What'll this do to Elio?

When I first heard about the Elio, I was excited but told myself that I might buy one when I can walk into a showroom, test drive one and take it home that day. I also started my "Elio Fund" added into my budget. My wierd and non-painful saving rules have banked $8100 since then and I have great confidence that this money will NOT be spent on an Elio. I live 50 miles from the plant and would love to see them succeed.

Sorry, but my opinion is that it was planned to fail while generating money for a few hucksters along the way.

Bruce

So does it go away or does someone come in and get the whole deal at pennies on the dollar.

KyAllroad wrote: How many dreamers (suckers) plunked down deposit money on that fraud?

According to the site 65325 dreamers.... I've considered it but there's something that says wait. what that number doesn't show are how many are ""All In" reservation

Forget the Elio. Get a Monotracer. $75k but it's real. And it comes in a full electric or gas powered configuration.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IigpnNCUFHA

Speaking of hucksters, good old Malcolm Bricklin is flapping his gums again, this time about a $25k EV three wheeler that can be fully market ready within two years, just as soon as 95 visionary dealers each pony up a cool $2M each for the combined vehicle dealership and high end art gallery.

Jeez ... who in their right mind would possibly put any stock in that deutsch sac! He might be the one guy in the "auto biz" that makes Elio seem at least somewhat legit.

In reply to einy:

While the Bricklin SV-1 may have been a flop, Malcolm Bricklin is actually a pretty smart guy. After all, he was the guy that got Subaru into Israel (both getting the Israelis a source of cheap cars at a time when no other OEM would do business with them, and establishing Subaru as one of the highest-selling brands there), as well as getting Subaru a solid foothold in the American market even when Subaru didn't have a car that America would find acceptable.

The Hayride is known source of Louisiana local news. So they are as accurate as any other paper (general idea OK, details may be a little off)

I was hoping I was wrong on this one. Damn it.

I guess I will go and see how the Corbin Motors resurrection is going.

Called it vaporware when it first circulated, seems like I won that bet. Surprised it has stuck around this long.

I would have expected Elio to have bolted with the money by now, but it seems its more the long term milk rather than the smash and grab.

What's interesting about all of these companies- it's not that the product is bad.

It's that the business plan is bad.

My first issue with Elio was they planned on 200k/year sales. Huh? My gut would suggest closer to 50k, or even 20k. Small cars have never been a big thing here in the US. And that seem to be the constant issue with these new companies out there- they think there's this massive market for their cars where the rest of the industry doesn't have it. If there was a market that big, you can count on at least ONE of the car companies to at least try.

My second problem with Elio- that engine. The fact that they though they could DIY develop that is insane. At least from new without any income. Eventually, they could make it. But even Tesla got off the shelf parts to get their first car going. Again, lean on the massive industry that is already in place.

I really don't understand why people are so convinced they can do things better than the rest of the entire industry. This is a massively mature industry, where the product takes a lot of money and effort to make. And the result of that- margins are pretty thin. So to survive, everyone does a really good job making cars really efficiently, and really reliably- as there's SO much competition that you will be swooped up and taken out if you can't deal with it.

Even considering the really big companies- GM, Ford, FCA, PSA, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Subaru, Kia/Huyndai, BMW, VW/Audi.... That's more than computer makers. And computers are far cheaper to make, far more disposable, and have a much longer shelf life. How you think you can do better than any one of those, when all of the rest are ready to pick up tiny little mistakes is really interesting.

Anyone who is surprised at the demise of Elio has not been paying attention to reality. First their whole business model was exposed as optimistic to a laughable extent. Also why ever bother with internal combustion for a commuter vehicle? Commuter vehicles, especially those with that are really not designed for long distance freeway travel are ideal for electric power. A small vehicle like this is even better suited as it's a smaller shape trying to move through the air and less mass as it isn’t' pretending to be a 4-5 seater. Going electric would have allowed off the shelf technology, reduced hundreds of millions of needed production equipment plus hundreds more millions of design, testing and most importantly legislative hurdles. All that could have gone away with electric and proves to me this was never serious. Finally look at the Tata Nano, the cheapest car in the world at $2.4K selling to a market of 1.3 billion people, that's four times the United States and it was still a failure. Despite what people claim I just don't think there is a market for a super cheap ultra-economy car. If there were you wouldn't be able to pick up a 2-3 year old Nissan Leaf or Fiat 500 E for $5K. The car didn't make sense. The power train didn't make sense and most importantly the business plan made Bernie Madoff look like a conservative and honest businessman.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

Adrian the model you describe is similar to the model www.electrameccanica.com is using.

FlightService wrote: The Hayride is known source of Louisiana local news. So they are as accurate as any other paper (general idea OK, details may be a little off) I was hoping I was wrong on this one. Damn it.

Same here. The fact that Tesla went from being the brunt of jokes to actually producing cars gave me hope for the weird little 3-wheeled start up, but this thing has turned out to be complete vaporware.

In reply to alfadriver:

One would argue one of the big car companies did try - Honda with the first Insight. By most accounts a cool car/engineering exercise, but not exactly a commercial success.

Of course, that gives Elio even less of an excuse. "those who fail to remember history..." or something.

Rons wrote: In reply to Adrian_Thompson: Adrian the model you describe is similar to the model www.electrameccanica.com is using.

Here's a link that works Link-e-dink

I know nothing of the company or its business plan, but as I say Electric is certainly the way to go. Big Q. Why will anyone pay $15,500 for a car with less usability than a Leaf or 500E. Setting the max price at $15k there are over 1,000 Nissan Leafs (Leaves? but it's a proper name so I think Leafs) with dozens below 1,000 miles on the clock. It seems pointless. In its favor though, other than electric it seems to have a base price that passes the sanity test unlike the VaporElio claiming a laughable $7.5K. The Renault Twizy has sold less than 20K units globally from 2012 to 2016, or an average of 4K per year with the might and power of an established global brand, selling them at a loss for the equivalent of approx. $9,000 - $9,500. I'm not saying that someone like Gordon Murray or Tesla won’t come out with a practical, affordable vehicle of this type, but I'm seeing nothing that seems remotely practical from anyone so far.

