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

[Frank Lee]

Journalists and others are sometimes greatly speed-governed in test cars so that chances of totalling it are lower. Just like a valet switch.

[Xist]

When GreenHornet mentioned R.Q. Riley in http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post463224 I wondered what they had done lately, and saw their XR3 plug-in hybrid. I went from the 128 MPG Centurion to the 125 MPG three-wheeled XR3, although that is without the hybrid system. It seemed curious that you would remove a wheel, taper it greatly, and lose 3 MPG. I read:

Figure about 500 - 650 hours of build time[...] Much of the time is in building the body. The simple chassis goes quickly. Construction costs are also variable [...]
At the upper end, a duplicate of our Li-Ion-powered prototype will top $25,000. If you switch to lead-acid batteries, you can save as much as $5,000, but you'll have to forego the performance of advanced batteries. At the bottom end of the scale, a diesel-only vehicle capable of achieving 125-mpg can be built for less than $10,000.

Mass-producing something should make it less expensive than something made individually, right? However, if you do something yourself, then you "save money," right?

If it costs almost ten thousand dollars to make a three-wheeler by yourself, $6,800 seems impossible.

So, 500-650 hours. If you work on it for forty hours a week, it would take 12.5-16.25 weeks. If you were paid the minimum wage for that amount of time, in Arizona, you would earn $8.05 hourly, 322 dollars per week, and earn $4,025-$5,235.5 for labor on one tadpole vehicle.

Well, I have nothing else to do...

[niky]

Economies of scale bring down the individual cost of parts.

Assembly line production lessens the man-hours required for each individual unit, because a workman doing a single repetitive build task will be more efficient than one that has to switch between a hundred different tasks.

And, of course, mass production allows for parts that would otherwise need hand-fabrication to be stamped out en masse.

[freebeard]

As well, assembling the parts into a complete vehicle and shipping it is less costly than shipping the individual parts un-assembled and stocking them until they're needed. A car built from replacement parts would cost about 5x as much.

I just noticed that car's shadow. The running boards were ventilated as well. Drag racing in the 1950s was about seeing what worked and what didn't.

[Frank Lee]

Could have been more about lightening than aero.

[NeilBlanchard]

Elio will be showing their new 0.9L engine February 6th, at the IAV offices in Michigan:

Recharge Wrap-up: Elio Motors to debut all-new engine, AeroVironment introduces TurboDock charger

[Christopher Jordan]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Elio will be showing their new 0.9L engine February 6th

Hopefully it will still run in mid 2016 without being an afterthought of an old 2015 design that did not make it. When you come right down to it; it seems to me that the defunct Zap PU lasted a few years - and Elio???

[NeilBlanchard]

Yep, the delay from mid-2015 is to 2016:

Elio Production Delayed Again, This Time Until "Mid 2016" - Gas 2

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Yep, the delay from mid-2015 is to 2016:

Elio Production Delayed Again, This Time Until "Mid 2016" - Gas 2

2016 IF he/they are able to get another $250+ Million soon enough to even make that 2016 time line ... News flash , they will not get any where near that much $ anywhere near fast enough to make even the 2016 date.

Even if Bill Gates or someone like him wrote them the $250 Million check tomorrow ... it would still take many months after that to finish all the tooling / training / etc .. even before they could start production.

If they give up on the large economies of scale start out year one .. and just start building ~100 cars a year (like Tesla started as) than they might have a chance for a good future to scale up over time... If not .. and it looks like the CEO is dead set against it ... they are walked dead, will never be more than Hype... EEStor anyone?

[ME_Andy]

Elio recently sent out an email regarding their funding situation. I'm sure many of you have heard that the car's release has been pushed back til 2016. The email basically clarifies that funding is the one cog that is holding the trike back from production, and I'm sure the $185M Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan is the biggest chunk of that.

Anyway, I did some wikipedia research into the history of the ATVM loan, and frankly what I found pissed me off. Aptera went out of business after waiting 2 years for the loan approval. Bright Automotive went out of business after waiting FOUR years to hear back regarding loan approval.

Meanwhile, Ford was rapidly approved for $5.9 BILLION.

Yes, I believe it's a political game. But I also believe that the Elio is far more deserving of a "small" $185M loan than almost any other vehicle out there.

Check out the wikipedia page yourself:
Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And send an email to the ATVM loan program of the DOE if you would like your voice to be heard:
atvmloan@hq.doe.gov