Ten thousand is a lot more than 40. That alone makes 2019 a pivotal year for Eugene startup Arcimoto.

The electric vehicle manufacturer finished last year having made about 40 of its all-electric vehicles called FUVs — Fun Utility Vehicles.

By the end of 2019, CEO Mark Frohnmayer hopes to be producing them on a commercial scale, at a rate of 200 per week, or 10,000 per year.

"Basically we are in the home stretch for getting the vehicles ready for retail production," Frohnmayer said last week from a parking lot near the Consumer Technology Association's massive CES exhibition in Las Vegas, where Arcimoto officials were showing off their three-wheeled, two-seat vehicles.

Frohnmayer founded the company in 2007, envisioning a fully electric cruiser ideal for daily commutes and as a recreational vehicle in warm-weather, resort and retirement communities.

But Arcimoto in the last few months has taken some of its largest steps away from startup status and toward becoming a genuine vehicle manufacturer.

Arcimoto's $6 million production line in its leased Eugene factory space went online in the fall, giving it end-to-end manufacturing capability — assembling the entire vehicle in-house — for the first time.

Arcimoto briefly opened a Eugene rental center and showroom in late October to build exposure locally, with plans to re-open it and a second rental showroom in the Encinitas-Carlsbad area north of San Diego later this year.

"Over the course of the last year we've been in various stages of refinement of the vehicle," Frohnmayer said. "We're building about a dozen more test vehicles that will be used to validate a bunch of different aspects of production, finalizing everything from electromagnetics to (battery) life cycle."

But the biggest milestone for the company could come around April, when it expects to start fulfilling the first of more than 3,000 pre-ordered FUVs for clients around the world. The back-order list has grown from about 1,800 in late 2017.

FUVs are expected to cost $12,000 to $15,000 once Arcimoto reaches commercial scale, with numerous add-ons offered.

"We've been working on this thing for 11 years, and now we're a few months away from the starting line," Frohnmayer said. "It's a full-court press across the organization to get into, I wouldn't say real production, but getting into production where we're really starting to scale the (FUV) unit, where the design is locked."

But the massive production upswing comes as Arcimoto still faces some of the financial headwinds common among startups: shifting from an investor-reliant funding model to a full-scale manufacturing and retail operation, with revenue coming from sales.

"That's the first step, getting into production and starting to deliver to real customers, cutting down the cost, improving efficiency and all the rest," Frohnmayer said. "We are very excited that we're almost to that starting line."

Arcimoto, with about 80 employees, has relied mostly on issuing stock to stay afloat. The company's 2017 initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange raised nearly $20 million in vital funds to refine and produce its first FUVs.

As of September, the company had $2.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, down from $11.2 in March, according to its financial filings. The firm reported spending $7.4 million on operating expenses through the third quarter of last year, significantly more than in the previous year as it ramped up production.

To raise new capital, Arcimoto in November issued 504,900 shares of common stock, which was expected to raise more than $1.5 million. Then last month a Florida venture capital firm FOD Capital, LLC acquired a 9 percent stake in Arcimoto, according to financial filings, netting the company $4.5 million.

But Arcimoto's biggest financial prize continues to elude it: a coveted $100 million loan through the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program, which has provided billions of dollars in low-interest loans to automakers like Ford, Nissan and Tesla. The funds could better position Arcimoto against popular electric vehicle prototypes developed by French, German, Chinese and Japanese automakers.

"We don't have anything new to report in terms of the conversations with the federal government, but you can assume that conversation is continuing," Frohnmayer said. The loan "is a tool that's appropriate for scaling capital, so we basically need to make the business case that those funds can be accessible" and repaid down the road.

"We've got to walk before we can run," he added.

In the short term, shipping out pre-ordered FUVs this year will bring Arcimoto its first real sales revenue. The company says its current pre-order deposits represent about $50 million in anticipated sales.

At a rate of 10,000 vehicles per year, Arcimoto expects annual sales of about $150 million.

The past year "was not about a particular production target, 2018 was about getting the product done," Frohnmayer said, "and 2019 is about beginning to actually market the product as a whole. It teases up for a really good vision for 2020."

Follow Elon Glucklich on Twitter @EGlucklich. Email elon.glucklich@registerguard.com.