This limited run of pre-production vehicles will be a step forward for Elio Motors as it works toward mass production. The pre-production vehicles will allow Roush, which was named lead engineering partner earlier this week, to provide a quieter, smoother vehicle with refined driving characteristics, Elio said.

We now intend to sell the first 100 pre-production vehicles built to one or more fleet customers, rather than use them for internal purposes as previously disclosed in our offering statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This will help us generate additional revenue, it will allow us to evaluate vehicles under real-world driving conditions and it will allow our supplier team to refine our design.

—Elio Motors founder and CEO Paul Elio

Elio is moving the bulk of the consumer launch into 2017 at a date to be determined, as the company continues to seek additional funding.

As we have stated in the past, building an ultra-low cost, high efficient vehicle for the masses is not an easy task. It takes solid engineering and supplier partnerships, which we have, and substantial funding, on which we continue to make progress. We recently had a successful stock offering, which showed there is investment interest and enthusiasm for this project. We raised significant funds, moving us even closer. Our team will keep fighting to get this done. The key is to not quit, and to continue to move forward toward our goal. We have a number of other financial strategies that we are pursuing relentlessly to help get us to our consumer production launch.

—Paul Elio

In November 2015, the company introduced the P5, its fifth-generation prototype, featuring a 0.9 liter, 3-cylinder engine designed by IAV specifically for Elio Motors.