Solo

[AriLea]

So the Solo had a news promoted price of $15,500 USD and a MSRP price of $18,500;

But this Daymak, also from Canada (also a three wheeler) has a newsy price of $19,000 (USD or CAD? not sure which)

However, it is a sociable 2 seat layout. I feel not much more interesting than any Prius-C, Leaf or Smart EV, except for the novelty factor of a three wheeler. Aerodynamic advantages are likely nil, just looking at the surface topography. It does promise a range of 180miles. So the main benefit is by dropping the one wheel, drops the weight of the car and thereby of some battery weight and still keeps that range up. These reductions should help reduce some of the car cost. In exchange, it has a bit worse roll-over compared to a 4 wheel econobox.

And it does state 85mph, so it is mostly freeway ready. Deliveries currently promised for 2023. Sure, we'll see.

But the one bad part, based on what images and drawings provide, this is rear-wheel-drive. With two people loaded up front, it would be worse than an empty pickup with three people in the front bench-seat. Not so good in weather. I don't know why Canadians would forget that. They should know better.
All the bad weather you can think of except tornados and hurricanes, they have all that.... more checking...

Just talked to their online chat, the man there just said, he thinks FWD, but may change by the time they sell. I noted that he did totally get the weather issue. The take away here is, they actually had an online presence.

SO the website says a lot about being the fastest..yadda yadda etc. And various text on the internet talk of up to three models including an 'Ultimate'. If that much power is true, certainly do not want it to be only RWD. With a lot of power, they could get away with 50/50 AWD, but that is about it for power in the rear, and still be 'all weather'.

 

[ehwatt]

So the Solo had a news promoted price of $15,500 USD and a MSRP price of $18,500;

But this Daymak, also from Canada (also a three wheeler) has a newsy price of $19,000 (USD or CAD? not sure which)

However, it is a sociable 2 seat layout. I feel not much more interesting than any Prius-C, Leaf or Smart EV, except for the novelty factor of a three wheeler. Aerodynamic advantages are likely nil, just looking at the surface topography. It does promise a range of 180miles. So the main benefit is by dropping the one wheel, drops the weight of the car and thereby of some battery weight and still keeps that range up. These reductions should help reduce some of the car cost. In exchange, it has a bit worse roll-over compared to a 4 wheel econobox.

And it does state 85mph, so it is mostly freeway ready. Deliveries currently promised for 2023. Sure, we'll see.

But the one bad part, based on what images and drawings provide, this is rear-wheel-drive. With two people loaded up front, it would be worse than an empty pickup with three people in the front bench-seat. Not so good in weather. I don't know why Canadians would forget that. They should know better.
All the bad weather you can think of except tornados and hurricanes, they have all that.... more checking...

Just talked to their online chat, the man there just said, he thinks FWD, but may change by the time they sell. I noted that he did totally get the weather issue. The take away here is, they actually had an online presence.

SO the website says a lot about being the fastest..yadda yadda etc. And various text on the internet talk of up to three models including an 'Ultimate'. If that much power is true, certainly do not want it to be only RWD. With a lot of power, they could get away with 50/50 AWD, but that is about it for power in the rear, and still be 'all weather'.

View attachment 25312

Can not imagine how a fwd "anything" can get to 60 in under 2 seconds, much less single, rear wheel drive.

 

[AriLea]

Can not imagine how a fwd "anything" can get to 60 in under 2 seconds, much less single, rear wheel drive.

Yep, propaganda. Would take rockets, jet engines or an air-tank with it's neck knocked off. :-)

Tadpole trikes are not good dragsters.

Koenigsegg Gemera – 1.9 seconds

 

[AriLea]

I did get this email on Tuesday after trying to set up an appointment for a test drive on the weekend...
But it seems to have come from my inclusion in public news releases;

Hi Arak,

I am excited to announce that ElectraMeccanica has begun test drives in Scottsdale! If you are interested in test driving the Solo, please respond to this email with a couple of dates and times that work best for you and we'll get you scheduled!

