Response from a member of the Elio team
Reponse from a member of the Elio team .... not me.
Yeah.. lots of experts that pass judgment without even taking a peek at the full business plan. Wow.
ATVM
1.Equipping, expanding or establishing manufacturing facilities in the United States to produce ATVs or qualifying components or
2.Engineering integration performed in the United States of ATVs or qualifying components.
Hey.. in the least, that frees up a lot of our capital for operations. All of these costs we currently are paying ourselves.
We DO have an engine designed.. will be dry spun, then completely tested mid November.
Our own engineers? It was faster to hire firms with the expertise than running our own. I laugh about how one can criticize our supposedly lack of managerial skills, then criticize Elio for not having our own engineers. How about IAV designing our drivetrain? They did the Bugatti and a host of other high end vehicles. Good enough for me. Altair does work for all the majors. This isn’t either of these firms first rodeo. It is by far the best approach.. hiring those who have done this 1000’s of times. GM has their own “engineers” How many recalls did they have this year….. so far?
Management Team? Not good enough? No experience? BoD: The previous CEO of Chrysler(also on Sirius BoD, Snap-On and a host of others.? The previous CEO of Lear Corp(also on a number of other boards)? A previous VP of Mercedes Benz, President of SMART USA and launched the SMART here? Paul Elio owned his own engineering firm with 40 plus engineers working for him. He did new product development for the auto industry. I will take that team anytime..
Aptera? They want to compare us to Aptera? Over 40K for an electric vehicle.. range 100 miles. Because of the curved design I don’t think the windows would even roll down. No wonder it didn’t make it. Not even close to functional. 4,000K reservations tops.. $100 refundable. And they could only get 4000K somewhere around two years or more? Compare that to Elio. Over 35,000 reservations with the vast majority Non Refundable form 100-1000.00. Compare that to sales last year of the VOLT (23,094) The Leaf (22,610) The Tesla (17, 650) There is huge acceptance of a vehicle that costs 6800.00 84 MPG and a 672 mile range. And our windows roll down.. I talked to a previous exec of Aptera who said: “You are going about this in exactly the right way… we didn’t”
A backwoods’ analysis of Elio Motors doesn’t impress me much.. not when I know that the 34 of the automotive companies top suppliers all did their own DD on Paul Elio, Elio Motors business model, the viability of that model, and chose to partner with Elio Motors at a time when they didn’t need the business. So did investors do their own DD.. so did Racer Trust.. So did Comau who is our factory design partner(one out of every 3 autos in the world is manufactured with a Comau designed plant.)
One thing for sure, no matter what the issue or potential bumps in the road, Elio Motors always has several other pathways to success. Most of the critics never ask the “how” they just inject their doubts based on opinion.. we are used to that.
