Back in late 2022, I got to drive a seriously quirky three-wheeled car. The ElectraMeccanica Solo was supposed to be the modern-day people’s car. It was great in concept until you realized the Solo gave you a single seat and a cheap-feeling interior for a whopping $18,000. Then ElectraMeccanica issued a voluntary buyback after a fatal bricking condition was discovered and the company couldn’t figure out how to fix it. The Solos returned to ElectraMeccanica are now showing up in junkyards and it’s not a pretty sight.
This tip comes to us from Pokemonprime on our wonderful Discord server, which you should totally join. Truth be told, I enjoyed my short time with the ElectraMeccanica Solo. The vehicle had some oddities like lifting its rear end on acceleration and interior pieces that seemed to be a collaboration of knockoff parts from Alibaba and Pep Boys. Still, the bones felt great and I could have seen myself owning one as a toy.
Unfortunately, the Solo wasn’t meant to be, and ElectraMeccanica wanted 429 Solos back. ElectraMeccanica never said where those EVs were going, but now we know. A literal pile of these EVs have shown up on TikTok thanks to a former Local Motors engineer who goes by StartupSlick on the platform. The engineer explains that these ElectraMeccanica Solos are at the Pull-N-Save in Gilbert, Arizona, awaiting destruction.
@startupslick
StartupSlick indicates in the video that he believes these vehicles to be trashed Elios. However, ElectraMeccanica is a totally different company. And to ElectraMeccanica’s credit, it actually put some vehicles into customer hands, unlike Elio.
ElectraMeccanica?
Oh, right, this thing is so obscure that there’s a non-zero chance you’ve never even heard of this thing.
The company’s heritage technically dates back to 1959 with a completely different company, Intermeccanica. This company was founded by Frank Reisner and specialized in go-fast parts for Renaults, Simcas, Peugeots, and more. Intermeccanica’s history includes building Porsche 356 replicas, coachbuilding, and body construction for the Apollo GT, the Italia, the Indra, and others. Reisner died in 2001, and his son Henry Reisner took over. Today, Intermeccanica continues its tradition of custom-built cars and replicas.
In reality, Intermeccanica has nothing to do with ElectraMeccanica, but when Henry decided to open a new venture, he slapped the “-meccanica” suffix to his new company. As Automotive News Canada reports, in 2012, Reisner joined forces with Jerry Kroll to create ElectraMeccanica. Despite the similar name to Intermeccanica, ElectraMeccanica wouldn’t be a coachbuilder. Instead, Reisner and Kroll decided to build an innovative three-wheeled electric car.
Kroll’s connection was important. He had a history of being involved in failed startups, including two other EV startups and a failed sports drink startup. The startup most relevant to this was Kroll’s involvement with the Corbin Sparrow (above), an electric cutie first produced in 1999. At one point, Kroll ran Corbin Motors Vancouver. Eventually, Kroll decided it was time to make an electric people’s car, from my review:
In 2015, Kroll purchased the rights to the Corbin Sparrow, and while the ElectraMeccanica Sparrow looked pretty much the same as the Sparrow did in 1999, the new version ditched the lead-acid batteries for lithium. The plan, as Canadian car publication Driving.ca wrote, was to produce a handful of Sparrows before shoving the drivetrain into a sleeker body. Kroll touted his company’s EV as the new people’s car:
“This is the Volkswagen Beetle for the 21st century,” Jerry Kroll declared in the Westin-Bayshore parking lot during my pre-test drive briefing. “After 30 minutes of driving it, you feel like you are wearing Robert Downey Jr.’s Ironman suit. You’re wearing the car. It’s the way driving should be.”
In a video, Kroll went even further, saying the Solo would end up “as ubiquitous as the iPhone within a year” and calling it the best experience that you could have that isn’t sex. But what wasn’t happening were deliveries, and after those 2015 teasers of the production version and tens of thousands of pre-orders, sites began to doubt whether the cars would ever reach customer hands.
