Elio Motors, The Next Big Thing?!!...

[bhtooefr]

If it's 800 pounds, that means something's really wrong - it should be getting better city mileage. And, unless aero is absolutely atrocious (which, it wouldn't get 84 mpg if it were), or the engine is a torqueless wonder with stupid long gearing, 0-60 should be a lot better with 70 hp.

[NeilBlanchard]

The combined MPG they have mention is 60MPG and the highway is 84MPG. That means the city is at least 40 and probably 45-50MPG. That is awesome mileage, and I think it is about all we could expect from an ICE vehicle without Stop/Start. It makes it sound like 800 pounds (or so) is quite believable.

And the aerodynamics is only decent, but not great; saved by the small frontal area. I'm guessing that the Cd is >0.35 and could be 0.40-0.45?

For what it's worth, my motorcycle was a BMW K75S - 0.750L 3cylinder ~75HP fuel injected water cooled 5 speed shaft drive that weighed ~550pounds and carried two adults and luggage comfortably.

The best mileage I *ever* got was ~55MPG, and I probably averaged about 40MPG.

I want to the draw attention to a comparison between the Elio (Trikke?) and the Trev:

Both are reverse trike (aka tadpoles) that carry two people in tandem, and they both weigh about 800 pounds (actually 772 for the Trev and an guesstimate/rumor on the Elio). The aerodynamics (strongly?) the Trev with it's smooth tapering shape. They both even have the single door on the left side.

But they have polar opposite drivetrains. The Trev has a 21kW DC brushed motor and swingarm (from a Vectrix scooter) powering the rear wheel and the Elio has a 1L 3 cylinder engine powering the front wheels. The Trev has a 13kWh lithium pack and the Elio has an 8+ gallon gas tank.

The Trev has a range of about 150 miles, and consumes <100Wh/mile at 50-55MPH - which translates to 337MPGe.

The Elio has a range of ~672 miles, and gets 84MPG at say 55MPH.

[doclees]

Using the 0-60 calculator at 800 lbs it should be doing 5.6 to 6 secs. A far cry from the claimed 9.6. Where did the 800 lbs number come from. I missed it.

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by doclees

Where did the 800 lbs number come from. I missed it.

It came from their FaceBook page, half way down one of their threads.

At 800 pounds it should be plenty light to swap an electric drive train in to and be able to cost less then $10,000 with a nice range of 100+ miles, cheap enough buy new that I suspect it will become popular to do.

[doclees]

OK if it is in the 800 lb range why doesn't the 0-60 calculations add up? What's missing?

[Ryland]

What kind of 0-60 time do you need? they have only built one so far, so it makes sense that they are going to keep all of their figures conservative.
Looking at 0-60 times of other vehicles, 9.6 seconds is pretty reasonable, lots of slower vehicles out there.

[doclees]

Originally Posted by Ryland

What kind of 0-60 time do you need? they have only built one so far, so it makes sense that they are going to keep all of their figures conservative.
Looking at 0-60 times of other vehicles, 9.6 seconds is pretty reasonable, lots of slower vehicles out there.

3.5 sec 0-60 works for me. The problem is, assuming the 0-60 calculator is close to correct , the numbers don't match. Also lit's c1 is 800 lbs doing 0-60 under 6.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The combined MPG they have mention is 60MPG and the highway is 84MPG. That means the city is at least 40 and probably 45-50MPG. That is awesome mileage, and I think it is about all we could expect from an ICE vehicle without Stop/Start. It makes it sound like 800 pounds (or so) is quite believable.

The Elio has a range of ~672 miles, and gets 84MPG at say 55MPH.

The odd part of this is my subaru 360 which weighs in at 900lbs could get an honest 60mpg+ chugging along at 45-50mph and the city mileage in the winter was around 42mpg.

I am uncertain why the city mileage is so low for this trike, if my subaru can get 40's city real world but has a carb'd small gas 2 cycle engine there must be a lot of low hanging fruit available for this 800lb trike with a modern 4 cycle. Perhaps they need to beg honda for a lean burn 1ltr motor

I am guessing it points to the fact that it is overpowered, This means my 70's non-computer controlled 2 cycle rig with no a/f control whatsoever does a better job on the g/hp in the city at least, must be the 25hp instead of 70hp going on.

[NeilBlanchard]

The Lit C1 is electric, and the Elio is gasoline - they won't accelerate at the same rate; as the electric motor has far more torque and no shifting.

We do not know the City mileage for the Elio, and we need real world confirmation of the Combined and the Highway.

[Ryland]

There is also no way of knowing how they tested the 0-60 times, one of the web sites that I was looking at that listed off 0-60 times pointed out that they were all done by trained drivers on closed tracks.

I've seen a number of different 0-60 times for vehicles like the Tesla model-s, varying by up to 2 seconds, because they had different people driving in different situations.