Elio trike- Good news & bad news

[bluegoatwoods]

You know what I don't understand? Why don't Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc., market something like this?

Toyota and a few others are at least building prototypes of vehicles that are similar. But they could have had one on the market by now quite easily.

I'm afraid that the answer must be one of two things; either the big boys know, somehow, that they'll never sell enough of them to make it worth-while --I doubt it. But they might think so-- or they're sticking to the Starship Enterprise-on-wheels model of auto design out of some kind of stubbornness.

Either answer is pretty depressing. But I can't think of anything else that makes sense.

I do wish that someone would get Elio's and similar vehicles to market. I think they'd sell and I think a lot of people would like transport of this type.

 

[racie35]

Imagine being in one a escalade doesn't see..that's probably more than enough to keep the big automakers away.

 

[bluegoatwoods]

Imagine being in one a escalade doesn't see..that's probably more than enough to keep the big automakers away.

Yet I can remember a time when Volkswagen Beetles shared the road with some truly monstrous cars. Imagine a 1970 Chrysler New Yorker, for instance. It must have weighed three tons. Probably not. But it might have come close. And I don't recall anyone blaming the manufacturer over these weight advantages. If anyone tried, I doubt if they got much traction.

I kinda suspect that the big automakers are still stuck in some pretty narrow thinking.

I've often wondered why there wasn't, say, a Chevy motorcycle decades ago. I'm guessing that GM just didn't see it as needful or desirable.

But if they'd have used something other than their fat butts to think with, then they might have avoided that bankruptcy and bailout back in 2009. The Japanese invasion of the 1970s might not have been as troublesome as it was.

And when they finally do decide to do something new, they come up with, for instance, an electric car that's fairly impressive. But it costs thirty-five thousand bucks.

Morons. If Elio becomes the General Motors of the twenty-first Century it'll serve 'em right.

 

[allen standley]

1. they might have avoided that bankruptcy and bailout back in 2009.
AND
2.an electric car that's fairly impressive. But it costs thirty-five thousand bucks.

Blue! We have been shammed by tyranny since 1913. The bailouts are a result of THEFT to the taxpayer. MANY should have been jailed. Didn't happen. Mr. Tesla had the answers but they have been kept from us. No- I don't wear tinfoil but another storm is brewing. Heads up to politicians.
I hope I don't regret this post.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChD-zWutIego-bcHKOatFWA
Let's wake everyone.

 

[bluegoatwoods]

Here's a question. I'll have to fill in the background a bit. And I'm not sure that I have all of the details right. But I'm pretty sure it's accurate in general.

Guys like Ransom E Olds, James P Buick, Louis Chevrolet, John and Horace Dodge and Henry Ford were good automotive engineers. But they lacked capital to work with. So they had to be good salesmen as well. They had to entice investors.

There were some others, William C Durant comes to mind, who weren't automotive engineers. But they jumped into the same game. Enticing investors and trying to start up auto companies. I think Walter P Chrysler fits in this group. I don't really know. But I don't think he was quite the automotive engineer that the first group was.

And, to be honest, I don't know a thing about Ransom E Olds' financing. But in 1903, 1904, Oldsmobile was easily the biggest auto company on the planet. (Maybe Daimler was some sort of competition. But they're a 'maybe' and they're the only one.) I doubt if Oldsmobile got that big on Ransom's capital or profit. I'd bet on outside investors.

(And as I'm working with these ideas, I'm becoming a bit more optimistic about Elio. I'll explain why shortly.)

Both William C Durant and Henry Ford had a few episodes where they'd attract investment and then fight so badly with their investors that the whole thing would fall apart. One of those fights, involving Henry, ended up spawning Cadillac. But Henry was cut loose and left to start over. He did okay in the end, as we all know.

But...anyway....how in the world did all of these guys attract that much investment? At least part of the answer is that there was a bit of money in Michigan at that time looking for some place to be invested. Money that had accumulated in a relative handful of families from the previous century or so as a result of fur and timber trade. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some profit made from mining that was beginning to accumulate as well. Though I suppose the iron ore industry was only in its infancy at that point.

So.....perhaps these guys had an advantage over Paul Elio in that there was some capital looking for investment right there at just the right time. But, on the other hand, capital is more fluid and moves around the entire globe more easily than it did back then. So it could be argued that Elio has the advantage of a larger pool to draw from.

So why hasn't he attracted the investment he needs to get this show on the road? Well...maybe the possible investors have no faith in his product or business model.

But maybe there's more to it than that. Consider; the Ford Motor Company was founded in 1905, 1906, something like that. Chevrolet was founded in 1906, 1907, something like that. It took a couple of years for Henry to get the Model T on the market. And I guess it took off like a rocket. But that's fairly exceptional. I think it took Chevrolet something on the order of fifteen years or so to become strong enough to threaten Ford's dominance.

So....the Elio was something like a dream five years ago and has, at least, been in development for the last two or three years. Maybe my impatience is not justified. Perhaps something innovative like the Elio needs a bit more than two or three years to be fully developed. And maybe production really will start in 2016 on a product that actually is ready to hit the road.

The argument, mentioned above, between Henry Ford and his investors might be illustrative. The gist of the argument appears to have been that the investors wanted something gotten to market in order to start generating revenue. Henry wanted to perfect a product before putting it on the market. (Why didn't they hash this out before starting? I don't know. But reckless business deals are not unheard of.)

But this perfected, or at lest developed, product that Henry wanted sounds a bit to me like the Model T. This argument took place in 1903. Henry started over and got the Model T to market in five years. But the Model T, remember, is an exceptional success story.

So perhaps I ought to be more optimistic for Elio for a couple more years at least.

Go, Paul, go! You could be the Henry Ford of the twenty-first Century if you do this right.

 

[george_n_texas]

If you haven't heard their webb site says they should be on the market in the forth quarter of this year.

 

[racie35]

That means 2017...unless they find another reason for delay

 

[wheelbender6]

"they should be on the market in the forth quarter of this year. "
I know what I want for Christmas this year.

 

[fasteddy]

In the early years of the automotive industry they didn't have to deal with the Green Weenies whining at the politicians who run like sheep with a dog after them anytime there is a large enough group complaining.

These are of course are the people who are paddling their plastic kayaks around floating oil rigs while holding up vinyl signs when they arrived at the protest site in their S.U.V.'s.

In the early days Elio would have built their cars and taken a chance that they would sell with out worrying whether they met crash test standards, environmental standards or mileage standards.

We just can't have it both ways.

Steve.

 

[wheelbender6]

The Houston Auto show is this weekend so I checked the website to see if Elio would be there. Unfortunately, Elio is not listed on the auto show site. I would think that Elio would make appearances at these auto shows if they are truly close to production.