for Elio that the immediate response to their lobbying was to propose that regulation, and would create massive investor uncertainty, though.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/05/2017 at 09:40, STARS: 0
Oh, right, I forgot about that.
It’s certainly not good for Elio that the immediate response to their lobbying was to propose that regulation, and would create massive investor uncertainty, though.
"SidewaysOnDirt still misses Bowie" (sidewaysondirt)
01/05/2017 at 12:29, STARS: 0
their remaining target market consists of Luddites that worship the Geo Metro as the best high MPG car, and see the Mitsubishi Mirage as its spiritual successor
I’m sorry, are you insinuating that they’re not?
"JEM" (jem)
01/05/2017 at 13:44, STARS: 1
DAMN IT.
Well, looks like I’m out $500 then.
I really love the idea of this as a commuter car.
Also, I loved the idea of it getting around regular crash requirements. Not everyone needs/wants a 3000lb compact vehicle to protect their precious toddler.
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
01/05/2017 at 13:54, STARS: 0
I was okay with it skirting crash regs too, so long as companies are honest with what you’re getting and possible consequences of it. I so wouldn’t mind a stripped down, bare bones tiny car that doesn’t have to meet full crash regs.
My problem is Paul kept saying “engineered for 5 star crash safety”, despite fighting against a requirement to do crash testing. It’s like, if you’re going to brag about how safe it is, put your money where your mouth is and legit crash test it.
"TheTurbochargedSquirrel" (thatsquirrel)
01/05/2017 at 15:56, STARS: 1
Not enough strange yet.
"lecrab" (superservaas)
01/07/2017 at 11:04, STARS: 1
I should follow you more, I posted my worries today. Thanks to the kind jalops, I now know about your piece.
http://oppositelock.kinja.com/what-is-happening-at-elio-motors-1790928445
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
01/07/2017 at 14:04, STARS: 1
Aww thanks!!! I mainly write about smart (car) stuff and Transgender topics, but I also write about general car stuff of interest (small cars), the Chicago Auto Show, planes, and tech! :)
"bubblestheturtle" (bubblestheturtle)
01/08/2017 at 11:10, STARS: 0
I would like to see this succeed, but I have always felt that the decision to build their own motor was the real deathnell for this company. But maybe it will be more of a mix of things.