Well, When Something's Too Good To Be True.....

[Marshall]

I can think of a couple reasons why they went with the survey approach. First, it may be that the automatic transmission is turning out to be more expensive than they thought. If the price is so high that people aren't willing to pay, then they may be forced to offer it at cost, or go with a cheaper option. Second, they may have come to the conclusion that the AMT option won't be acceptable to the general public (advice from Roush, maybe?), and they want to know if people would be willing to pay more for an upgraded style. (The three price points corresponding to AMT, traditional automatic, and CVT?)

It doesn't have to be that they wanted to find out how much they could squeeze out of people. It could be, but I don't think that fits their style. And, really, that would be pretty stupid.

Maybe they just needed to do a bit more explaining in their survey. "Would you be willing to pay $1,500 if it meant you would get a CVT, or would you rather stick with an AMT for $1,000?" Market research is important, and perfectly valid.

Agreed, well designed market research is important. The problem is that most people do not understand how hard it is to do something (anything) well. You can certainly overpay for a cleverly-designed (in this case) survey, but you can also vastly underpay. Given the breadth of assumptions stated by the survey takers when presented with the $1500 question, the results and any conclusions drawn from them would clearly be suspect.

This was Quick and Dirty at best for a survey. At least that is what they got. There is no telling whether the cost is reflected by the quality received.

While the old say that "you get what you pay for" may once have been true, I have found that recently, you pay for what you get, but frequently get less than what you paid for.

 

[Coss]

One other angle might be; they need to find how to bring in an additional $1,500 to be able to meet the $1,000 profit in every Elio built.
Or to be able to balance out pricing on other items (like cruise control).
Hard to say.

We're all just guessing (ok speculating) on why they asked the question that they did.