Does Anybody Know Anything About Elio Motors New 3 Wheeled Car?

A link–

84 MPG, $6,800 base.

It seems like there is no car, yet.
It also seems like this would be IDEAL CAR FOR ME, if it pans out!
Input from Dopers who know?

I have more to say but I’m on the phone now.

We’ve had threads on it before, not sure when it gets released to the public. They’ve pushed back the release date at least once.

With gas prices hovering at $2-3, I’m not sure how big the market will be vs. a $4/gallon gas scenario.

IIRC there are still a few regulatory hiccups. They’ve been having to work things through state-by-state.

If you can find one at a show, I recommend having a seat. I found it surprisingly roomy.

It certainly isn’t a car for everyone. It isn’t for me, now, but it might be as my living situation changes over the next year or two.

I just looked into their situation, which has been another hurdle. It looks like they still don’t have that DOE loan. I don’t know if it got rejected or if it’s still bouncing around in DC. I’d forgotten about Reg A+. I need to look into that some more; it may make for some nice investment opportunities.

According to Wiki:

I will note that their website has a nice map showing all their projected dealerships.
They may not have a plant or a car yet, but they’ve got balls.

There is one other implication of registering it as a motorcycle instead of a car. Car makers are only allowed to advertise the EPA MPG rating, whereas motorcycle companies can claim basically whatever they want. I have a feeling they’re only confident trotting around that 84 MPG number because they don’t think they’re ever going to have to report an actual EPA rating.

One of the side effects of measuring fuel economy in distance per volume instead of volume per distance is that it tends to exaggerate differences on the higher end. As their enthusiastic previous owners will tell you, cars like the Honda CRX or original Insight or 3 cylinder Geo Metro could get 70’s and 80’s MPGs under certain circumstances, but in the current EPA cycle they’re only rated in the high 40’s to low 50’s. My hunch is that if the Elio has to undergo EPA fuel economy testing, it’ll probably wind up around there in the low-to-mid 50’s. Pretty good, but probably not good enough to get large numbers of people out of their hybrids especially if they have to go through the hassle of getting a motorcycle/trike endorsement.

At least it is projected to have two wheels in front, not in the back. Someday this might make it more stable than a Reliant Robin. Lifesaving documentary: Rolling a Reliant Robin | Top Gear | BBC - YouTube

Factory being leased to a textile manufacturer

http://gas2.org/2015/07/15/fishy-investors-new-tenants-bad-news-for-elio-motors/

Maybe they’re making the material for the seat covers? :smiley:

We covered quite a bit of Elio Motors here, with most of us being skeptical of them ever making it, but with us hoping they could pull it off. And I agree with others, even less of a chance of them pulling it off now due to the lower gas prices.

This is a year old, but the points still seem to be valid, for the most part:

This sort of “reverse trike” seems to be trendy right now, but yeah, Elio doesn’t seem to have it together as a company.

They seem to have attended the Elon Musk school of “keep promising your product is coming out really soon now:stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve wanted one since I first saw one, but have been unwilling to obligate with a deposit.

Well, for my birthday, my wife and kids “bought in” for me.

So, I’m in it until I get mine!

Oh, dear.
How much was the “deposit”?

He had more kids before the buy-in. :smiley:

Hmmm…I’m hoping they pull this off, because I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
White.
Add a rear spoiler.
Paint it up with Rebel Alliance Insignia.

Stop next to Cops, blow horn twice, roll down the window, & ask for directions to the Death Star.

:cool::D:p

Well, it’s not that they’re ‘trendy’ so much as it is that physics dictates that a ‘forward trike’, i.e. a kid’s tricycle, is inherently unstable. They cannot counter-steer before turning therefore when they turn they flip over.

OTOH, I see one of several local Teslas nearly every day. It’s a real product around Chicago.

Indeed. See the Reliant Robin documentary I linked. Though it did keep running.

That Elio is going with a bespoke engine is nuts. An 883 Sportster engine is just shy of the 55hp he wants, and is already EPA approved for a motorcycle. US Highland has a US-built, 50hp thumper that would fit anywhere.

I think he’s loaded his design down with a bunch of poison pills, so that as he approaches the go-live date (assuming he gets enough money to launch), he’ll be able to drop back a few yards and punt multiple times… “Well, it’d get 84 mpg if we could get our engine running… it’d be legal to drive with a car license if it satisfied car crash safety tests… it’d be under (whatever weight) if it didn’t have to have a catalytic converter…” and next thing you know, it’s overbudget, overweight, underperformance and unsafe at any speed.

But the Elio has two wheels up front and one in the back, creating greater stability forward-moving cornering.
I had a friend that used to refer to counter-steering as “fake left, go right”.