[brucepick]

It's a startup. Product is in development.
At this point it's all expenses and no revenues.
Of course they're in debt.
That's only a bad thing if dollars are the only thing one considers.

Elio's business plan is based on producing hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually. Building them dozens, hundreds or even low thousands, would force the price up to where only the well-heeled could afford one.

Elio said long ago, it's "Go big or go home".
Yeah, they might need to just go home one day, if they don't succeed. But the only way for the project to succeed is to "go big" - and that means laying out many millions before they start seeing money coming in.