Report From The Party

[DiscjockeyDale]

From Thomas Jackman on Facebook:

I talked to the Arcimoto marketing guy whose name I can’t remember who is in all the Arcimoto videos with Mark. As you might have guessed, he wasn’t all that forthcoming with most of what I asked him, but he did give me a few nuggets of info I didn’t know and perhaps you didn’t either.
Information about how ownership is going to work, including how you will get your FUV repaired if you don’t live in Oregon, is very very close (“a few wet signatures away”) to being finalized and then they will have announcements.
There is a secondary 12 volt battery for non-motor related functions. Amps unknown.
Cold weather testing hasn’t been done but is on the list of to dos. They intend to sell in all markets so it’s something they are thinking about.
I asked about whether the range was realistic and he kind of implied without saying it that their range estimates are perfect scenario estimates, like 55 mph on the freeway type scenario, which tells me that real life numbers will likely be lower. Not surprising.
Battery life is estimated to be 150-300k miles and their goal is for zero repairs needed during this time for all components. The FUV has so few moving parts I can’t imagine this will be all that hard.
The motor is an SME motor that is a hybrid permanent magnet + inductive motor that has “an amazing torque curve, which is basically a straight line of power.”
A lot of people had questions about doors and they just aren’t far enough along in the door development to answer them. They just now finished the door open and shut mechanism, which is the 3/4 door you see in the photo below. All other doors will bolt to this, and they are currently planning for a variety of materials, door sizes, windows.
Estimated ASP is $15k. While they didn’t say this I have a sneaky suspicion they plan on following Tesla’s example and selling the first batch as the long range + premium options only for awhile before they sell the base model for $11,900 to help them generate more revenue until they get the manufacturing line up to speed. That being said, the dude told me he plans on getting the base mode plus the extended range battery with no other options and that’s it.
They aren’t building retail models until 2019, although that’s only six months away so it is coming up really fast.
The rear hard shell trunk will hold two bags. That’s all he would give me.
They are currently working on a way to make the battery easy to swap / upgrade but they have nothing to announce on this right now.
Retail unit sold next year will use a Bluetooth connection to your phone as the key. Basically the same as the Tesla Model 3.
I had more questions but at that point he had to leave.
As for my personal impressions for sitting in a signature unit, I will just say that I found the seat to be very comfy and I noticed the UI screen is a massive improvement over the dinky one that was on the engineering test model I test drove a year ago. They weren’t doing test drives while I was there so I can’t speak to the ride quality unfortunately.
Hope you found something interesting here. I remain very excited about getting one next year!