I always advise interested customers to reserve their Solo by placing a fully refundable deposit, which you can do so with this link here: https://owners.electrameccanica.com/checkout
Reserve your SOLO today - ElectraMeccanica
Reserve your SOLO today. Save your spot in line with a fully-refundable $250 deposit. Raven Black Electric Red Iridium Silver Arctic White Custom Wrap. You can add custom colors or branding to the outside of your SOLO by using a wrap.
owners.electrameccanica.com

I look forward to hearing from you!
All the best,

Bianka Larouche
Solo Specialist
www.electrameccanica.com
NASDAQ:SOLO
7014 East Camelback Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85251

 

[AriLea]

SO, today was a score. Maybe a double or triple score!

I got some time off work because a doctor appointment was canceled.
And I started to drive up to the ElectraMecannica 'Showroom' at the Scottsdale Fashion Mall to see if I could set up an appointment to drive a Solo.
(BTW, Solo in Spanish means 'only')
, but I got a call before I got there, and I received a schedule for 5:00 PM on Saturday.
That made me decide to reroute, and go back past the 'Factory' and see what is going on there during working hours.

Oddly enough, they actually let me in the door. And they sat me down in their front conference room while they got someone to talk with me.
While I was sitting there, this chart was up in the corner of the room. Like a good spy, I snapped a image.

The chart seems to be comparing the various sources of cabin noise between the solo and a couple other cars. It's not clear, but the top one on the line chart says 'Corolla'. I drove over there in MY Corolla. (Kismet!) My 2020 Corolla is very quiet, so hmmm, interesting.

Previously, the Elio crowd have pointed out that the demo Elio was a bit noisy. Makes sense to me considering so much window glass sits next to the driver's ears in the Elio. And it's interior was not soft, being non-production panels.
But the Elio was ICE drive, and this is an EV. Beating an ICE driven Corolla(or hybrid), is a lot easier than a Tesla I would guess.

A few minutes later a woman comes in, asks me what I was there for. I said basically, "just some info before my test drive on Saturday." She scrabbles around, and brings me an advo-info card. And also a couple very nice pens, which I took with me of course!
(I'm sending one to Mark Bex if he wants it)

I forgot to record her name, but she let me know she was something like the factory manager. (forgot to keep her card!, my bad!)
She says they can't have me test drive anything at the factory, but nicely, she offered to bring one out front and let me sit in it.
Nobody should expect to get this treatment from now on, and they prefer customer traffic to go to the 'showrooms'.
But, I said I was investigating for my Posse (you guys), and apparently I'm 'special' :-). Or rather 'We are special'! :-))
Turns out to be a Solo that we have all seen before. And she even took selfies for me with my phone!

This Solo had about the same amount of room inside left and right, as I found in the Elio. It did have a very tight gap to swing my feet inside.
And like the Elio, the driver's space is 'just adequate'.

Knowing how I like to draw tadpoles, I know this means the driver's weight is moved forward between the front wheels and that helps the vehicle Center-Of-Gravity to be held in a better spot. But it forces a person to develop a higher level of skill getting in and out. It was tuff for me at 67, I'm not very flexible. And, admittedly, I'm overweight. But I figure next time I will push my butt way-far toward the other door, and only then swing my feet inside.

I also noted that they put some of the batteries left and right of the driver, something I often feature in my own design dreaming. It lets the driver sit lower, and keeps the CG lower too. This car is just about the same volume and dimensions as the Corbin-Sparrow by my best estimate. Maybe very slightly lower. YES, it is small!

I like that the car has both doors. My factory-manager-lady said that this extra door gives the driver the option to not open your door into ongoing traffic. I like that, that's a very good sales point.

And for the most part she wasn't allowed to say almost anything about operations. Couldn't tell me how many were in assembly. But the fact that there is an office with four people in it, one answering phones as I observed, then her and two others that look very manager-ish, I think I can confirm some serious business is ongoing.

