Although CarNewsCafe, and myself in particular, remain skeptical about the Elio and its chances of being anything more than vaporware, the company is poised to disrupt the industry in fundamental ways. Some of those ways are being seen elsewhere in the industry as hints as a different future and Elio is helping highlight those. I wrote my take on those disruptions over at iSeeCars.com.
The Elio as a car was conceived in 2008, when the automotive industry was at its lowest in decades. Since then, the car has perpetually been “18 months away” from production; and still is, we assume, as no firm production date has been set beyond a vague “next year.” Most of the problems have been funding. The company needs around $250-300 million to get started and has less than a quarter of that on hand right now. They may have found a solution for that, and if so, we expect the automotive industry will begin to change substantially over the next few years. Here’s how the Elio is causing the disruption that will bring about those changes.
