Financing Elio Motors Development And Production

[Kuda]

Snipped: Its more a realistic persective on Elio, Thats the safe and honest way to approach this product. Keep the faith, but keep your money.

Your skepticism is well placed & the folks who are early adopters of this concept aren't naive but are willing to take a risk to help Elio prove
that there is real interest in this transportation alternative model. Look at the people that are involved. Look at how they've reasoned out
their approach. Will it take serious money to make Elio a reality? Absolutely. Musk,Jobs,Gates,Branson, faced hurdles also but persisted &
ultimately succeed. Who are we to say that Elio will fail. 17K reservations & continuing to grow. The timing is ripe for a "Folks Wagon"
for the 21 century. Elio doesn't rely on costly R&D & massive bureaucratic infrastructure to make it's vehicle. It is using existing equipment
that is already amortized & bought out of GM's bankruptcy, etc,etc. These guys have faced your arguments more than once since 2008
& their still alive & moving forward. You may be proved right in a year or so, but until they fold their tent I will continue to support them
in whatever way I can, starting by putting my money where my belief lies.

 

[jetpack54]

I think most of us have already had our own little memorial for our deposits. It's all we can do and we hope for the best.

I HESITANTLY agree....hope for the best!

 

[jetpack54]

Your skepticism is well placed & the folks who are early adopters of this concept aren't naive but are willing to take a risk to help Elio prove
that there is real interest in this transportation alternative model. Look at the people that are involved. Look at how they've reasoned out
their approach. Will it take serious money to make Elio a reality? Absolutely. Musk,Jobs,Gates,Branson, faced hurdles also but persisted &
ultimately succeed. Who are we to say that Elio will fail. 17K reservations & continuing to grow. The timing is ripe for a "Folks Wagon"
for the 21 century. Elio doesn't rely on costly R&D & massive bureaucratic infrastructure to make it's vehicle. It is using existing equipment
that is already amortized & bought out of GM's bankruptcy, etc,etc. These guys have faced your arguments more than once since 2008
& their still alive & moving forward. You may be proved right in a year or so, but until they fold their tent I will continue to support them
in whatever way I can, starting by putting my money where my belief lies.

5 star reply!

 

[jetpack54]

Yet with All your amazing knowledge and Infinite wisdom creating companies and making fortunes you find nothing better to do with your time other than trolling Elio websites? Thank you very much for sharing your amazing brain and financial guidance with us. Please feel free to move on and share your wisdom elsewhere. Did someone leave the forum door open again?? You KNOW Elio is starting to gain speed and create waves when Everyone feels the need to pile on to the negative train to freeze progress. Try the Mac vs PC debate channel, or the Apple vs Samsung forum. Plenty of people fighting over there about what these Billion dollar companies should or shouldn't do. Have fun and thanks for stopping by.

5 star reply again!

 

[jetpack54]

I love the idea of the Elio, the design is really well refined for what it is, its the kind of thing as a kid I would dream to own someday. The problem is 200 million only gets you to your side of the 20 yard line, and in no way could such complicated initiative be achieved through crowd funding. Any startup vehicle company has to be extremely well capitalized, as there are significant upfront supply chain and operations costs involved, to the tune of nearly 1B, in order to reach an economies of scale formula that could price a vehicle for just $7K. The fly in the ointment here is that to justify the infrastructure/investment, there has to be significant and continued demand, and a bonafide level of confidence on return on investment, neither of which Elio will be able to acquire initially, let alone ongoing and growing, the vehicle is in too much of a niche, and that niche overlaps considerably with other low cost transportation alternatives, ie: motorcycles and other micro cars, and those coming shortly. As a very experienced engineer and industrial designer, within world class volume manufacturing of well known consumer products, after my assessment of their business model and with scant details on their fulfillment process, I have nearly zero confidence this company has legs beyond maybe producing a maximum of 1000 units before reaching an unsustainable cash burn due to exhausted cash flow. Now, that first lot will cost them 2-3X more than the selling price since the factory is significantly incapable of automating itself in time to see any profit whatsoever. So what we have here is a product, that we all love the idea of, that however will eventually crash and burn. Big car companies could bring a vehicle like this to market fairly readily, but they however are in the position of writing off hundreds of millions of dollars of loss, something a small startup company simply cannot do. As its a childhood dream to see something like this happen, maybe someone with the same dream, but with say 700M+ of available funds, may just swoop in at some point to help make it happen, but even then, this vehicle will never see significant sustainable demand, unfortunately. Money is far better spent on the many variants of electric vehicles that will be out in the next few years while the Elio struggles to squeak out the door, and those electrics will have a place to bring it to for service, whereas with the Elio, you will need to be fully capable of doing your own work.

Sorry to burst your bubble whattheelf but electric car is NOT the only choice to save money! Big car companies are on alert because they know they're looking at a very viable concept, it even looks pretty for crying out loud! If this ELIO makes it to production, they need to follow suit just to have their "share" of this new enclosed reverse trike market! Who know what the future holds for EM but I'll tell you this much, I think they have more cards in their sleeves so counting them out is not an option in my book!

