Elio Motors and their three-wheel vehicle
We know that the automotive industry in America is going through seriously hard times, and we’ve reported on several brands and factories closing down in the past year or so, however today we’re reporting on a new endeavor which seeks to help the transition into more environmentally friendly vehicles in the States.
We’re talking about a start-up company called Elio Motors who are planning to build a fuel-efficient, three-wheel car starting from 2014, in a plant that was once used to build the massive Hummer H3 SUV. Yes you read that right, a three-wheel car.
The Shreveport, Louisiana plant was sold to Elio by the trust known as RACER – Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response – which is responsible for selling and ‘greening up’ as many old General Motors properties as possible.
Reports say that the 167,000 square-meter plant will begin producing the $6500 two-seater in about eighteen months’ time and they plan to hire 1500 new workers.
What do we know about the car, besides the fact that it will be a three-wheeler? Well it will be powered by a conventional petrol engine, but they say it will use less than 3.9 litres per hundred kilometers on the combined cycle and it will feature a theoretical driving range of 1081 km.
The company is pretty enthusiastic about starting work in Louisiana and have mentioned that preliminary computer model tests are predicting the three-wheeler will get a five-star safety rating because it will feature a reinforced roll cage frame, large crush zones, anti-lock brakes and three airbags – so on paper it sounds great, we’ll just have to see what the actual tests say, there can be a difference between computer simulations and real-life.
We’ll keep a close eye on this rather interesting development from America and will report when we have anything new on it.