The Company Delivered, Then Failed Anyway
ElectraMeccanic succeeded in doing what so many dreamers couldn’t. The company pulled the covers off of the production model in 2016 and in 2017, began production in Vancouver, Canada. Those first production ElectraMeccanica Solos were built by hand and as Robert Dunn of Aging Wheels says, about 180 of them or so were built in Canada.
Oh, and ElectraMeccanica was smart to switch up its marketing. The trike went from being the next Beetle to being a fun commuter.
Not often reported is the fact that ElectraMeccanica technically had multiple generations of Solo. The first “generation” Solos were built between 2017 and 2019, but it’s believed 40 or fewer reached customers. Apparently, ElectraMeccanic then made a second-generation Solo, which was designed to be cheaper and mass-produced in China. Dunn says that of 300 or so built in just 2019, just one was sold. The rest were examined and scrapped.
The Solo you might be familiar with is technically the third generation, which sold from 2021 to 2023.
These new Solos were still built by Zongshen in China, but have improvements such as a wider track to reduce the chance of rollover. They also have stability control to try to keep all three wheels on the ground. They came with specs that were reasonable for a city car. The Solo had a 17.3 kWh battery, a 56 HP and 103 lb-ft torque motor, and a top speed of 80 mph. The 1,769-pound weight was about what a Smart Fortwo weighs and 100 miles of range is ok for city use.
I found the little Solo to be a great urban vehicle. It practically sliced its way through tight city streets and it was so small it could park in places usually reserved for Smart Fortwos and motorcycles.
All of that is fine and dandy, but the ElectraMeccanica Solo suffered from a couple of glaring issues. One was the price. The Solo was $18,000. For that, you got just a single seat and an interior on par with an early Chevy Aveo. That’s a lot of dough to spend to make a lot of compromises.
Another issue was the fact that the Solo could suddenly lose motive power and ElectraMeccanica didn’t know how to fix it. As a result, ElectraMeccanica issued a voluntary buyback of the 429 Chinese-built Solos sold between 2019 and 2023. ElectraMeccanica had another 800 units sitting around unsold. Thomas wrote about the reason for the buyback and here’s what ElectraMeccanica said:
While driving, the vehicle may experience a loss of propulsion. An instrument cluster warning light illuminates, and the driver will experience a loss of power as the vehicle decelerates as if removing their foot from the accelerator pedal. Steering, braking, and lighting systems are not impacted. The vehicle can be restarted after a period of time. In the event of sudden loss of propulsion, the vehicle maintains all other critical functionality including power steering, braking, and lighting, and in most instances allows the driver to pull over.
[…]
If the error occurs, a red “BMS” or “Motor Icon” instrument cluster warning light will illuminate, indicating a loss of propulsion.
[…]
EMV (ElectraMeccanica Vehicles) has been unable to determine a root cause for the issue, therefore, EMV is repurchasing the SOLO.
Now, this buyback is voluntary, so owners of these three-wheelers can roll the dice and keep them, but ElectraMeccanica made it clear that these people would be, well, left solo:
EMV strongly recommends you accept the purchase offer for safety reasons. Please note that EMV will no longer warrant, support, or service your vehicle.
As for what’s happened to those Solos? Sadly, as the video above shows, they’re living out their final days piled on top of each other in at least one junkyard. StartupSlick says these vehicles will be destroyed, not parted out and sold. That’s a shame because the ElectraMeccanica Solo is sort of living a second life as vehicles for YouTubers like Robert Dunn and also the Grind Hard Plumbing Co. I also occasionally see some for sale.
As for ElectraMeccanica, the company shuttered its office in British Columbia and moved to Arizona. The company appears to be in a weird holding pattern today. ElectraMeccanica announced and then canceled a four-wheeled EV. Most recently electric truck manufacturer Xos bought ElectraMeccanica. Xos wasn’t interested in the cars or designs, instead, it reportedly wanted its cash reserves, so who knows where it’s headed now.