But she did offer that this was only their temporary factory location with 15000sq-ft(1393.5m-sq). The new location was the second building east of there, still being finished. Since you can see the square footage on google maps, she said she could confirm it was around 200,000sq-ft(18580m-sq). Thirteen times as much space. And most factories are two story, most offices above the shop floor.

Certainly, they expect to assemble a number of cars in the near future. That activity was obviously happening in the back of the office as we spoke, such that she had to get back to it right away. On my drive home, I took a snap of the new factory. It's the unpainted one on the right in the image below.

I discussed some of my talking points to see how she reacted. When I said the early smart was in the range of 10,000 units/yr, her body language and responses seems to say 10k units was undershooting what they expect for this factory. But she could not confirm or deny anything directly.

So, I'm optimistic about the future of three wheel autocycles like this. Even more for the two seat versions. And especially the Bex-Mongrel.
For the next few years, the more of these exist, it simply helps bolster the whole category.
My guess is that the Solo will not be matched (at ElctMech) by a two seat tandem anytime soon. The business realities will dictate that they make some kind of sport or upscale model since another super-economy class car will compete with the Solo. Unless they (ElectMech) get worried about competitors in the market with an upscale model, and react by just upscaling the 'Solo' into a 'Dual'.

So for me personally, will I buy a Solo? While I work where I do, it actually make sense. But I will retire at some point before a Solo has served its time.
And a Bex-Mongrel will serve me better, and I want resources left to buy-in.
But I will give it a try, and calculate if I can afford it and still be in position for the Bex-Built model.

-Such fun!

 

[84mpg]

Very interesting. I don't think this one will be for me – but's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Sounds like they were fairly nice to you, being a "drop in" that you were. That says a positive bit about them. I like to hear things like that.

Look forward to hearing about your upcoming drive....

 

[Coss]

Yep, just another writer waking up to the context that this vehicle type fits into.

Same chicken and egg problem as always. Enough people need to buy in (literally) to put the effort on the map, so that enough people buy in to make it commercially viable. ie low enough to attract attention of a large population.
This is only one article, not enough to trigger anything, so.... yawn...

On the other hand, if Bill Gates read it and 'got it'.... Anyone know Bill Gates... personally?

There is one point that might be new and interesting, about bus use....

YEP.... he drives a Porsche 985 as his normal car, he's got a garage full of cars, all sweet Long time ago he had a standing bet about beating him across the 520 floating bridge, lots of people tried, no one won (I tried 4 times) he used to be crazy in cars, now, not so much.

 

[smithsonssg]

Bet it beat ELIO into production. my 3 wheelers work but the really miss the mark on fuel mileage. Winter is ok for passenger but a bit hard on the driver.

 

[AriLea]

OK, well, I did it. I went I did the drive and got the full experience.
First of all, lets look at the environment a bit. Why? Because it maters to us and to the success of this car.
I'm realizing that as I drive up for the appointment. As I get into that area, I notice it has changed sooo very much.
I had not driven there in years. But it has become a strange, yet familiar human topography all oriented to cars, parking, walking and cavorting around in the city. In particular, a shopping and street-side restaurant, joy-time party town. It seemed perfect for a car based human civilization.
And why not have an easy to park and maneuver little car for that?
This image below was with-in a few blocks of the 'showroom'. Oddly, this was the first overcast day I had seen since early in the year.

Perfect, the XMas persona was on full display.

Lots of walking, talking, shopping and eating, hopping in your car and going somewhere to do simple little things.
Certainly, Not a time or place for your RV.

And that is what I'm thinking as I come around the corner near the 'showroom'. As you see, the showroom is a more of a open air kiosk. And you can also see the relationship of the environment and human behavior to parking and errand running. Certainly things happening for two or more people exist in this environment. But it's obvious there are situations in that realm that fit the Solo very well.

It would be so super-easy to drive this small footprint around and park, it's oddly attractive to me in that moment.

