Elio Motors Town Hall Meeting With Paul Elio - August 16, 2014

[goofyone]

Have not had much time to read the last few weeks so could someone please tell me who the hell is this Lord Elgin fellow and maybe a picture link to his proposed Elio dash would help me out....thanks in advance.

33 pages so far of discussion on the Lord Elgin:

http://www.elioowners.com/threads/elio-dash-elgin-dash-yes-or-no.803/

 

[Ronald Levesque]

Ya, maybe we need prince Charles or perhaps the Queen mother herself or at least someone from the royal family to help clue us all in, why a American vehicle needs the assistance of Lord Elgin's help in designing anything, a dash, a dashboard, or sir lord Elgin could you please remove that not to dashing looking fellow, Charles from the back seat of my Elio...Why thank you!

 

[AriLea]

Looking at the article, they are definitely getting more optimistic about sales levels. 1000/units a day? Cool. Anyway this is likely max level planning, off the cuff.

So, more off the cuff calcs;
Anyway, going with what was said, at three shifts 100% capacity, that figures around 2150 units/day possible at max plant capacity. (they can always rent more space too) In ten years that could supply, (7day week?) 7.85million vehicles.

There are 200million drivers in the US. Each one is a potential sale. If eventually just 1% drive an Elio daily, that's 2million eventual sales. At 500 per day, 182,500per year, it would take 4000 days (11years) to supply all drivers. At some point, 10year average replacement (guestimate) starts to kick in, 200k units each year. EM would not be able to keep up at 500units/day for both new and returning drivers(then add fleet sales). I have no idea what used Elio's would do to total count of drivers. Would anyone prefer to wait 5years for their first Elio?

We're likely to see well over 75k reservations if they keep that open for all of next year. (When do we see market saturation? unknown) I would guess, EM likely projects an estimate that there are x first year buyers out there for each pre-reservation. I think like 10 to 1. That gives 750k potential buyers in the first year.

So those calculations indicate over 250units per day is a shoe-in, 500units likely, and more could happen. It all depends on the percentage of drivers that want an Elio.

 

[Ty]

Looking at the article, they are definitely getting more optimistic about sales levels. 1000/units a day? Cool. Anyway this is likely max level planning, off the cuff.

So, more off the cuff calcs;
Anyway, going with what was said, at three shifts 100% capacity, that figures around 2150 units/day possible at max plant capacity. (they can always rent more space too) In ten years that could supply, (7day week?) 7.85million vehicles.

There are 200million drivers in the US. Each one is a potential sale. If eventually just 1% drive an Elio daily, that's 2million eventual sales. At 500 per day, 182,500per year, it would take 4000 days (11years) to supply all drivers. At some point, 10year average replacement (guestimate) starts to kick in, 200k units each year. EM would not be able to keep up at 500units/day for both new and returning drivers(then add fleet sales). I have no idea what used Elio's would do to total count of drivers. Would anyone prefer to wait 5years for their first Elio?

We're likely to see well over 75k reservations if they keep that open for all of next year. (When do we see market saturation? unknown) I would guess, EM likely projects an estimate that there are x first year buyers out there for each pre-reservation. I think like 10 to 1. That gives 750k potential buyers in the first year.

So those calculations indicate over 250units per day is a shoe-in, 500units likely, and more could happen. It all depends on the percentage of drivers that want an Elio.

To build 2150 per day off of one line would mean that each operation could only take up to 40 seconds. That would surpass GM's capabililties by 26%. Now, I'm not saying it CAN'T be done but I AM saying it is VERY unrealistic to expect a new company to be able to engineer a vehicle that is so simple to put together that every single station along the line takes less than 40 seconds. Sure, if you had a difficult station, you could double it... Each person or crew would assemble every OTHER vehicle as it came down the line but that gets very inefficient very fast.
Most likely, Elio will run just under GM's maximum speed of one vehicle per 54 seconds. Elio could have room to run a second line in parallel with the first one but that seems unlikely. It is more likely that Elio will eventually run 2 line shifts of 8 hours each, producing one Elio per 54 seconds to get to 1,066 per day and then use the 3rd shift to perform line maintenance, restock, and shipping catch-up. There will be line shut-downs, slowdowns, and problems but Elio could use part of the 3rd shift to make up for small delays.

To recap - Yes, I'm an industrial engineer and yes, I worked at that exact plant for GM and yes, I could be wrong.

 

[AriLea]

To build 2150 per day off of one line would mean that each operation could only take up to 40 seconds. That would surpass GM's capabililties by 26%.

