Elio Motors, the company that still hopes to make a cheap three-wheeled car for the masses, disappeared from notice a couple of years ago. They are, apparently, not dead yet with a dream that still lives. Now likely thanks to some Overstock.com investment and a plan to introduce a new cryptocurrency for investment.
Overstock.com plans to buy a chunk of Elio common stock before Elio can go public (they announced plans to do an FCC filing earlier this year). The investment coincides, coincidentally, with a plan to issue an “investment cryptocurrency” to be called ElioCoin to be issued by an investment bank through Overstock.com’s trading platform tZERO.
Because of public announcements regarding investment points having requirements that those investments have listed plans, the Elio press release for the announcement includes where that income will go. We can safely deduce that Elio is not doing well at all given the amount of money involved and the plans for it. This is basically “keep afloat” cash.
The stock purchase from Overstock.com will be at $2.75 per share for a total of $2.5 million. “Elio intends to use the proceeds of the new investment to fund capital expenditures and pay certain outstanding debt and accounts payable.” That’s in addition to the debt board members at Elio hold over the company, which will also be converted into common stock at $2.75 per share. That’s another $1.7 million.
Overstock.com’s founder and CEO, Patrick M. Byrne, commented that the car could sell well at $7,500 (it’s now-current pricing, up from the original $6,800 price). He said so while mentioning Overstock’s Overstock Cars and Overstock Retail sites.
The plan for the cryptocurrency is to create an investment coin for Elio through which they can raise funds (legally) from the public to get the car into production. This is the latest of several attempts at raising capital to get the car off the ground, as chronicled here at CarNewsCafe many times over.
Maybe this one will work. We’re not going to hold our breath.
