Results Are In!!!! Vote Early, Vote Often!

[Ty]

But white will never show a rich deep shine.

 

[Husker1]

Your talking to an incompetent computer user, I'm lucky I know how to turn the dang thing on. What COLOR Husker?

Lol I'm not much better but sometimes surprise myself! I did my best to paint it Red but looks like I'm in 3rd place. I'm planning on silver for mine, but thought Elio needed to try a red one to attract the sports car type.

 

[Thomas Maule]

I also think that white is only winning because the "color" people are split between red and blue...

 

[Norahsbed]

I also think that white is only winning because the "color" people are split between red and blue...

That an they can't vote for orange, green, silver or Yellow! I'm sure all colors will be represented with the P6-P30 or will they make the crash test cars white? Once again I'm getting ahead of myself or is that getting ahead of Elio Motors?

 

[Cache Man]

You can vote about ten times before the site says you ran out of votes. So vote for the RED!

Well, out of the colors I feel it is best. Even though I think the black looks great, I feel that it may not be seen on the road and likely ran over. But cool just the same.

 

[Ekh]

Well I think Ty might be right for the most part.

I'm one of those advertising guys. Over 42 years in the business with 20 years specifically in regional automotive advertising. I'm on the creative work end – not an account exec or paper pusher.

Sure, black cars are sexy. You do see a lot of them in national ads. The manufacturers spend a lot more money than you can imagine, to get the cars to look good. Even then, detail is hard to show and often gets lost. We see lines on a car because lighting creates highlights and shadows. It's kind of hard to see shadows on the surface of a black vehicle. So when you're shooting a black vehicle – you only have highlights to work with.

At this point, I would think Elio wants to make the car as visible as possible. A black vehicle might be sexy in an expensive video or print production, but a red or blue one would sure show the car and it's design better – overall. More bang for the buck. Just my 2¢….

The French have a saying -- three things you don't talk about (at the dinner table), religion, color and politics. Yet here we are! You're absolutely right about the lighting and shadows defining the curves of black cars -- really, for all objects.

As for Elio's colors, the swatches we see in the poll suffer from two problems -- lack of highlights and shadows, and being seen in transmissive, not reflective light. Transmissive is what we get from computer screens and reflective is what we get from the world around us (mostly). Yet I find myself uncomfortable with both the blue and the red colors in particular -- the blue is very nearly a purple. In the CMYK system which is used for printing on paper (reflective, not transmissive) it has no yellow or black, the blue is 78 (out of 100) and the Magenta (red) is 67. "True blue" isn't true in any color sense at all! In RGB values which are used for computer screens, it skitters around a bit, depending on how many points you're sampling, but an average value of 11 points is 71-95-213 for Red, Green, and Blue.

If you use LAB (luminance, plus two warring hue values), you get 44,21 and -65. 44 is how bright it is, and 44 is a little below middle gray -- not very bright at all.

Red Hot, at least on my calibrated computer monitor, shows in RGB as 226, 72,68 on average -- and it, too skitters around especially near the lower edge. It would be much brighter -- hotter -- with a higher amount of yellow in it.

See why the French think colors are hard to discuss politely?

Marshmallow is actually a warmish light gray, and is a "pure" color with equal RGB values in all three channels 226,226,226. The scale goes to 256, which is pure white with no detectable color in it, so it's a pretty balanced color. In the LAB scale, it's 90, 0-0. (which means that blue-red and yellow-green are exactly balanced, while the luminance (brightness) is 90% of the way to absolute.)

Licorice is 22, -1, 0 in LAB color -- a balanced gray about 1/4 of the distance from pure black to pure white, and with just the teeriest bit of a green cast to it -- can't be detected by eye, and might be an artifact of some sort in this swatch or in my computer.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the real world -- and to a certainty, 95% or more of the people viewing these color swatches will not have calibrated monitors, so the colors will vary all over the place. (I don't see how my wife can stomach the crappy color on her laptop and el cheap desktop monitors, yet she seems unfazed). And the cars, being reflective, will look very different than what we see on the computer screen.

Well, that's a half hour that should have been spent doing something else ... as of this morning, Marshmallow still leads with 34.99%, with Red and blue virtually tied at 25.88 and 25.06% respectively. Black is an also ran at 14,07%

 

[Thomas Maule]

I think elio motors should not have given us any option for a "boring" color... so there are no bad options lol....

 

[Jeff Porter]

Well I think Ty might be right for the most part.

I'm one of those advertising guys. Over 42 years in the business with 20 years specifically in regional automotive advertising. I'm on the creative work end – not an account exec or paper pusher.

Sure, black cars are sexy. You do see a lot of them in national ads. The manufacturers spend a lot more money than you can imagine, to get the cars to look good. Even then, detail is hard to show and often gets lost. We see lines on a car because lighting creates highlights and shadows. It's kind of hard to see shadows on the surface of a black vehicle. So when you're shooting a black vehicle – you only have highlights to work with.

At this point, I would think Elio wants to make the car as visible as possible. A black vehicle might be sexy in an expensive video or print production, but a red or blue one would sure show the car and it's design better – overall. More bang for the buck. Just my 2¢….

It's good to hear from experts in fields as they relate to the Elio. Here's one of our creative marketing dudes! Thanks for your 2 cents 84mpg.

For this thread, one thing I've noticed, lots of input coming from different angles trying to satisfy different goals. What we'd like to own, vs. what looks good in pictures, vs. what looks good on the tour.

84mpg says Elio should make the car as visible as possible. Seems like red or blue would be a color that makes it visible, gets people's attention. The orange and the green certainly got my attention.

Has EM said that the P5 will go on tour? I thought I read somewhere that they have indeed said it will.

Next thing that pops into my mind: we feel good about the idea of EM letting us vote on the color. That implies that EM is fine with the P5 being any of those 4 colors. Comments?

 

[Coss]

Next thing that pops into my mind: we feel good about the idea of EM letting us vote on the color. That implies that EM is fine with the P5 being any of those 4 colors. Comments?

How about none of the above (aka other) and do Yellow as a write in?

(Oh oh, just opened that can of worms again)

 

[Ty]

It's good to hear from experts in fields as they relate to the Elio. Here's one of our creative marketing dudes! Thanks for your 2 cents 84mpg.

For this thread, one thing I've noticed, lots of input coming from different angles trying to satisfy different goals. What we'd like to own, vs. what looks good in pictures, vs. what looks good on the tour.

84mpg says Elio should make the car as visible as possible. Seems like red or blue would be a color that makes it visible, gets people's attention. The orange and the green certainly got my attention.

Has EM said that the P5 will go on tour? I thought I read somewhere that they have indeed said it will.

Next thing that pops into my mind: we feel good about the idea of EM letting us vote on the color. That implies that EM is fine with the P5 being any of those 4 colors. Comments?

Good point. I know they'll probably have all the colors on vehicles that survive testing.... noise, vibration, whatever and that at some point, they'll all be together so we can see all the colors and iterations.

Elio gets to tell us that they are close enough on the P5 that they are looking into color. They get to show how much they care about their supporters by letting us vote on color (though anyone can vote. Maybe there's a bunch of Elio haters that are trying to have Elio make a white one so the press won't like it so much. Kidding, there).
What I see is that the P5 won't be ready till sometime in July at the earliest. Okay, that's only a couple weeks away but they won't be painting it till after July 2 since the vote ends that day.