Funding Refused By Paul Elio

[3wheelin]

Getting back to the topic "Funding Refused by Paul Elio", the real question might be "when will Paul give up some of the control/profit in order to start making the vehicles? I wonder how many legitimate offers he has refused because of his own, what's the word, ego? I'm sure there are some other words for people that must be in control.

Right, and while we're at it, it's becoming more like "Funding refused by INVESTORS", not the other way around. I think, and this is purely a guess in my part, he knew he made a grave mistake of coining that famous phrase "half the car, half the price" even before arriving at a pre-production unit/s. After that, pricing it now more "realistically" will dismay reservation holders and create refund chaos. Who will want a 12-15K ELIO when they can get a regular 4 wheeler for that price? Not many, and that's where investors will shy away- because EM relies on at least 100K units of ELIOs to sell just to see profit or break even. It's not ego, PE would gladly see his creation turns to reality if only his vision's not based on fantasy.

 

[RUCRAYZE]

Impact... hmm, some numbers, conservatively, (BTW, I refinanced my cars and other loans into my house. $800/mo savings)

17.5 million cars are sold every year in the USA. On the average each Elio purchased displaces a sedan purchase, no mater what EM says about that, at least somewhere during the life cycle of a driver.

Average cost of a sedan, $25k. Average MPG, 25mpg, $400/year to service maintain and repair.
average daily use 30miles, 312 days/year (weekends as one day)
If gas is $3/gal, and Elio sells 100,000 units at $8K each year and they get used 50% of the driving days.
If Elio's get 80mpg, and go out of service at 10k attrition rate each year, Elio cost half or $200 less to service/maintain each year on the average....

At 50% use, 100k units each year;
The US public would save $2 billion the first year, but by year ten the total savings would be 17.3 billion.
One person saves $17.8k the first year and $23,2k by year ten if the Elio is still in the game.
But for some people, at 100% use,
One person saves $19.6k the first year and $29,8k by year ten. Buy a new one, repeat.

No pain, all gain.

Pain???? the oil companies????

 

[RUCRAYZE]

Right, and while we're at it, it's becoming more likely it's "Funding refused by INVESTORS", not the other way around. I think, and this is purely a guess in my part, he knew he made a grave mistake of coining that famous phrase "half the car, half the price" even before arriving at a pre-production unit/s. After that, pricing it now more "realistically" will dismay reservation holders and create refund chaos. Who will want a 12-15K ELIO when they can get a regular 4 wheeler for that price? Not many, and that's where investors will shy away- because EM relies on at least 100K units of ELIOs to sell just to see profit or break even. It's not ego, PE would gladly see his creation turns to reality if only his vision's not based on fantasy.

I would buy it for 12-15k, i've paid more for bikes.
anyone who NEEDS basic transportation, are looking at the wrong vehicle. -for the price, easily purchase a VERY reliable 4 passanger/4 wheels.

 

[3wheelin]

I would buy it for 12-15k, i've paid more for bikes.
anyone who NEEDS basic transportation, are looking at the wrong vehicle. -for the price, easily purchase a VERY reliable 4 passanger/4 wheels.

Yap, and I might too just because it's unique and it's not a NEED for me.

 

[AriLea]

Why are you comparing a $25K sedan vs a $7450 Elio. That's like comparing a $4 quart of fried rice to a $30 meal at a restaurant.

You know the 'other car' idea. People often buy two cars, and both have to be four seat sleds because that's all the choice they have.
So yes, an Elio will end up replacing a sedan, just not your primary car. Of course, I'm ignoring that there will a replacement of a used car as often as a new one. But that car is at half it's life, so they are likely be replacing two used cars.

Buy hey, these are dreaming numbers and not hard facts, post-mortem.

Anyway, back to topic, how the heck would any of us ever find any clues at all that any investor has offered anything at all? It's all behind the scenes by design.

 

[RSchneider]

Anyway, back to topic, how the heck would any of us ever find any clues at all that any investor has offered anything at all? It's all behind the scenes by design.

