Not intended as a political question, just seeking clarification:
Does Elio and/or any other company/person who wants to produce vehicles have to have/use unionized employees?
I ask because in researching one of the points made by 'opposition' press is that the price is too low, that it will
have to be more expensive, too much more for it to really be viable - but it seems to me that if they can get into a place which has a workforce that needs employment, and the employees are not Union, then that could really help hold costs - and therefore retail prices - down. Why?
According to
this website, an employer will pay over $70/hour per UAW employee, which is
significantly more than what a non-Union employee who was still paid well would cost them, and that was in nearly 5 years ago in 2008 - though given the economy I doubt it has had room to rise much. Also according to the above article, labor costs account for about 10% of the production costs of a vehicle.
So, for easy math
(because that's all I can do 
) say a small car actually costs about $14K to produce
(see note at bottom of post), and 10% of that production cost is Labor, that's $1400, which divided by $70/hr comes to about 20 hours of labor. Though there are less materials used, I would expect that the Elio would have about the same amount of labor required in the build process as a slightly wider car with an extra wheel.
If your employees as non-Union only cost $35/hr (approx $15-20/hr + taxes + benefits), that's $700 less you'd need/have to charge per unit, all other things being equal - or about 10% of the expected Elio Retail price. In short, a not inconsiderable amount of money, both to those of us considering buying, as well as to the company which will have to produce them.
All of the above is to point out that at the projected/promotional price point of $6,800 Retail, labor costs could
easily make or break the financial viability of the Elio when coming into actual production.
If they have to have UAW employees, every hour of labor in production is a bit over 1% of the retail price. Wow! If they can do it non-Unionized, labor is half that, or maybe even less, and that would go a long way towards explaining such a low price point, and make me more optimistic about the Elio concept actually seeing the light of a retail day...
Anyway, a very interesting vehicle! Though an open roof would be desirable, being able to put both hands out either side window at the same time will make it feel a LOT more open than your typical cage. I've been looking at it trying to figure out how hard it would be to configure for sleeping - or: a teensy tiny slab-compatible RV with hella mileage at a low price...
(Note about labor costs - I read that the average new car in the US is around $31K retail, so these numbers are likely higher - by a large margin - thus affecting Elio production much more than the above musings consider...)A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. - M. Twain
