Electra Meccanica says it received over 41,000 orders for all-electric Tofino roadster and 23,000 SOLO EVs

Fred Lambert | Dec 20 2018 - 4:15 pm PT

Electra Meccanica, a Canada-based electric vehicle startup, confirmed today that it received over 41,000 orders for its all-electric Tofino roadster and over 23,000 reservations for the SOLO EV as they move production to China.

We have often reported on the Vancouver-based company for its effort to bring the SOLO, a ~$15,500 all-electric 3-wheeler with 100 miles range, to market, and their more recent vehicle programs:

The company went public earlier this year in order to raise $10 million to bring those electric vehicles to production.

Electra Meccanica has a manufacturing agreement with the Zongshen Industrial Group to produce the SOLO in China and they gave an update today about their production ramp up.

They built 40 SOLO EVs themselves in Canada this year, but now future vehicles will be coming from the Zongshen factory:

“This manufacturing facility recently shipped its first two 2019 SOLO EV’s to the the Company’s headquarters in Vancouver for on-road testing. An additional 48 SOLO EV’s are scheduled for shipment from the Zongshen factory to Los Angeles, Portland and Vancouver in the first quarter of 2019.”

They released a video of the volume production of the SOLO EV at the factory:

https://vimeo.com/307386642

Electra Meccanica COO Henry Reisner commented about the production

“I am very pleased with our team’s progress to date. Having driven the 2019 SOLO myself, I’m convinced we have a winning car on our hands. Now we get to the business of final calibration, initiation of production and delivering them in significant numbers in 2019 and beyond.”

There are many people waiting for those vehicles.

Electra Meccanica says 23,030 people have placed a deposit to pre-order the SOLO:

“As of December 20, 2018, Electra Meccanica had a total of 64,154 vehicle pre-orders across all models, representing $2.4 billion in potential sales at the targeted MSRP. These pre-orders consist of 23,030 pre-orders for the SOLO single-passenger electric vehicle, which has a $15,500 target MSRP, and 41,124 pre-orders for the Tofino two-seat roadster sports car, which has a $50,000 target MSRP.”

Production of the SOLO will ramp up during 2019 and the production of the Tofino is expected to start in 2020.

Electrek’s Take

I am impressed by the number of reservations for the Tofino. With a $1,000 deposit, it gives some weight to those reservations.

Over 40,000 reservations and they don’t even have a prototype. All we have seen were a few renderings.

But I am not that surprised because I feel like it’s an attempt to create the “Mazda Miata of electric vehicles”, which is not necessarily a bad approach.

It might be a little too expensive for that, but I think there’s a market for electric roadsters without the price and performance of a Tesla Roadster.

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