5/29/2014 Car Talk - Crowd Pleaser: The $6,800, 84-mpg Elio Is Getting Closer

[JNR]

Saw this on fb and reference in a forum thread today, so here it is. A few key quotes, as determined by me, are below the link to this article.

http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/crowd-pleaser-6800-84-mpg-elio-getting-closer

"Jerome Vassallo, Elio’s ex-VW vice president of sales, told me that now exists as a cast block. Elio hopes to have the 900-cc three-cylinder, 55-horsepower unit from IAV in place at the company’s Detroit engineering headquarters by the end of the summer"

and

"Vassallo assures that the $6,800 price target is still in place"

and


"Vassallo told me that delays were due to money issues and getting the engine ready, but Elio is now “fully funded” with $55 million through the engineering phase. The full goal to make it to launch is $200 million." (JNR comment: this has been edited because earlier mistake in the article was corrected.)

and

"Elio with export models (and possible diesel and electric versions to come) would want to be building 250,000 a year, Vassallo said. But this is all down the road. Getting the car on the assembly line is the big hurdle now."

(JNR comment, glad to see this, I've mentioned a few times that the 250k # is worldwide, which, IMHO is more realistic long term goal, regardless of the what the '08-'09 business plan may have been)

 

[Kuda]

SnippedJNR comment, glad to see this, I've mentioned a few times that the 250k # is worldwide, which, IMHO is more realistic long term goal, regardless of the what the '08-'09 business plan may have been)

Good stuff JNR, thanks for sharing. As we've noted before, Elio has benefited from the learning curves of their predecessors, Aptera, Fisker, even Tesla, etc. They've been refining their strategy & business plan accordingly to best suit the financial climate while keeping a careful eye to the end game, i.e. initial production. This fall will tell all of us faithful a great deal................. GO ELIO!

 

[Neal]

Good find

 

[Elynde]

Updated information on this article, per the Elio Motors Facebook page:

Elio Motors: Hey John, we responded to your other comment. We are in no way trying to "fib." There was a mistake in the article that you're linking to. Here's a copy of the response we gave on your other post...

Jim Motavalli of CarTalk wrote an excellent blog yesterday that captured some of the progress we are making and the overall excitement that people feel for Elio Motors. We did need to clarify one thing, however, as we might have been unclear with Jim about where we are in our fundraising efforts.

Here are the facts:

Fundraising is going really well and we are quite pleased with where we are today, but we are not funded to production as the article states. We have $55 million to date and we are talking to additional investors to raise another $200 million to get us to production. There is a great deal of interest and enthusiasm for Elio Motors and we are optimistic about where we are heading.

 

[olddog1946]

Talk em up fellas, the sooner they get the coin the sooner we'll get our Elio's.

 

[Kuda]

Talk em up fellas, the sooner they get the coin the sooner we'll get our Elio's.

They don't need Jim Dandy, they need Warren Buffett!

 

[JNR]

Updated information on this article, per the Elio Motors Facebook page:

Elio Motors: Hey John, we responded to your other comment. We are in no way trying to "fib." There was a mistake in the article that you're linking to. Here's a copy of the response we gave on your other post...

Jim Motavalli of CarTalk wrote an excellent blog yesterday that captured some of the progress we are making and the overall excitement that people feel for Elio Motors. We did need to clarify one thing, however, as we might have been unclear with Jim about where we are in our fundraising efforts.

Here are the facts:

Fundraising is going really well and we are quite pleased with where we are today, but we are not funded to production as the article states. We have $55 million to date and we are talking to additional investors to raise another $200 million to get us to production. There is a great deal of interest and enthusiasm for Elio Motors and we are optimistic about where we are heading.

Elynde,

Thanks for the notification, I have edited the original post to reflect the updated correction in the linked article.

 

[goofyone]

"Vassallo told me that delays were due to money issues and getting the engine ready, but Elio is now “fully funded” with $55 million through the engineering phase. The full goal to make it to launch is $200 million." (JNR comment: this has been edited because earlier mistake in the article was corrected.)

This revision makes makes more sense and to me is really great news. Securing funding to complete the vehicle engineering is a huge step. Elio Motors can always continue working on finding funding sources to enter production however it should be much easier to find investors for a fully engineered vehicle, with production facility lined up, than for a concept or prototype.

 

[Kuda]

This revision makes makes more sense and to me is really great news. Securing funding to complete the vehicle engineering is a huge step. Elio Motors can always continue working on finding funding sources to enter production however it should be much easier to find investors for a fully engineered vehicle, with production facility lined up, than for a concept or prototype.

I agree that it is positive & argues well for fulfilling milestones that are certainly part of any large funding package..............

 

[Neal]

Updated information on this article, per the Elio Motors Facebook page:

Elio Motors: Hey John, we responded to your other comment. We are in no way trying to "fib." There was a mistake in the article that you're linking to. Here's a copy of the response we gave on your other post...

Jim Motavalli of CarTalk wrote an excellent blog yesterday that captured some of the progress we are making and the overall excitement that people feel for Elio Motors. We did need to clarify one thing, however, as we might have been unclear with Jim about where we are in our fundraising efforts.

Here are the facts:

Fundraising is going really well and we are quite pleased with where we are today, but we are not funded to production as the article states. We have $55 million to date and we are talking to additional investors to raise another $200 million to get us to production. There is a great deal of interest and enthusiasm for Elio Motors and we are optimistic about where we are heading.

That is encouraging. For a private company, that has zero obligation to share their financials with us, takes the time to do just that and to clear up what was misunderstood by the writter. I appreciate the transparency.