The ElectraMeccanica saga is a sad one. There was so much potential here and the company even reached production. But even it is now sitting on the scrap pile of history.
It’s a shame they’re all being junked, I’d be interested in repowering one with a bike engine.
Paraphrasing Dire Straits: I want my Elio…
Just a tip for marketing folks. Don’t name your car something that sounds like slow.
“You’re wearing the car. It’s the way driving should be.”
No
“as ubiquitous as the iPhone within a year”
No
This ugly junk is right where it belongs: the junkyard
Mr. Bean would knock these over too like he did w/ the Reliant Robin
I get the feeling 3 wheelers are never going to “work”. You’ll always find some customers of course, but it’ll never be a regular sight.
You are right. It’s really hard to build a seven seat three wheeler.
I’m glad you mentioned Elio, I’m still waiting for my $100 reservation refund. HA, HA, I’ll never see THAT hundred bucks again, lesson learned. Had the ElectraMeccanica been priced a couple of thousand dollars more than a scooter I think they might have made it. 18k though, oh hell to the nooooo.
Someone needs to tell Mr. Aging wheels so he can pull anything he might need
It’s a real shame how this stupid little car brought down Intermeccanica.
What they should have done is continuing to focus on making their expensive/high quality Porsche 356 and VW Kubelwagen clones… just in electric form.
To make a small/cheap car like the solo work, you need volume. To build in volume at that price, you need to be a big company with experience in volume manufacturing.
Intermeccanica was the complete opposite of that.
Henry Reisner was a complete IDIOT for buying into Jerry Kroll’s stupid idea and abandoning the low volume/high price/boutique vehicle business that made Intermeccanica successful.
And after fucking up the business his father built, he “retired” and let this doofus with no experience running a boutique car maker run the show
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/kevin-pavlov
Naturally that guy fucked off shortly after and an Ex-GM exec named Susan Doherty took over
https://www.biv.com/news/technology/vancouver-ev-maker-electrameccanica-lands-third-ceo-15-months-8269788
This is the same Susan Doherty that “managed” Chevrolet and Cadillac in Europe with the mission to “fix” things
https://thedetroitbureau.com/2011/12/gm-sends-susan-docherty-packing-to-europe/
And we all know how that went:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/02/susan-docherty-has-a-great-idea-how-to-kill-cadillac/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25237227
Naturally with someone like her put in charge, Intermeccanica/Electromeccanica as we knew it was doomed and all she did was engineer a merger with some other two-bit company n the US and now the company is basically dead.
It’s such a shame.
I test drove one of these in Portland a few years back after reading Mercedes’ review and it was a blast. I was very tempted to pull the trigger but even with the $3k discount it was just too much money. Now I am glad I didn’t. Really wish someone would finally bring back the Carver One concept. I would drop $$ on that in a second.
One of the people my wife works with had a gen 3 Solo that he drove about 70 miles each day commuting to work and he loved it. When they bought it back he decided to get a gently used Leaf for his commute. He wishes he could have his Solo back.
I’m sometimes very glad that I don’t have any space for cars, because I have such a soft spot for unloved little weird things like this.
Oh I know the feeling. My little city lot is at capacity, but I just bought acreage so this could get dangerous.
The same inglorious fate as those ET Atari 2600 cartridges.
Is there anything Zhongshen doesn’t make? Cars, EV cars, motorcycles…I’m gonna bet they have a heavy duty/industrial division.
They do make general aviation aircraft engines, boat engines, and generators
Curious what the batteries in them are worth. Surely they are stripping them out?
Maybe it’s a sacrifice to whatever gods cursed them, as they do indeed seem cursed. Corbin Sparrow was a great idea but bad business failed it, then Kroll buys it and tries to update it and doesn’t even seem to be selling any, and then moves manufacturing to China and then recalls them and crushes them.
I know making cars is hard, but Corbin was building these 20 years ago, it shouldn’t have been that much harder to modernize the electronics/batteries and profit.
It did give us (two) wonderfully entertaining videos from Aging Wheels though so there’s that.
