The “Elio” seemed so promising. Named for Paul Elio, the Dreamer-in-Chief, the three-wheel concept is beguiling; the design, elegant. But the dream may be over.
Elio Motors was funded largely by advance reservations, a risky scheme in itself. And the delivery date for the three-wheeled totally-enclosed “cars” has been postponed several times, ultimate production delivery nowhere in sight.
As of January, the company was over a hundred million in the red, with no firm date for the production units, and nothing but a few test vehicles delivered, according to Jalopnik. Cedric Glover, the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, where the factory resides, insists that early consumer-investors are “waiting for nothing”:
If you look at Paul Elio from 2009, certainly by the time you get to 2011 and 2012, it’s clear that what he is in fact is a dreamer and a schemer. It leads one to ask, what was the actual motivation behind committing these facilities, this equipment to Paul Elio and the Elio operation.
Easy to answer: hope. Though I suppose it could have been a scheme, a fraud, from the beginning.
Trouble is, it is the nature of start-ups that the difference, on paper, between a fraud and a hopeful long shot is a mere hair’s width . . . right up until the moment of success — or failure. This is one reason why government regulation of start-ups is such a bad idea. It should be up to entrepreneurs, bankers and investors to provide the desired checks and balances.
But the story has not stood still. Government demands obeisance. According to KSLA News 12, dateline Jefferson Parish, Louisiana’s “Motor Vehicle Commission is accusing Elio Motors of operating as a manufacturer/dealer of recreational products without a license.”
First I heard of a license, and I’ve been following the story for some time. I wonder when Mr. Elio heard about that license.
The panel decided during a hearing Monday in Metairie to fine Elio Motors $545,000 for offering reservations for the future purchase of its 3-wheel vehicles.
The commission also ordered Elio Motors to obtain both licenses to manufacture and deal in Louisiana and to place all refundable Elio Motors reservations into a trust account within 60 days.
This is awfully late in the game to try to secure some exit strategy for investors. Indeed, the whole thing looks more like a simple shake-down, or perhaps a pretense to prosecute for fraud. That is, government-as-usual.
I sniff something more, though: the influence of competitor greed. As the company made in its statement informing of an appeal to the recent ruling, it makes no sense now to grab funds from the production process. It is sure to doom the whole project. Which I would not be shocked to learn is precisely what a lot of other businesses want.
Which would not be unheard of.
This is how it works, folks: licensing and registration is instituted to help current businesses keep out upstarts.
Par for the course for mercantilism, protectionism, progressivism or whatever we call the modern corporate state. The sanctimonious tone to the mayor’s cavils, calling the company founder a “dreamer and a schemer,” is a little hard to take. Where does the mayor think new products come from? Other mayors? They come from dreamers, schemers, wheeler-dealers.
I understand — there was a goofy odor to the whole emprise from the start. Though excited about the concept, I wondered at the initial promised purchase price, less than half of what the in-production Polaris Slingshot (see below) goes for. Further, funding by consumer investment (pre-order reservation charges) is so . . . “not done” . . . except that it is: GoFundMe and Kickstarter and all those other crowd-funding operations have proven how well this sort of endeavor can go. Perhaps the fact that Elio didn’t use one of those hubs suggests the fatal glitch.
It is worth noting that automobile guru Eric Peters suggested last year another problem besetting the Elio: it is not an “electric car,” so it got very little play in the news. There is indeed a cultural conspiracy (that is, no real conspiracy at all; just groupthink) to snub innovations in internal combustion tech while promoting even goofier (and much-subsidized) “alt-fuel” auto technology.
Had the major media not fixed its collectivist head so firmly up its collective colon, perhaps Paul Elio would not be in his current predicament. And maybe, just maybe, we would be seeing the Elio on the roads by now.
twv
Wirkman Comment 