End Of Life For SOLO EV Start Up Due To Design & Performance Issues

Walking around a junkyard in Gilbert Arizona, Instagram publisher Startup Slick found where the defunct #ElectraMeccanica Solos are being crushed. Image Credit: Startup Slick via Instagram (07-16-2024)

End Of Life For SOLO EV Start Up Due To Design & Performance Issues

Flashy EV start up ElectraMeccanica and their introductory model SOLO came to a disputed primary-reason end.

In an article published at The Drive by James Gilboy, and Instagram publisher in Arizona, Startup Slick, stumbled upon a stack of ElectraMeccanica SOLO cars getting ready to be crushed in an end-of-life activity. It is assumed that these vehicles from the now defuncted company were too dangerous to have the general public pick one up and start wilding on the streets with their 3-wheeled EV SOLO!

ElectraMeccanica SOLO cars at their Studio City ElectraMeccanica corporate location being prepared for delivery to new customers on tax dat, April 15, 2021. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2021)

As written by The Drive in their article >>>

Cheap EVs From Failed Startup Are Piling Up in Arizona Scrapyard
This isn’t a case of EV tax credit fraud—it’s much simpler.

Or is it, suggests EVHN – given the evidence in the article.

This excerpted and edited from The Drive –

Just outside Gilbert, Arizona is a scrapyard that’s accumulating tons of a single, strange type of vehicle. Videos of the pile of three-wheeled EVs are circulating the internet, igniting speculation and rumors about why they’re being destroyed. But the reality is simple: They started breaking and couldn’t be fixed, so there was only one thing to do with them.

You’re looking at the remains of dozens of ElectraMeccanica Solo EVs, a three-wheeled commuter produced from 2018 to 2023. Initially marketed as the cheap EV solution to end them all according to The Autopian, the Solo’s appeal was severely limited by its price of $18,000 and single-seat cabin. Those (and the Solo’s three-wheeled design) wouldn’t be the reason for its undoing, however.

Full sideview of the ElectraMeccanica SOLO and one notices no downforce aerodynamics designed into the flow of the angles in the body. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2021)

In August 2022, ElectraMeccanica received a complaint from a customer that their Solo had lost propulsion while driving. More reports followed in September, leading the company’s engineering team to try to diagnose and address the issue. They worked out that “a defect in the motor controller and inverter or the battery controller may cause the electric motor to shut down”—but not how to fix it. The problem was escalated to ElectraMeccanica’s executive team, which in February 2023 initiated a recall for almost every vehicle sold to customers in the United States, totaling 428 Solos.

While the recall documents suggest the company hoped to find a fix, it never manifested, and in April the company notified customers it would be buying back all affected vehicles. Since then, ElectraMeccanica was purchased by electric truck company Xos, which has shown no interest in repairing the Solos to resell them. Instead, it has evidently turned to scrapping them, which an employee of the junkyard allegedly told a visitor had to be supervised to verify the Solos’ destruction. (Author’s note: it was probably cheaper to write them all off than do anything else.)

The Drive contacted Xos seeking an official answer as to why all those EVs were sent to be crushed, rather than fixed. All Xos could share was that “Following the recall, buyback, and ElectraMeccanica’s cessation of sales, the vehicles were disposed of partly via the facility in [the] linked video. Following the acquisition by Xos, ElectraMeccanica few remaining operations have been wound down.” 
[Reference Here]

This following Instagram posting has a completely different take – the problem with all of the SOLO cars built was with the design and build of the rear suspension.

The Drive gives the official ElectraMeccanica answer having to do with the powertrain and the management system that would have the vehicle “BRICK” but the Instagram puts forward that the rear suspension does nothing to settle the car at speed, suggesting that the faster it goes, the more unstable it becomes because the rear of the car lifts up.

Not a good solution for a three-wheeled vehicle.

Not a simpler answer, as suggested by The Drive, to the demise of the SOLO.

… notes from The EDJE 

SOLO on display at AutoMobility LA 2022 (formally LA Auto Show Press Days). Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2022)

POST SCRIPT: On February 28, 2024, Solo Automotive Inc., of Vancouver, Canada, wholly owned by Jerry Kroll, acquired all of the Solo assets, including Industrial Design, Trademarks, and Patents.

The company plans to enter the European and UK markets with a more advanced model called the SoloGT, which will be manufactured at a plant in Spain. The first vehicles will go on sale in early 2025, and reservations with a $200 refundable deposit will be available soon on the new SoloEV website.

So, the term End-Of-Life for the SOLO was referring to the United States marketplace and the ElectraMeccanica name which was purchased and presumably owned by Xos along with the resolution of previously sold defective SOLO cars.