Cleaner Than Cow Fart! That's What Elio Claimed!

Yes, that’s what Elio Motors said. The startup automaker, set for a 2015 inaugural launch, has claimed that each Elio vehicle traps less carbon dioxide than a cow’s fart accumulated in one year. This is Elio’s rationale:

• One cow emits 242 pounds of methane annually through burps and farts. Methane traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide, hence the cow indirectly emits 4840 pounds of CO2 equivalent greenhouses gases.
• An Elio vehicle emits only 4500 pounds of CO2.

Ergo, the Elio is more environmentally friendly than cow farts. We did once implore our readers To Stop The Cows Farting And The Chinese From Eating Meat!

Production of the Elio 3-wheeler is set to begin in December 2014, but the automaker has already racked up more than 12 000 reservations; quite an achievement for an automaker that has yet to actually make any vehicles, except for prototypes. The vehicle is powered by a 900cc engine, with an estimated 84mpg highway usage and a maximum range of 672 miles on each full tank.

The Elio sits two, the driver and a passenger behind. The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2012, 76% of workers in the States, 16 years and older, drove to work alone. Considering this, it makes sense to have a super compact car that caters for minimal passengers, stripping away all the unnecessary weight and, therefore, requiring less fuel to run. A smaller vehicle requires less material, hence, less cost, which translates to affordable prices, and affordable the Elio 3-wheeler is. At only USD6800, it costs one third of the average car and can be paid for using a credit card!

The vehicle does look rather small, cramped and rather flimsy, and we wonder if it will get blown sideways when a large vehicle zooms past. The automaker, however, anticipates a 5-star rating with its safety features, including three airbags, a reinforced roll-cage frame, ABS and 50% more crush zones than “similar vehicles”; we do not know which other vehicles that the manufacturer is referring to for the Elio is rather unique – small car or big motorbike, we are still deciding. The vehicle was designed for a 6 feet 1 inch tall driver, and has been ‘tested’ on smaller, larger and taller drivers; the degree of comfort, however, is still in question. 

The eponymous founder of the company and engineer by training, Paul Elio, conjured up the idea when oil prices soared in 2008. “…instead of getting mad I decided to do something about it,” he said, in an interview with The New York Times. The vehicles will be built and marketed in the US for now, and will of course enter international markets when the company is ready for the challenge. 

As a side note, we think that Elio should invest some advertising dollar in making better videos; ones that do not look like they belong on television shopping channels. It's a car, Elio, not a blender.

image: eliomotors.com