The E-series Build.

[Mel]

However, the Elio facility is an assembly plant. The panels could easily be contract/lot build off site. 60machines or 6 machines, it makes little difference us, they can get her done.

I seem to remember that the body panel molding is being farmed out to a company in Grande Prairie, TX.

 

[TCBronson]

From Elio Motors Owners Association:
Rick Deckard Hand laid fiberglass is very different (and heavier) from Molded Plastic Products molded fiberglass which is very similar to SMC (SMC is a trademark product so the names have to be different and this is different but similar) Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic but the Elio had determined that this was more readily available and that Molded Plastic Products had more direct experience with producing body panels than the previous company and this had been planned prior to the development of the P5 - http://moldedplastic.com/

Rick Deckard And now it is Fiber Reinforced Plastic FRB... This Wiki has a lot of the ways things that are FRP are made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre-reinforced_plastic

Fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) (also fibre-reinforced polymer) is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibers. The fibres are usually glass, carbon, aramid, or basalt. Rarely, other fibres such as paper or wood or asbestos have been used. The polymer is usually an epoxy, vin…
en.wikipedia.org

How does the material Elio is using for the body panels compare to what Saturn used or the new Corvette, is it the same?

 

[Sethodine]

The proccess is the same, but we don't know if the chemical composition is the same.

 

[HonestTex]

I was just thinking ( yeah I know, you hate it when that happens),

Are we not getting E series updates because they haven't started building them yet? (stay with me).. They are going to build them on a mock production line, so they may be waiting on all parts for all 25 E's before they begin building. 25 Elios is an easy afternoon on an assembly line, so might take a week or two on the mock line?!? We may not hear much until late May/early June.

 

[Rickb]

I was just thinking ( yeah I know, you hate it when that happens),

Are we not getting E series updates because they haven't started building them yet? (stay with me).. They are going to build them on a mock production line, so they may be waiting on all parts for all 25 E's before they begin building. 25 Elios is an easy afternoon on an assembly line, so might take a week or two on the mock line?!? We may not hear much until late May/early June.

We aren't sure if there is even a design and engineering freeze on which to base parts and part fabrication for the 25 E Builds. EM is still doing parts CAD renderings.

 

[Ekh]

We aren't sure if there is even a design and engineering freeze on which to base parts and part fabrication for the 25 E Builds. EM is still doing parts CAD renderings.

Body panels are Frozen including engine mounts. I don't know how much more Frozen you need than that.

 

[Rickb]

Body panels are Frozen including engine mounts. I don't know how much more Frozen you need than that.

I would prefer the vehicle design and engineering freeze that EM mentioned some time ago, but individual parts are fine too.

 

[AriLea]

I was just thinking ( yeah I know, you hate it when that happens),

Are we not getting E series updates because they haven't started building them yet? (stay with me).. They are going to build them on a mock production line, so they may be waiting on all parts for all 25 E's before they begin building. 25 Elios is an easy afternoon on an assembly line, so might take a week or two on the mock line?!? We may not hear much until late May/early June.

I think the more important parts of this stage is process design and captured in things like digital definitions and even in some early release tooling etc.
The physical assembly of 100 Elios is quite a small part of the entire effort. With the 'panel design' done, it means the vendor can confidently build for these first tool sets. Anyway, all that activity is just a bit boring for PR release. When all this is done and the panels etc exist, the assembly/build will go quite quickly.

 

[Marshall]

I would prefer the vehicle design and engineering freeze that EM mentioned some time ago, but individual parts are fine too.

If your going to use the information from the E build, the fleet sales and Rouch, minor things will change. No need to prevent upgrades which do not interfere with Reservation Production schedules.

I'm hoping that some of the 10 or so first reservations retained by Elio are for road testing on their marketing tours.

I personally think if they don't qualify for the loan, the loan program should just be dropped altogether as useless theory.

 

[Smitty]

Molding is faster than stamping?