I think it's a really cool concept. It would make perfect sense for my commute. My only concern is safety...even if they get a 5-star safety certification, I still wouldn't want to be rear-ended by an F-150 in it, you know? There's something to be said for having mass, haha.
I don't think they're going to make their advertised $6,800 price, but if they can do it for under $10,000, then they'll beat out the super-cheap new cars like the Nissan Versa sedan. Would love to see a Turbo version offered for a bit more money as well, to make it a bit more peppy & fun to drive. I'm sure it will gain a huge customization & tinkering following.
It makes a lot of sense to me in two ways in particular:
1. For commuting
2. For the car market (getting old crappy cars off the road, giving people on a budget something good, etc.)
I drive, by myself, between 20 to 40 hours a month to & from work. Then my car sits in the parking lot at work, and then sits in the parking lot at home. It doesn't really make sense from an economical point of view to have a passenger car for work commutes. The Elio offers great gas mileage, good snow performance, the option to take an extra passenger if you need to...seems like a great idea (safety concerns aside).
That, plus the Cash for Clunkers initiative kind of ruined the used car market, at least in my area - even really crappy old used cars were overly expensive when I was car shopping last year. If you're young and/or poor and buy an Elio and get a 5-year loan on $6,800, even with bad credit with a high 10% interest rate, your monthly payment is only going to be like $125 without a down payment, which opens the door to a new car for a lot of people. So if you can come up with literally $32 a week (which you can make even from a minimum-wage job easily, or probably even just returning plastic bottles for coins), then you can have a nice, new, reasonably safe car with excellent mileage & low insurance premiums. That sounds like a huge deal for a lot of people - people who commute, college students, people in tough economical positions, treehuggers, etc. Plus I read that they're going to try & offer some interesting financial incentives, like tacking on a partial payment to a special gas card every time you fill up so you pay for gas & your car at the same time, to kind of break up the payments into bite-sized chunks.
I like the idea. Interested to see how it plays out.