I found it. Instead of a mystery source of information about funding, I went to the horses mouth where's it's documented. I found that Elio Motors was privately funded back in early January 2013. So it was funded and production should start in June 2014.
Q: Where's the funding coming from at this stage:
PE:Stu Lichter of IRG is backing the purchase of the plant in this round of funding and then we have a capital stack that everyone is comfortable with and it's all privately funded

Q: When will people be able to take this on the road?
PE: We should start production in 18 months, so June of 2014.

You can see Paul Elio say it right here:
https://www.cnbc.com/id/100373460

I ask this. With Elio privately funded back in January 2013, why did they start taking non refundable reservations? With private funding, you take refundable and show how this was an excellent investment. Plus, why did Elio have do incentives for those reservations (50% discount, SIL's and fixed prices). With private funding you just say, "1K refundable and it'll cost $7500 with 84 mpg." Since we needed to get Americans back to work plus really high gas prices, there should have been 100K reservations in a month. No risk for the reservations holders and it saves the American public billions. Slam dunk if you ask me. Plus, why do an IPO#1 and IPO#2 and Eliocoin of it's all privately funded?

Then this thread starts 2 years later with someone who claims Elio turned down funding and then another, that Elio has offers and it's not if but when. Does anyone see how none of this makes sense. What happened in January of 2013 because the tune sure changed. Did Paul turn down the funding in 2013 and then turned it down again in 2015? Maybe there was no funding at all but just interest in funding but the phone never rang with the good news?

 

[TexasTesla]

I was curious...

So..I reviewed all of the prior Elio Motors SEC documents... lots of boring reading...but hidden in the hundreds of pages of SEC documents there are many answers to gleaned...

Here’s one of my many conclusions...

Remembering that Paul Elio never had much of his own capital...thus everything he did from day one was predicated on his fundraising abilities...

Long before Elio Motors went public...he had recruited dozens of early private placement investors...

These early private placement investors were given RSU’s...which might become valuable if Elio Motors ever went public...

Years later...and soon after Elio Motors went public...the smart early investors sold their RSU's at large multiples...and reaped huge profits on their early Elio investments...

The early investors that were not smart enough to sell their RSU’s in a timely manner after Elio's IPO...lost the potential for large returns on their Elio Motors investment...and if they hung on for the long-haul...their RSU’s are basically worthless...

....

 

[AriLea]

For the last two posts, all of that is pretty much survival tactics for big scale investors.
What I don't see, is how you can know anything about investment since then.

The original investment was 35 million, and always it was known that over 200 million (and later more), would be required.
Sure the guy that put in the first 35 million, he always had a back-out strategy. He would get the ball rolling, see how it goes, and if it didn't pan out, sure he would find a way to recoup. So what?

Then a few infusions from other sources happened, and that's been it since.

I don't really care, nor does it mater what happened prior to the last funding round. Do you really have anything tangible other than long stretched conspiracy theory based only on what you think was in their hearts at the beginning?

We want to know, what if anything is happening now, and what is possible to happen next. I don't see that you have any leverage over that knowledge.

I will grant you this; Next to nothing has happened in the last two years. That doesn't bode well for anything happening anytime soon, if ever. That's kind of a duh-Ralph moment.

 

[RSchneider]

This thread is about what happened in 2015. The way I see it is that Elio’s total budget needed to be over $600M and they raised about $100M. First was from private, then public via two different methods. The picture that was painted was that it was ready to go to finding will happen to silence. Best case scenario is Elio needs over $400M.

Right now, Elio Motors is running out of any sort of money to operate beyond paying a yearly fee for a website, mail stop and storage. With 3 years of no progress, then it’s in a mode of press releases that seem to go nowhere. So if you are looking for info today, it will not happen. I suggest you check out the Elio blog as it gives you the latest information. Other than that, we rehash old info because Elio acts like they were taken private due to their lack of communication.

 

[Samuel Gompers]

One question that serious investors asked, but casual ones did not, gives the key to why funding never happened.

"How is it possible that a vehicle that was 90%+ off-the-shelf, and 90%+ fully sourced, with a total parts cost of under $7k, never was hand-built and tested?"

Even allowing for engineering, and labor, and rebuilding, this was supposed to be a very inexpensive vehicle. There were LOTS of problems. The numbers (engineering and financial) never made sense. But the biggest issue was the lack of working prototypes. If you can't built something close to spec, it's hard to convince big money investors that you can build anything to full spec.