Reservations: 65341 As Of 6/20/2017

[eliothegreat]

<snip>

The reservations were never intended to fund production. They fund ongoing operations and as Ty mentioned are leveraged by EM to assist the effort in other areas.

There we are in agreement. It does appear that Elio never intended to use the reservation money to produce vehicles. I suspect that a fair number of people placing reservations believed otherwise when they sent in their money.

Maybe Elio could add that to their website and the reservation form: "We do not intend, nor did we ever intend, to use this reservation money to fund the production of the Elio vehicle."

 

[JEBar]

Maybe Elio could add that to their website and the reservation form: "We do not intend, nor did we ever intend, to use this reservation money to fund the production of the Elio vehicle."

I thought they made it pretty clear, in addition to a T-shirt and bumper sticker, "All In" reservation money bought/buys a place in line that would be honored if/when they get into production ..... nothing more, nothing less .... what they use/used the money for is up to them .... what people think, is what they think

 

[Rickb]

Reservation money is being used to fund a planned production. Using non-refundable reservation funds for daily operations leaves other funds in tact for production providing there was other funds. If EM had enough reservation funds to push to prototype builds as the critical next step to production, I say use the funds.

 

[cortsdad2]

Well, maybe they have reached a level of saturation, such that this is just not new information to very many people. People who research it online now, get a barrage of pro and con. People who don't, base a decision on sitting in the car, or just are taken by the idea.

If the 1k ratio holds up of 30%, they are acquiring about $12k each day, minus the expenses for the showings, or about $360,000 monthly, minus expenses. Each person on the team averages a cost between $2k and $6K, is it a team of 5 on the average? then the trailer and the truck, another 10k? Flights for key people, another 10K?, 5k for the show fees? so they clear maybe $280K for the events schedule? So each year of that is worth over $3.3m in funding towards those crash test vehicles. They had about $12m from prior collections.

Some articles say(if correct), Paul is now saying he thinks they can get 240k reservations for the first year? Only EM would have an educated guess at the true ratio of fence sitters waiting for some miles stones to be completed. Especially around the state/city/county gov customers who can't order until their availability criteria are met. There are 50states, two+ territories, 50 large cities, 3,000 counties, and 20,000 smaller cites., then the businesses. If buying an average fleet of 10 each (likely optimistic) maxes out to over 230,000 vehicles just for the gov. I wonder what EM requires for a reservation for fleet sales, if any? At least the $100 I'd guess.

I admit, just don't have enough real stats to get closer to estimating how things are now going than that.

You have completely ignored the "refundable deposits." That money should be sitting somewhere... untouchable! And you have no way of knowing how much of it IS refundable. The only other number that we can count on is the $1,000 "All In."

 

[Rickb]

You have completely ignored the "refundable deposits." That money should be sitting somewhere... untouchable! And you have no way of knowing how much of it IS refundable. The only other number that we can count on is the $1,000 "All In."

.........should be sitting somewhere?...........untouchable?! Holy crap! What if EM has borrowed against it with the idea of paying it back when production begins in 2016. My Lit Motors C-1 Reservation pre-order deposit was held by a private investment company and couldn't be touched or at least less likely to be touched.

 

[Hightech]

Your math seems okay, but your basis is way off. Paul has stated that the average reservation is $400. Paul has also stated that they have raised ~$17M from reservations. The $1k's have been averaging 30-35% for a long time.

$400 average car x 231 cars a week = $92,400/week (including refundable); remove estimated refundable % then your still close to ~50k of inflow cash only

 

[goofyone]

The vast majority of the roughly $65 million EM has raised up until now has been spent already on the development and marketing efforts up until the is point and is not just sitting in a bank account somewhere. While it would not surprise me if EM has a reserve fund it is highly doubtful that EM has enough of the money they need in place to kick off the E-series building and testing process as if they had that money they would be moving forward on that process.

If EM can find some money but struggles to cross the next fundraising step what I could see happening is the production of a single P5 or the refitting of the P4 into the P5. This was not a good option before as the engine was a key missing component however now that the engine is making its way through the testing process I can see EM doing this as a backup plan to draw more interest by showing off a vehicle which is much closer to final form even if this means a higher unit cost in building this as a one-off instead of as a group of 25.

 

[ecdriver711]

The vast majority of the roughly $65 million EM has raised up until now has been spent already on the development and marketing efforts up until the is point and is not just sitting in a bank account somewhere. While it would not surprise me if EM has a reserve fund it is highly doubtful that EM has enough of the money they need in place to kick off the E-series building and testing process as if they had that money they would be moving forward on that process.

If EM can find some money but struggles to cross the next fundraising step what I could see happening is the production of a single P5 or the refitting of the P4 into the P5. This was not a good option before as the engine was a key missing component however now that the engine is making its way through the testing process I can see EM doing this as a backup plan to draw more interest by showing off a vehicle which is much closer to final form even if this means a higher unit cost in building this as a one-off instead of as a group of 25.

That would be really nice; seeing a very close production design.

 

[Elio Amazed]

That would be really nice; seeing a very close production design.

EM certainly needs a substantial milestone to help push this stalled project off of the ralroad tracks.
Isn't the train (the hiring deadline) coming soon?
Quiet! I think I hear the whistle.

 

[LillyMayPatterson #1685 & #5648]

I admit, just don't have enough real stats to get closer to estimating how things are now going than that.

It would help if Elio provided the stats of demographics (sp) they said months ago was coming....soon. I have been not so patiently wanting/waiting. Remember they posted a pretty colored map of the states showing the states with the most reservations with the darker color. I have it as my screen saver.