I Agree, Sondors Electric Autocycle is Everything Elio Is Not

Last year, Storm Sondors, a Malibu-based entrepreneur, used an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to launch a very basic $499 electric bicycle. He’s since sold 15,000 of his Asian-made electric bikes.

Buoyed by that success, Mr. Sondors has announced the creation of the Sondors Electric Car Company, which he says will sell an electric-powered, aluminum-bodied, three-passenger, enclosed reverse trike with a variety of battery pack options that offer 50 to 200 miles of range.

The Sondors electric trike is supposed to have a starting price of $10,000 and will be called the Model Sondors, more likely a nod to Tesla than to Henry Ford.

The folks over at Gas2.org think the Model Sondors is everything the proposed Elio is not. I agree with that statement, though not in the same way as Gas2go’s Steve Hanley.

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  • Theflyersfan Expect a press report about an expansion of VW's Mexican plant any day now. I'm all for worker's rights to get the best (and fair) wages and benefits possible, but didn't VW, and for that matter many of the Asian and European carmaker plants in the south, already have as good of, if not better wages already? This can drive a wedge in those plants and this might be a case of be careful what you wish for.
  • Jkross22 When I think about products that I buy that are of the highest quality or are of great value, I have no idea if they are made as a whole or in parts by unionized employees. As a customer, that's really all I care about. When I think about services I receive from unionized and non-unionized employees, it varies from C- to F levels of service. Will unionizing make the cars better or worse?
  • Namesakeone I think it's the age old conundrum: Every company (or industry) wants every other one to pay its workers well; well-paid workers make great customers. But nobody wants to pay their own workers well; that would eat into profits. So instead of what Henry Ford (the first) did over a century ago, we will have a lot of companies copying Nike in the 1980s: third-world employees (with a few highly-paid celebrity athlete endorsers) selling overpriced products to upper-middle-class Americans (with a few urban street youths willing to literally kill for that product), until there are no more upper-middle-class Americans left.
  • ToolGuy I was challenged by Tim's incisive opinion, but thankfully Jeff's multiple vanilla truisms have set me straight. Or something. 😉
  • ChristianWimmer The body kit modifications ruined it for me.