You know the Volt is not an electric car, right? It's a PHEV that gets 380 miles on a tank of gas. And that the Tesla, while not "practical" for 90% of the population due to cost, does not have range problems at 300 miles/charge and is by any accounting a profitable success?
I think the "green" people will come on board faster than you think. With the light weight, outstanding MPG, and lack of toxic-metal exotic battery and no use of coal-generated electricity, the Elio is "greener" than any Pious could hope to be.
I do not think we will see an electric Elio in the near future. Or ever if Paul is as smart as I think he is. It would destroy two of the Elio's four fundamental advantages: Low cost and light weight. Batteries of sufficient capacity are either very heavy or very, very expensive. Take your pick. The tandem layout leaves very little room for battery packs. Consider the entire floor of the Telsa is a giant, expensive, exotic battery pack. Despite using the lightest battery material available - lithium - the Tesla still tips the scales at a Bentley-esque 2-1/4 tons! More than 3.5 times the weight of an Elio.
The Elio Team already has plans for a Electric Elio, Propane/LG Elio, and a Hybrid Elio, but they want to wait and have about 500,000 Elio's on the road first... before new models are made...
So they are going to wait for about 2 years after production starts, and then Elio Motors will go into International Sales, and start the work on getting the three new models out for World Wide Sales...
By the time Elio Motors is ready to build the new Electric Elio's... they should have those new printable battery's out by then, which will cut costs and weight for any electric vehicle...
Look how long it has taken Paul Elio to get Elio Motors going to just this stage... some very new discovery's in the battery field are coming.. it just takes years for us to get to use them... kind of like a Elio...
This is
Not a
fact, it is
Not in
stone yet, it is just some of the plans they may have in the future...
I had that talk with the Marketing VP about what plans Elio Team had for the future of Elio Motors, when he was here in Portland Oregon in July of this year...
Proud to Be an Elio owner..#2225