Elio Motors has been out here for so long not making cars that it is easy to forget that it still exists. But it does, I guess, somehow? It exists enough to push out a press release Thursday saying that it will be making an electric version of its three-wheeled car, the one that doesn’t exist.
The sheer gall of this company is something to behold. Take, for example, the press release’s headline, which is, “Elio Motors announces its intent to produce an electric version of it’s [sic] popular vehicle,” which contains a grammatical error and, again, is also describing a car that isn’t mass produced and has only ever existed in prototype form. Elio was founded sometime in the early ‘10s — the timeline is a bit nebulous — but has been not mass producing cars for so long now that it says the market has changed.
Elio Motors was founded with a vision to create a high mileage, low-cost vehicle that everyone could afford. During the initial development phase Elio Motors believed that the best strategy was to first develop a gas-powered option, establish it in the marketplace, and then launch the electric version. The entire automotive landscape has changed significantly, and Elio Motors now believes that it is better to first develop an electric powered Elio-E and get it into production. Elio Motors was able to garner over 65,000 reservations for the (Elio-G) gas-powered vehicle, proving the demand for its unique styling and design. Once the electric version is produced, Elio plans to potentially launch the Elio-G for consumers looking for a gas powered alternative.
Elio also says that this move is aimed not just at potential buyers but at investors as well, as Elio is a public company and EV companies have been popular with investors in the past couple years.
The announcement is based on the change in consumer demand and finance markets’ new appetite for electric vehicles.
Elio Motors stock price is up 136 percent today because of the announcement, trading at $1.04 per share as of this writing, it has been a penny stock for almost all of its existence. Some might look at all of this and assume that something untoward is going on, but not me, I assume every company has only the best intentions.