At that price tag I see it competing with used cars. If you are looking for cheap transportation you can get a used car in a decent condition for ~$2000. That would leave you with $4800 to spend on gas. According to the EIA the average household spends $3000 on gas per year. Dividing by two and assuming two cars and two daily commutes, the $4800 would only last for around three years.
So that means that it would take three years for somebody to break even and start saving cash on gas if you decide to go with the Elio instead of a used car.
So whether this concept will sell or not depends in part on whether the customers will view it as a long term investment or a short term fix until they are better off financially.
And I really don't buy their second commuter-only-car pitch. Somebody who can afford a new $20K vehicle can also afford the $700 (they claim $800 in gas per year) yearly penalty on gas, so the only people I see being attracted by this concept are people short on money which probably drive used cars.
If I had to guess I would say it's intending to fill the niche of the family's second car. Something for Dad to drive to work in while Mum drives the kids around in the main car. The person who's so poor that they can only afford a $2,000 car probably can't afford to make an investment that will take 3 years to pay off.
I bought a 1998 Kia Sephia for $1000, with 92k miles on it. Drove it for 2.5 years when the transmission started going out on it at 142k miles. Sold it for $450.
After that bought a 2001 Hyundai Accent for $1000, with 96k miles on it. Drove that thing until it had 136k at which point it started having some issues that would be expensive to fix. Sold that after owning it for 3.5 years for $900. I put about 4k into it, including oil changes, AC charges, and various other bits of maintenance (timing belt was expensive). I don't think I did too bad.
Both cars were bought in Phoenix, AZ, the Kia was sold there too, the Hyundai I sold in Denver, CO since I had moved there.
The Hyundai got fantastic gas mileage at about 30 Mpg with city/highway driving (about 50:50 mix). The Kia a little less at 28 mpg.
Both the Kia and the Hyundai were reliable for the time period that I had the car. Had I put some more time into the Hyundai it would probably have kept going without issues, I just was in the position with work and my finances to be able to go and purchase a car rather than continue putting money into a car.
I picked up a 1996 Honda Civic DX that needed a new clutch and master cylinder ($500 including labor) but was otherwise in great shape (maybe 1 year left on tires/brake pads) for $800.
Sure it had some irrelevant body flaws (bumper paint was flaking a bit and there were some dings on the panels, nothing larger than the size of a half-dollar) but for $1300 and 26-28mpg, not a bad deal at all!
Just scour Craigslist and local (physical) boards.
The site didn't load for me, but I found their YouTube[1] channel to have a gander. They remind me a lot of the microcars[2] of the 40s and 50s, the most famous of which would be BMW's Isetta[3]. In terms of style, however, I the Elio reminds me a bit of the Messerschmitt KR200[4].
Oh Lord. Their videos could use some work. Not trying to diminish their work though. I'm really happy that multiple companies are tackling the affordable, fuel efficient, car void.
I think they REALLY should have put a CVT in it. I don't know why they are still in the manual / automatic mode. CVTs are great for low powered cars. They have less moving parts than automatic transmissions. They are standard on Mitsubishis and Nissans now.
If you ask people who are driving a Honda City as to whether they will buy a Nano. The answer is obviously no.
Either way Maruthi Suzuki 800 variants like Alto, WagonR et al. Are pretty good low segment vehicles.
And for Indian roads, traffic and wear and tear. Unless you have surplus money which you wish to waste. Its nonsense to buy an expensive car(For daily uses at least).
Well I have never driven one, I only asked my cousin. But you are right about Indian roads and traffic. If you are going 2km/h with a pothole you can swim in, why do you need an expensive car.
Priced too low. You can get nice used cars at the price. Any Toyota or Honda engine should run to 200-250k miles. I doubt this thing will make it to 100k.
If Honda made a semi-enclosed three wheeler for the "damn it I'm riding no matter the weather" audience, they would have a chance. They could also sell it for at least $10k and still sell a lot of them. The Elio is a solution to no particular problem.
Their site says 5000+ people have already ordered it. So its already solving their problems, no?
