Elio Unbans Facebook Critics, Has $17 Million Pledged From Small Investors

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

Businesses aren’t the only groups of people who try to influence what we publish here. TTAC has been getting emails from a number of people who put deposits down on the yet-to-be-produced Elio trike, only to become disillusioned after production has been pushed back a number of times.

There are at least a couple of Facebook pages devoted to disaffected Elio enthusiasts that accuse Elio Motors and Paul Elio of misleading people. In addition to the delays, most of the complaints seem to center around the fact that the company is promoting and taking deposits for a $6,800 vehicle when Elio hasn’t yet raised enough money to start production of a car that Paul Elio admits doesn’t yet meet their advertised price point.

The company has been using social media to promote the enterprise and its critics have seized on Elio Motors’ Facebook page as a venue to express their displeasure. Words like “liars” and “scam ” have been tossed around. Consequently, a number of those critics say they have been banned from that page by Elio Motors.

TTAC managing editor Mark Stevenson and I looked into the complaints and we spent some time going through the critics’ own Facebook pages. We came to the same general conclusion: most of the furor was being generated by the same half dozen or so unhappy prospective customers, making the same complaints about missed deadlines, a lack of financing to get to production, and skepticism that the trike will be delivered at the promised $6,800 MSRP. What concerned me more than these pretty well known issues was the charge that Elio (the company, not the man) was censoring its critics by banning them on Facebook.

Whether spurred by their complaints or by my own inquiry about the bannings, Paul Elio told TTAC a couple of weeks ago that at least some of the the bannings were “a mistake” even though he claimed they were mostly due to people using abusive language. At the time he told me he was considering a blanket unbanning.

While banning people from a company’s Facebook page can be spun as censorship, just about anyone who has ever created online content knows how abusive internet commenters can get, so I have some empathy for Paul Elio. It’s not his job to provide a forum for people to say bad things about him.

This was all transpiring against the background of Elio getting ready to announce that, due to substantial interest, they were going to be opening up their enterprise to smaller individual investors. In February, the company announced that it was going to be using the statutes in the 2012 JOBS act to offer equity stakes to accredited investors (those with 7 figure assets and incomes of greater than $200k/yr). Funds raised from those investors are currently being used to fabricate the final pre-production P5 prototype that will be using Elio’s own engine and a production spec transmission from Aisin. Elio Motors says that subsequent to announcing opportunities for accredited investors, they were inundated with inquiries about investment opportunities for smaller investors.

Now, investors with fewer assets and smaller incomes will also be able to take an equity stake in the company, investing as little as $250.

At the time I spoke with him about the Facebook issue, Paul Elio asked me to hold off writing about the Facebook unbannings until the investment opportunity was announced. While I’m happy to have the good rapport that I have with Paul and his team, I’m not on that team and we publish things at TTAC based on our judgment of their newsworthiness, not based on what’s most helpful to a story’s subject. As it remained to be seen what would happen on Facebook, we’ve delayed this post until now.

So far it looks like Elio has been true to their word and unbanned all of their critics, though it appears that they’re reserving their right to re-institute bans based on what Paul Elio describes as bad behavior. As I expected, being unbanned hasn’t really mollified the critics. Just about the only thing more passionate than a convert is a convert who has renounced their faith.

In the meantime, Elio Motors has gone ahead with their crowdfunding effort directed at small investors, and they’ve announced that there has been significant interest. In less than three weeks, more than 5,000 small investors have “expressed non-binding interest” in putting up over $17 million, via the startengine.com website. What that means is that per the Security and Exchange Commission’s rules, while no money has yet changed hands, those investors have indeed pledged that amount of money — though they can opt out, hence the “non-binding” part. When the enrollment period ends at on July 31, Elio will then present documentation of the investors’ interest to the SEC and, if granted approval, Elio will then make those investors a formal offer.

The company is hoping to raise a total of $25 million through this route. Elio says those funds will be used to build 25 pre-production validation vehicles. All along, I’ve felt that the most legitimate criticism of the Elio enterprise is whether or not the company will be able to raise the $200 million that it says it will need to start production. While it’s only a fraction of the amount needed, $25 million is a good start.

At the same time, the automotive history buff in me knows that Preston Tucker was prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission over how he raised money from investors. The infamous Dale’s Liz Carmichael was also prosecuted for fraud relating to investments in the company. While Elio Motors needs to find investors, I think that taking on grassroots investors creates another potential issue for the company’s critics.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

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  • Fred.smith Fred.smith on Jul 11, 2015

    Unfortunately, every claim Elio makes needs to be parsed carefully. The concept is good. But the numbers and the actions of the company don't live up to the idea. For example, the company is claiming that they will give more bang for the buck than conventional vehicle manufacturers, by using existing technology. Why haven't they been able to build a prototype that has all the pieces they claim, even if it doesn't meet the performance and pricing claims? Just how much can it cost for labor to hand-build a parts-bin special? Let's say 100X the MSRP. That would be $680K per prototype. Round up to $750K each, and $3M would build the four so far. That's ignoring the fact that the P2 was a rebuild of the P1, and none of them are fully functional. This company, who claims to be so efficient and well-managed, has burned through $65M to build $3M worth of prototypes. They are still in debt for ~$20M for the equipment at the plant and couldn't come up with the $7.5M to buy the plant. They should have been able to pay off the equipment and buy the plant and still have about $35M on hand. Once they built the $680K prototypes, they should have the molds available for the custom parts. At 10x MSRP, they should be able to build cookie-cutter prototypes by hand for $68K each. Rounding up to $75K each, they could have build 40 prototypes for another $3M. Instead of having over $30M on hand, with 40 prototypes undergoing testing, they are broke, in debt, and $230M from starting production. Is this really the company to invest in? The audited financial statements required by the Regulation A offering will probably open a few people's eyes.

    • Ronnie Schreiber Ronnie Schreiber on Jul 11, 2015

      Elio says that the $25 million raised in the Reg A offering will be used to build the 25 testing and validation prototypes. It shouldn't cost them $1 million per vehicle, certainly not if they're building 25 at the same time. A company like Metalcrafters charges about a million dollars to build a high profile one-off concept car. I would assume that some of that $25 million will go towards the cost of testing and possibly tooling that could later be used for production. Otherwise, the number doesn't quite add up for me.

  • Benders Benders on Jul 11, 2015

    I'm guessing someone linked this article on an anti-Elio forum for all the haters to come here with their "facts."

    • Fred.smith Fred.smith on Jul 11, 2015

      You seem to misunderstand the use of quotation marks. "haters" should have the quotes, and they are not needed for facts. We need a corollary to Godkin's law about the use of the term "haters". It seems to be used whenever a person defending a weak on indefensible position is faced with uncomfortable truth. The uncomfortable truth is that Paul Elio had a great idea, and has mismanaged millions of dollars and has lost track of the original concept along the way. Without real prototypes and testing, there is no evidence that the performance claims are reasonable and that the vehicle is viable at anything approaching the marketing claim's price point. The history of the company gives little reassurance as to the ability of the current management to actually produce the vehicle, as opposed to merely being good at collecting donations. When the crowdfunding from Regulation A moves from "testing the waters" to "offering", there will be a legal requirement of disclosure and transparency far in excess of the claimed "transparency" that Elio has offered up until now. If you, or anyone else, doesn't bother to research before investing, it won't bother us "haters" at all. It won't even bother us if you make lots of money on the investment/gamble, either.

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