 

[jetpack54]

Its more a realistic persective on Elio, for a reason. I want an Elio, I really do, I want to believe, but because my background and experience, being a part of more than few successful and unsuccessful startups, means its not possible to believe, just hope, even it thats unrealistic. The reason I posted what I did is to help prevent people from getting burned on deposits, and that includes the so-called refundable deposits, because few people understand what happens to your money once a company is no more. Elio is also not going to fail because of not having enough deposits, they are a fraction of a fraction of what this company needs to get off the ground. I do not want to see people earning hard earned cash get taken thats all. If the car comes out, and you can go down and get one there and then, then go buy one like I will, but do yourself a favor and do not send in any money until this vehicle is reaches mass production release, and you can physically go and get one. Thats the safe and honest way to approach this product. Keep the faith, but keep your money.

That's fair statement again. That said, you realize of course that we're not a bunch of dummies here that just giving money away... I want to speak for myself only and that I gave my non refundable deposit "I believe", and if you're smart enough, then you know that's how the Edisons and the Fords started out, they believe "it can be done" ! It's really that simple.

 

[whattheelf]

Yet with All your amazing knowledge and Infinite wisdom creating companies and making fortunes you find nothing better to do with your time other than trolling Elio websites? Thank you very much for sharing your amazing brain and financial guidance with us. Please feel free to move on and share your wisdom elsewhere. Did someone leave the forum door open again?? You KNOW Elio is starting to gain speed and create waves when Everyone feels the need to pile on to the negative train to freeze progress. Try the Mac vs PC debate channel, or the Apple vs Samsung forum. Plenty of people fighting over there about what these Billion dollar companies should or shouldn't do. Have fun and thanks for stopping by.

Your welcome. Sorry for bursting your fantasy, but just sharing insight on what I've observed and done, and done again. It won't matter who says what about Elio, and you'll find that actually most of us love the concept, but those of us that have real experience know what it takes to launch a product of this magnitude, and then keep it running, and this company has simply not executed in any number or critical areas. Don't take my word for it if you don't like to, read other expert's informed opinions on this company outside of this forum, there are plenty to read that are versant in why this is not going to pan out, don't kid yourself.

 

[whattheelf]

Sorry to burst your bubble whattheelf but electric car is NOT the only choice to save money! Big car companies are on alert because they know they're looking at a very viable concept, it even looks pretty for crying out loud! If this ELIO makes it to production, they need to follow suit just to have their "share" of this new enclosed reverse trike market! Who know what the future holds for EM but I'll tell you this much, I think they have more cards in their sleeves so counting them out is not an option in my book!

I agree the electric is not the only choice, and by the time Elio gets to releasing its first batch of hand built units, which they will claim as "production", there will also be hydrogen fuel cell options to pick from, and other considerable advancements from conventional internal combustion fueled small cars. With just 17K reservations after so much time, be assured the big car companies are not paying that much attention because such an effort, even integrated into their world class automated factories, would still yield massive hundred million dollar losses. Big car companies have their own plans, EM 's only hope is that somehow one of them acquires them privately, perhaps for some small redeeming amount of intellectual property, but it'll never go to volume production, unfortunately.

 

[Dustoff]

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[whattheelf]

Your skepticism is well placed & the folks who are early adopters of this concept aren't naive but are willing to take a risk to help Elio prove
that there is real interest in this transportation alternative model. Look at the people that are involved. Look at how they've reasoned out
their approach. Will it take serious money to make Elio a reality? Absolutely. Musk,Jobs,Gates,Branson, faced hurdles also but persisted &
ultimately succeed. Who are we to say that Elio will fail. 17K reservations & continuing to grow. The timing is ripe for a "Folks Wagon"
for the 21 century. Elio doesn't rely on costly R&D & massive bureaucratic infrastructure to make it's vehicle. It is using existing equipment
that is already amortized & bought out of GM's bankruptcy, etc,etc. These guys have faced your arguments more than once since 2008
& their still alive & moving forward. You may be proved right in a year or so, but until they fold their tent I will continue to support them
in whatever way I can, starting by putting my money where my belief lies.

Just keep in mind 17K or even 50K reservations, isn't going to put a dent in the amount of funding this company needs to get this thing off the ground. Anyone can produce a few hundred prototypes with the money they have got so far, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the cost to go to real production. Proof of concept is easy, production is a different ballgame. Keep in mind the ex-GM facility is not remotely capable of an easy transition to manufacture Elio components, the costs to tool up are exponential and require an extremely reliable supply chain, neither of which is going to happen without massive funding up front, which they don't have. These guys may still be alive, hoping, and driving around events around the country, but you see practically ZERO real news and details on their plans, because it doesn't really exist, its a shell game designed to maybe position themselves to be privately acquired, as it cannot scale in multiple areas. There are just real business physics out there that not everyone understands nor wants to take the time to understand, most want to hope and believe, and I get it, I do. I want you want, but unfortunately its not going to happen, this is going to be a slow bleed of wishing and hoping. I have seen this kind of miracle tonic song and dance routine multiple times, and its following the same formula as all the rest of them. You'll have alot of great alternative vehicle choices from the bigger and competent players soon enough, EM won't be one of them.