From the blog:
Since the life of the belts are pretty much the same, a timing belt became the clear choice.
I'm not entirely sure what this incomplete sentence means, but their intent may have been to claim that belts and chains have equivalent life.
Last Saturday I changed the timing belt on our 2002 Ford Focus with 65k miles. The belt was shot with countless small and not-so-small cracks in the back surface. A chain with 65k miles would have been fine, whether 15 years old or 150 years old.
While a belt may prove to be adequate in the Elio, belts and chains are not the same and wear quite differently over mileage and time.