Happy Friday Elio’ers! We are down to one shopping week left… are you ready? If you want to be the favorite Aunt/Uncle/Mother/Father/Friend this holiday, you can always give an Elio “All In” Reservation as a gift, order by Sunday and we will send you a printable card to give as a present now and the t-shirt will come in January. The rare 2-fer gift – one gift for next week, and another gift (t-shirt) next month. Way better than Amazon!

This week’s blog is similar to the “Top 3 questions” blogs we have done in the past where we answer the three most common questions we receive through email. The Holiday twist this week is we are going to answer three “internet” questions that we have culled from Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Forums/Articles etc.

The internet is incredible. Many of us that grew up before the internet remember having to read a book to find an answer. Now all one has to do is say “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” to their phone and ask literally any question and get an answer within seconds. Simply amazing. We now have access to information at any time from practically anywhere.

The other amazing part of the internet is the ease with which a person or group of people, whether they know anything about a subject or not, can add their $.02 and be heard. Sometimes these random ideas are heard so loudly and widely that it becomes “fact.” This phenomenon is so rampant that there are websites created just to debunk/diffuse these rumors like snopes.com, factcheck.com and many more.

The discussions that happen within the Elio online community today are nowhere near “snopes” level. They do however take on their own lives occasionally and move from opinion to “internet fact.” Fortunately none of the topics about Elio Motors will cause people to go home and throw away a food (candy) or forward a picture of a tech entrepreneur and get your share of millions of dollars (Facebook). Ours seem to start slowly and get quoted and misquoted until who knows what started it (remember the telephone game?).

Let’s take a look at a couple of these and clear the air (and maybe inject some humor…).

The windshield wiper doesn’t work on P3/P4/P5:

Um, no, it doesn’t. The reason? Because we don’t want it to work on the prototypes. We have talked about this forever mostly at each tour stop. We don’t want a handmade one-of-a kind prototype, the one that we take around the country to share the experience with thousands of people, driving in the rain. Too much risk for such an important piece of our company, don’t you think? The Elio gets so much attention when it is out on the road that people do some crazy things while driving to get close to it. Adding rain to the equation is just silly. Additionally, the windows are hand formed Plexiglas and a wiper going back and forth across it would scratch the surface (yes, the production vehicle will have automotive glass, by Guardian). The final Elio will have a working windshield wiper for which the engineers have designed a successful solution.

Fake Accounts on Facebook/Online Forums/Twitter:

There have been discussions on a couple of websites about Elio hiring/paying people to act and answer on our behalf, a “paid supporter” of sorts. We can say, with 100% certainty and honesty, that this is not true. We do not pay anyone, outside the Elio Motors social media team, to answer any comments/posts/threads. We will only answer under Elio Motors brand and will never take on a fake name/profile. Our core belief of transparency will not allow for us to do this. Again, we assure you that this has never and will never happen at Elio Motors.

The part of this that is the absolute best in our opinion is that we know the truth and love the fact that our true fans are so passionate, knowledgeable and thorough that people think that they do it for compensation. They do it because they understand what Elio is and will be and they choose to be supportive and help others understand what we are working to accomplish. We are thankful every day for all of our supporters and know that they have been a big part of our success to date.

Elio only has one prototype, it is just repainted to look different:

My guess is that this was started by someone that was bored and wanted to see if anyone was reading their posts. This one is somewhat true…. the prototypes have been different colors, but of course they are totally different vehicles! An important part of the Elio mission is bringing our fans along this journey with us and the evolution of the vehicle is a huge part! Each vehicle design is iterative and further refined to maximize style and performance than the last. Most everyone can easily see the changes from each vehicle to the next. P1 was proof of concept and had no color, P2 didn’t do a lot of touring. The P3 was in full tour mode when we rolled out the P4 and that was in full tour mode when P5 was revealed. We have an incredible team, but we couldn’t figure out how to tour and modify the same vehicle at the same time…

And we will leave you with the infamous “a picture is worth a thousand words” – stay tuned for more pictures of the Elio evolution.

The Elio Preview Tour:

No events scheduled this week or next for the holidays.

Check the website here for upcoming events

Thank you for your support.