Anyway, you'll have to agree, they are a lot more optimistic, and they seem to have good reason.
I think every one will look like a hero if the first year gets up to 60,000 units.

 

[goofyone]

Looking at the article, they are definitely getting more optimistic about sales levels. 1000/units a day? Cool. Anyway this is likely max level planning, off the cuff.

So, more off the cuff calcs;
Anyway, going with what was said, at three shifts 100% capacity, that figures around 2150 units/day possible at max plant capacity. (they can always rent more space too) In ten years that could supply, (7day week?) 7.85million vehicles.

There are 200million drivers in the US. Each one is a potential sale. If eventually just 1% drive an Elio daily, that's 2million eventual sales. At 500 per day, 182,500per year, it would take 4000 days (11years) to supply all drivers. At some point, 10year average replacement (guestimate) starts to kick in, 200k units each year. EM would not be able to keep up at 500units/day for both new and returning drivers(then add fleet sales). I have no idea what used Elio's would do to total count of drivers. Would anyone prefer to wait 5years for their first Elio?

We're likely to see well over 75k reservations if they keep that open for all of next year. (When do we see market saturation? unknown) I would guess, EM likely projects an estimate that there are x first year buyers out there for each pre-reservation. I think like 10 to 1. That gives 750k potential buyers in the first year.

So those calculations indicate over 250units per day is a shoe-in, 500units likely, and more could happen. It all depends on the percentage of drivers that want an Elio.

To build 2150 per day off of one line would mean that each operation could only take up to 40 seconds. That would surpass GM's capabililties by 26%. Now, I'm not saying it CAN'T be done but I AM saying it is VERY unrealistic to expect a new company to be able to engineer a vehicle that is so simple to put together that every single station along the line takes less than 40 seconds. Sure, if you had a difficult station, you could double it... Each person or crew would assemble every OTHER vehicle as it came down the line but that gets very inefficient very fast.
Most likely, Elio will run just under GM's maximum speed of one vehicle per 54 seconds. Elio could have room to run a second line in parallel with the first one but that seems unlikely. It is more likely that Elio will eventually run 2 line shifts of 8 hours each, producing one Elio per 54 seconds to get to 1,066 per day and then use the 3rd shift to perform line maintenance, restock, and shipping catch-up. There will be line shut-downs, slowdowns, and problems but Elio could use part of the 3rd shift to make up for small delays.

To recap - Yes, I'm an industrial engineer and yes, I worked at that exact plant for GM and yes, I could be wrong.

Anyway, you'll have to agree, they are a lot more optimistic, and they seem to have good reason.
I think every one will look like a hero if the first year gets up to 60,000 units.

I don't know how I missed this conversation however Ty is right on the money and Elio Motors is apparently even accounting for some time loss in their numbers which from Ty's info appear to be very possible. From the Town Hall meeting, as well as other times this was mentioned, we know that Paul Elio, and other EM folks, have said two shifts working five days a week producing 500 vehicles per shift. This is 1,000 total per day times 250 work days per year equals the 250,000 thousand Elio per year number they have said all along.

If you run the numbers you will find that if Elio Motors also used the same 54 second station timing they could produced 500 vehicles in only 7.5 hours. This tells us that 500 vehicles per shift is not an unrealistic production number at all especially considering that each and every vehicle will be identical other than paint color and choice of transmission.

 

[AriLea]

If you run the numbers you will find that if Elio Motors also used the same 54 second station timing they could produced 500 vehicles in only 7.5 hours. This tells us that 500 vehicles per shift is not an unrealistic production number at all especially considering that each and every vehicle will be identical other than paint color and choice of transmission.

I do find the numbers fascinating. Imagine, if just 1% of all drivers is the marketing -saturation- level, i.e. every driver who wants one, at 200m drivers, that's 1 million Elios in the USA. How long does it take to supply those at 250k? 4Years. And then replacements start to affect the counts.

If no competitors show up, and the cost stays the same, I suspect it's more like 10%. Will 60k or even 250k be enough? So I was calculating, if they wanted to expand to the max at the current plant, how big could that be?

The supposition here is that the Elio is a reliable vehicle with no serious caveats.

Does anyone know, of the 200m drivers, how many actually drive to work and school daily, over 30mi?

 

[aknaten]

Even the Apple Watch has analog face as it's default setting.

http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch/

 

[zelio]

Even the Apple Watch has analog face as it's default setting.

http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch/

I have not worn a watch in decades but would be tempted with the digital one with a watch band that matches my Elio. Z

 

[Dooltd]

Here is a photo of a Lord Elgin watch which seems to have inspired Paul's instrument panel design. I believe they were popular in the forties or fifties.