Besides used cars are still 'used' cars. And its not just engine running 200-250K miles. By 100K miles the juice from the engine is gone. It can still run an additional 150K miles, may be. But for a very different definition of 'run'.
And you still have to drive some one else's used car, for mileage no where close to Elio. Plus all other wear and tear hassles of an old car.
Here you get a brand new one for a decent price which can run for the next 2 years. And for 6.8K dollars its a super cheap investment to make.
Are you offering to help YouTube? That error indicates code on youtube.com is being blocked from accessing the page embedding the video (which would, for example, stop Google from accessing your personal info on every site that embeds a YouTube video). It's not something the containing page is doing wrong.
Wonder how this came up today, these guys have been around since 2008, or a year before I started my three wheeler "car" company. I am surprised to see they have one that runs, but the road to production will be long and rough. I'll bet anyone $100 that they won't ship a production version by "Summer of 2014".
For myself, I would be interested in this car due to low price, high expected reliability (not a lot to go wrong), excellent fuel economy and the ability to use HOV lanes. I have an SUVish vehicle and frankly it is overkill for what I typically carry.
Looks cool and I'd love to have one to zoom to work and around the city, but I would hate to be in an accident against a normal car, let alone a multi-ton SUV, and that's what pretty much everyone else drives.
There are other small cars, like those manufactured by Smart, that do quite well in crash tests. The car probably won't survive, but it's relatively cheap to build a top-quality protective cage around the driver when the interior is this small.
i kind of hate to put myself at risk of overturning at 80mph on mild windy day on mild turn on 280 just because 3 wheeler (motorcycle) is easier (read cheaper) to certify than 4 wheeler (car). Of course that is also because i can afford to pay additional money of "car price", and i'd probably thought differently if i couldn't.
Not saying that such a vehicle don't have its place. Though i have hard time imagining it. If not highway - than cities - European cities are well populated either by small 4-wheel cars or just scooters. Doesn't seem like there is niche for car size 3 wheeler without full benefits of a car.
I looked up the point you are making. The data backs you up, 3 wheelers suffer from inherent instability on turns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 "When the single wheel is in the front , the vehicle is inherently unstable in a braking turn, as the combined tipping forces at the center of gravity from turning and braking can rapidly extend beyond the triangle formed by the contact patches of the wheels. This type, if not tipped, also has a greater tendency to spin out ("swap ends") when handled roughly." What a pity. I was quite excited about the prospects.
> "When the single wheel is in the front, the vehicle is inherently unstable in a braking turn [...]
There is probably a reason that this vehicle has the single wheel in the back. While I think in principle this results in similar instability in accelerating turns as the one-in-front configuration has in braking turns, this is greatly mitigated by the fact that wheeled vehicles generally brake much more quickly than they accelerate.
Not to disagree, but I believe many of the problems with three-wheeled vehicles are solved by putting the single wheel at the BACK. e.g. the Peugeot HyMotion3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ZT8adga1E
To inherent instability of 3 wheelers one also need to add inherent instability at speed of low-weight small vehicle with high height to width ratio (an issue arising from aerodynamics) what 3 wheelers are. The best one can get is a T-REX like (http://www.campagnamotors.com/). Now, if somebody managed to sell T-REX at $7K instead of $40K+ - that would be something :)
Not to defend Wordpress as I'm not particularly a fan, but it's not all that complex to use Wordpress/Apache behind nginx with a reasonable caching strategy.
Even on a cheap VPS I've configured it to handle tens of thousands of requests per minute.
You don't even need nginx or a cache. Bog-standard WordPress, no extra plugins, behind only Apache, will handle HN front-page traffic without falling over. All you need to tune is httpd.conf and my.cnf; the reason these sites die is that they allow more Apache processes to spin up than their little VPS actually has RAM.
The httpd processes push the MySQL posts table out of the OS's filesystem cache, the newly spun up processes eat up all the free memory, and you start swapping and the whole thing falls over. Turn off keepalive, set the maximum number of httpd processes to a number that leaves enough RAM for the DB and filesystem cache, and the blog would be fine.
My blog's been top of HN FP a few times. It's just apache/mysql/wordpress on the smallest Linode, sharing it with a half dozen other sites.