But my interest in these vehicles is not limited to just city-scape activity. That would be interesting, but I want to see support for inexpensive long-reach commuting. Hence, I'm very interested in the road worthiness, and how well it does at freeway operations.
SO, drive it I must, but first I get a new look at the car as it sits on show, and interrogate the sales staff.

So first a little walk-around. This may take a few postings.

 

[AriLea]

Continuing on... oh wait a sec, I absolutely must post this image. This was part of all the active life around the Kiosk and that dog was super cute. But note, you can NOT put a dog this big into the Solo and still drive it. Something half that size? Yes you could if you take little or nothing else.

He was just sooo, cute. Yep I pet him. I hugged him. He was surprisingly skinny inside that fur, and it was softer than, well, cotton puff balls.
Even smelled good. Such a sweetie. I would have taken him home if I could. If I wanted one. No(surely a hell no), and nope. I got plenty in my house now!

Back to the car....

As you can see, this space could take a small dog, or some groceries, a briefcase or lunch box.
What you can't see is that the driver seat extends high above the deck and will mostly block anything from falling on the driver, and will likely keep your dog back there too. Yes, a cat surely could squeeze forward. Use a carrier, a soft-cat-sized version will fit.

No more images. You can get lots of these now online. Even lots of test drives from California that are on you-tube, so I won't do that either. YOU can expect mine would seem pretty close to the same. But here, I can talk to people and do my own driving, looking into my own specifics.

So I found my demo-handler. This, below, is Bianca. She was very sweet. And talked to me at length about the Solo. However she mostly confirmed what I knew and had found in posts you have seen previously. So look back at all that if you must. But, there were a few new facts.

First,
They are now making some deliveries, but only in California(according to Bianca). I would guess these are very limited until the Arizona factory is up and running.
So reading between the lines, these Arizona sales efforts are meant to build a backlog that will guarantee a steady stream of sales for the time when that factory is up and running. So, going forward I will try and keep tabs on this crew and see how things are going.
She said, (as you can find elsewhere) sometime in 2022 Arizona will begin getting deliveries too.
I would like to know what the backlog will look like by then. That is confidential type info, and not something I could expect to get an answer for. But I will keep poking around on that.

So, about the car; Using the AC does not change the range. It actually has a separate battery pack. Which also gets charged when the main pack is charged.
She, says, the experience of commuting has not shown much difference in range based on how fast the car is driven. But a lead foot seems to make some difference.
The car does have regenerative braking. Having said that, I know you never regain everything fully. So you can guess that a lead foot mostly has an effect where you also use the brakes a lot.

In a combustion drive, you become a little more efficient when you have the throttle open wide with no pumping losses. And you also lose energy braking. So highway travel is most always more efficient than city.

But this is not so in an EV. Modern EV drives throttle very efficiently. On the highway, the air drag remains as the larger issue. In the city, having to stop a lot, how you regulate that is the issue. So most often the city travel along long routes with no braking will be more efficient than highway use. But on the highway it all depends on whether you find the sweet spot best for your car. i.e. your mileage may vary. But behavior maters. These are tradeoffs I also found with my Prius hybrid.

The plan was, as is for everyone, that someone like Bianca would be in the lead car and we drive a preset path, returning to the departure area. So I asked that we get a chance to drive at a good speed so I could see how it might perform on the highway. She said she would do what she could.

The Phoenix area is probably the best place for this car. Or any car for that mater. Paved streets are everywhere. Everything is laid out on a grid, more so than most US cities. The main avenues are like little freeways, but with stop lights. So people do tend to run though red lights because of that, they don't want to break their stride. Speeds often reach 15 and 20 over the limit. And the posted limit on main routes are often 40, 45 even 50.

This worked to my benefit given I wanted to test the freeway capability for speed, acceleration and handling. Previously, I had seen between 65 and 75 as the top speed for the Solo. This made me feel uncomfortable, seeing little overhead above 65, given everyone here drives close to or even above 80mph.