Ian F wrote: In reply to alfadriver: One would argue one of the big car companies did try - Honda with the first Insight. By most accounts a cool car/engineering exercise, but not exactly a commercial success. Of course, that gives Elio even less of an excuse. "those who fail to remember history..." or something.

Car companies have tried multiple times.

The Fiero was a 2 seat commuter car. The CRX was a 2 seat commuter car. Del Sol, Insight, SMART, etc. Combine their annual sales and I bet you don't come close to Elio's goals. Ignoring the small cars out there now- there are a bunch of B sized cars out there. None of which blew the market's doors off. Totally ignoring the Nano, which was cheap and marketed in a market that should have liked cheap cars.

That's what I don't understand in the plan.

While there are probably thousands of people who would buy an Elio, there are hundreds of thousands- perhaps millions, of people who would rather buy a used car instead of an Elio.

alfadriver wrote: What's interesting about all of these companies- it's not that the product is bad. It's that the business plan is bad. My first issue with Elio was they planned on 200k/year sales. Huh? My gut would suggest closer to 50k, or even 20k. Small cars have never been a big thing here in the US.

As per my post. I think you are still wildly optimistic at 20K units per year.

The European market overall is similar but smaller than the US. Averaging around 12 million per year over the last three years compared to 16-17 million here. But they are far far far bigger on smaller cars. A Focus is a family car there and an F150 is a laughably big stupid commercial vehicle. Small cars are big, yet Renault has only sold 20K Twizy's in four years through Europe.

Over here, even in crowded cities parking spaces don't favor tiny cars. You park a Fiat 500 or Leaf in a tiny city lot here and you have acres of room all around to prevent car dings from the full size sedan/van/truck parked next to you. Something like an F150 is physically bigger than 99% of parking spaces in Europe. Forget opening doors, it's longer and wider than the space available. So I don’t see the need for a tiny tiny Elio/electra Meccanica here. The footprint isn't justified by available size. In terms of street width, on and off road parking availability and general infrastructure a sub B class car like the 500 or Leaf is already the equivalent footprint of an Elio / EM / Twizy in a European city. A Smart car still looks small here. Over in Europe a Smart is actually not that small, there are dozens of vehicles with a similar footprint.

I think the final death knell for a tiny commuter box like these in America is Uber and Lyft. Why bother with your city car when you can do away with a car altogether in the city. I think there is absolutely a global market for these tiny commuter cars in the Mega Cities of the world, but America is if not unique, then very very unusual. All the 'old world' cities grew up with less space needed and far greater effort to build infrastructure as they were built, grew and were developed over the last 1,000 years. America grew up over the last 1-200 years where space was cheap, materials were cheap and most importantly technology had made building faster, cheaper and easier so there wasn't as much space constraints. In the developing Nations (I'll include China, even Japan and India etc. in this) they already had big big populations before their economies had the power for massive building and infrastructure so again the space available was small. This country just doesn’t need tiny vehicles like most of the rest of the world.

Trust me, I really like the concept of these little computer pods, but I don’t see anything that is remotely practical YET and I don’t see this country as the market. Add in the threat from ride sharing and autonomous vehicles and the business case is getting harder and harder by the day.

Thanks for the update. I thought this was vapor all along.

Kreb wrote: Another way of looking at it is that it's really hard to be profitable making anything where low price is a primary selling point.

Lose money on every unit, and make it up in volume...

Duke wrote: Lose money on every unit, and make it up in volume...

It's off topic, but that's not as stupid as it appears. There are reasons to do that. The Toyota Prius principle. Sell the early ones at a loss to build brand awareness and market share. Now the general public sees Prius as defining hybrids even though there are better products available in the market place. Or the GM philosophy, sell the car at a loss but make money on the financing or lease deal. Or the Tesla approach. Sell at a loss and rely on government subsidy at both ends of the deal, both in making it and the customer paying for it. Heck, there's even the Elio playbook. lose millions of dollars while making a great living for yourself over five plus years and deliver absolutely nothing in the end. Appearing to lose money can be a great way of making lots and lots of it.

Now back to your regularly scheduled vaporware.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Duke wrote: Lose money on every unit, and make it up in volume...

It's off topic, but that's not as stupid as it appears. There are reasons to do that.

Loss leaders are an effective tool... when they are not your solitary product.

It's back to the old "If you go to jail for stealing money, you didn't steal enough money".

RealMiniParker wrote: Thanks for the update. I thought this was vapor all along.

It's not, I'm going to take over Elio.

Just send me a $100.00 non-refundable deposit and I will send you a pair of exclusive Elio driving socks.

I saw they were looking for another capital infusion a few months back. Really I think they could have made it work with Fords 1L engine or something similar but they decided to reinvent the wheel and design their own. If it ever was a real project, I'd bet a bunch of money that where it went off the rails.

Combine that with spending an ungodly amount of time lobbying for laws for 3 wheeled vehicles and there was a lot of mismanaged money that could have gotten them off the ground.

I'd have absolutely considered one, 5 years ago, if they made it to market.

In reply to NickD:

Briklin might be a bright guy, but he is also a huckster bar none. If you can find a copy at your local library, the book "Yugo - The Rise and Fall if the Worst Car in History" by Jason Vuic gives all the sorid details of his career in the auto import and marketing industry. Pretty entert aining read!!