On something about half the spec of the lowest end Linode I'm not as worried about mitigating the HN effect (not something I have to worry about) as I am just getting the most I can from the instance - this means as few dynamically generated and database hitting requests as possible.
But yeah, like yourself, just pointing out that a Wordpress instance that can take a battering is eminently achievable.
That looks right, as I don't see how they could possibly have legal lights or the silly federally mandated 2.5mph bumper.
However, I think even though they don't meet the bizarre federal "safety" requirements they could still have the IIHS crash test it anyway, and hence get a star rating.
It also looks like they got AAMVA to recommend that enclosed trikes not require a motorcycle license, so that's a boon for them (sorry for the spam press release link but secondary sources were even worse): http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/18/5923704/elio-motors-judicia... .
Number of current reservations: 4815
(As of Nov 05, 2013)
Elio is not a fling. It is not a novelty.
=========================================
It is the product of a mobile society naturally evolving to a more efficient and practical form of transportation.
Let’s look at the facts and realities of the world we live in:
Gas today is at an all-time high
Space is becoming a smaller and smaller commodity and we’re being crowded off our roads and bumped and dinged out of our parking lots
Cars cost more than the average house did only a few decades ago
Traditional personal transportation isn’t working like it used to. We need a new way of getting around.
That’s when a car enthusiast, a visionary, a man with a dream named Paul Elio got an idea. A simple, brilliant idea. To create a vehicle for today’s generation of drivers that addressed their transportation needs and the world’s new realities.
The result is Elio
===============
And it’s more than merely a fun, fuel-efficient way to get around. Elio can have a profound effect on our economy – creating approximately 1500 jobs in Louisiana alone. And we all know the ripple effect a vehicle has when you factor in everyone from the suppliers and their employees to all the other businesses that prosper from putting previously unemployed people to work.
Elio is a major step in curbing the erosion of our environment and making us far less dependent on foreign oil. Just think how that will affect the political landscape of our world!
From the economy to the environment to the national debt to foreign relations, Elio is an idea whose time has come – and that time is now!
Specs
=====
84 Miles per Gallon
It gets 84 miles to the gallon on the highway. That means you can go from Detroit to New York City on a tank of gas – or drive from Shreveport LA to Dallas and back – then back to Dallas again – and still have about 110 miles left before a refill. How is that possible? Keep reading.
Anticipated 5 Star Crash Test Rating
Each Elio comes equipped with a Safety Management System that includes three airbags – a reinforced roll-cage frame, Anti-Lock Braking System, and 50% larger crush zones than similar vehicles. Preliminary safety tests on computer models anticipate a 5-Star safety rating.
8-Gallon Tank
It can go 672 miles, or thereabouts, because it has an 8-gallon tank and 8X84=672. Of course, other factors will affect your mileage but you get the point.
American Made = American Jobs
It should come as no surprise that Elio will create a number of much-needed jobs for American workers. We’re estimating 1,500 jobs at our Shreveport, LA plant beginning in 2014.
Power in Numbers
An inline, 3 cylinder, .9 liter, 55 HP, fuel-injected, SOHC gas-powered, liquid-cooled, automotive engine.
Eco-Friendly
This is a very green vehicle – and we’re not just talking about the color. Yes, it gets 84 MPG on the highway, but you’ll be doing your share of city driving, too. Fear not, with its city rate of 49 MPG, you’ll be consuming only 1/3 of what the average American vehicle consumes.
Only $6,800
It only costs $6,800. That’s about what you would pay for an outboard motor to power a rowboat.
Our Transmission Mission
5-speed manual or automatic. And yes, it has a reverse gear.
So that means that it would take three years for somebody to break even and start saving cash on gas if you decide to go with the Elio instead of a used car.
So whether this concept will sell or not depends in part on whether the customers will view it as a long term investment or a short term fix until they are better off financially.
And I really don't buy their second commuter-only-car pitch. Somebody who can afford a new $20K vehicle can also afford the $700 (they claim $800 in gas per year) yearly penalty on gas, so the only people I see being attracted by this concept are people short on money which probably drive used cars.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=9831