Frankly, that is changing. Arizona has become very popular, and it's getting more crowded. They are clamping down more. So I expect speeds to come down a little going forward, especially around where I live.

So this test should be pretty close to the speeds I need to see.
The car has an electric control knob for 'shifting'. D, N and R. And a button for Parking Brake. You must step on the brake to go into R or D. You have to be in N to use the Parking Brake. But if you flip to D or R, the parking brake goes off automatically.

That is about it for anything odd in operating the Solo. Except the windows do not do that thing where you just start closing them and they finish automatically. YOU have to hold it the full way. SO I guess nobody will choke themselves on that one.

The car she let me use was around the corner. I had my choice, so she had the Red one, and I had the White.

I left navigating completely to her, and it was dark by then. Our route looked something like this; (green out, red back)
I don't know how far we went, but 10 minutes or less outward was close to the time driving.

I was focused on the driving as an experience. But something was a bit distracting, being as fun as it was. The car itself was also fun. But this one extra thing is too, and NOT very normal, giving a little more energy to it.

You see, I had put my arms out both windows on a strait stretch, (driving with my knees, don't tell Bianca please!) a christening of sorts for single or tandem driving cars. Ahnmmm, why? Well, because I CAN! And they did it in the Elio didn't they? So I did it, I got my Navy-Man hair cut, kind of. And I put two thumbs up at the same time. And that may have prompted the distracting part. NO the hands on their own wasn't it. This was;

Two cars pulled forward, with much pomp and smiles, giving me the thumbs up. A woman in a large sedan, then a man in an SUV. They were impressed. I pride myself on not desiring attention, but hey, that was pretty fun. And other people were noticing too. Smiles, dropped mouths. And that was all in the darkness, but on a lighted major street? God knows what mid-day would be like.

The Smart Cars had that attention early on. But it did die down at some point. This too shall pass.

But, I digress, back to the car.

It is small, very small. And I did succeed at getting in easier, so long as I accommodated with better positioning. Still not perfect, but not too bad with discipline. In a short time, no thought about it for me, I would guess. Same for feeling tight. I did find it may be more roomy than the Elio at my shoulders by and inch or two(in total, not both sides), but tighter where the dash meets the doors.

I did have to have the seat more upright than the last driver, and put the seat fully to the back. But I did have just enough room for my feet/legs to feel fine. I'm 6'1", so most people are going to be OK.

I was expecting it to not feel very solid on the road. This was not the case. It felt just like any other car for road hug at speed. We did get up to 55 I think. It felt like more speed would not change anything. Acceleration was very snappy. It felt like we had plenty left, even at the top speed we hit. Bianca said she typically tops out around 82mph. If it is like most EV's, it will be very crisp acceleration until you hit the ceiling speed, then it's like hitting a cardboard wall. That's just about all you got, rather predictably. But this is no Tesla, remember that. My 2020 Corolla has a little more pep, especially at 50. But not a lot more.

Bianca confirmed that batteries are left and right of the driver, weight centered very low. And she seemed to confirm it has traction control. It felt no different than driving my FWD Corolla in that regard.

Nothing was odd in handling until we did a U-turn to go back. MAN! it does turn sharp and tight. I think we could have looped inside of two lanes. A short wheel base can do that. The whole car is only 13 feet long.

I did seem to have a little odd wiggle or left-right twitch as I powered out of that U-turn. Most people don't do that. They do the turn, then they go. Since my childhood days playing with slot-cars, I accelerate out of a turn. It's just habit, with attitude. But nothing odd like that happened otherwise. I would feel just fine driving that on the freeway. And you just don't have a perception of feeling small. You feel like you are the same as other cars.

SO that could be a problem. YOU are indeed small, and you should make sure you are seen, or assume you are not.

So more (text only) in the next post.

Actually Bianca was concerned she wasn't photo-genic enough to appear in my snap shots.

I told her Noooo!, you look lovely. She does, doesn't she? Yep. She does!
Personality-to-match, IMHO.