I’d weld two of them ass to ass and daily the result.
Still more successful than Lordstown Motors 😛
There is a boomer somewhere in Michigan hoarding these things right now.
Grind Hard’s putting a Hayabusa in theirs so maybe they can make a kit and people can save these by putting sport bike drivetrains in them. Untapped market!
After watching them take it apart I’m more terrified than I was when they originally talked about their plans for it. And that was before they cut the only structural part to fit the engine in.
Yeah but wait until Carsandcameras predator swaps one!
Personalized plates: HAN
or CUP.
Or MON.
I guess you could call these Dumb Forone. Should have donated these to colleges, technical schools, whatever as a tax write-off and to see if students could figure out what went wrong with them.
The Corbin Sparrow was the hideous cousin of the Corbin Merlin.
A three-wheeled trike with a V-Twin wedged on its nose like a modern spin of a Morgan 3-wheeler.
Don’t forget the Sparrow chase in Goldmember
I still see one sometimes at work. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen in the wild, and it’s increasingly likely it’s the only one I will. And that’s too bad.
I love how Robert Dunn of Aging Wheels always made the best video on any quirky car, even my Figaro. Such a champ!
It’s so strange that they opted to go for such a generic looking front end on such a novel car form. The front could be lifted directly from something like a Honda Odyssey. The generic front end makes the car look even weirder than it would look otherwise, as you get the impression that you’re about to see a compact sedan, but then the rear 2/3 looks like it got hit with a shrink ray.
Also strange that the front of it is wide enough to be a 2-seater, if they made the passenger compartment the same width as the fenders, so the single seat configuration didn’t really make it any smaller on the outside.
And they originally intended it to be a new Beetle, a car that was specifically designed to serve as the only car a household needed, room for mom, dad, and at least two kids, plus 300+ miles to a tank, kind of clear why that rhetoric was abandoned early on
Unfortunately for a car to meet those “needs” today it needs to be a 3-row SUV for some reason.
With an off-road capable all wheel drive system.
Well, you can’t expect Braxton and Brexit to share the same row, that’s inhumane
The reason is safety of course. The Beetle was designed in a time where car seats weren’t even available much less required. Also, try fitting a compliant, rear facing car seat for a toddler in a Beetle behind the driver’s seat. You can’t do it if the driver is over, say, 5′ 5″. If you have more than two kids? Forget about it.
Sure, I could trade in my SUV once the kids are older but why would I? I have an already-destroyed paid off car!
I think it was to keep the frontal area down, though who was going to be running them at higher speeds where that’s more relevant, IDK, and it should have then been a tandem 2 seater, anyway. The other part might be that SXS seating would have an imbalance that could be substantial as a percentage of overall weight with the single wheel. Morgans are SXS, but they’re about 7 inches wider and the seats are rammed close together and there’s no roof, so people can stick one elbow out the sides. Then there’s side impact to think about. The claim that it would be a Beetle was absurd. Not only is too odd to ever be a big volume seller, but single seat and minimal luggage area also limit its appeal and it was expensive for what it was—a city-bound commuter for someone who can somehow charge at home and who isn’t utilizing the easy sex that is a major appeal of living in a city (of course, driving one of these will assure that whether or not it’s intentional and I say that as someone who likes what tadpole trikes could be). It’s also a much different time, but mainly, the claim of it being a new Beetle is either worryingly ignorant for a (several-times failed) company founder or insultingly stupid marketing drivel.
You know, I thought the same when I drove it. “Is that a Honda front end scaled down in Photoshop?” is what I asked myself before hopping in.
Hell, it almost looks like Honda stole the refreshed Odyssey grill from the Solo, based on the timing anyway.
Driving back to work one evening a few months ago in North Charleston, SC (a bit dodgy part of town, not the tourist area) I saw what at first I took to be a CR-Z someone had put a weird body kit on, or grafted some OG Insight panels to. After a bit of googling I discovered what this was, and was sad to see both the price and the just announced buy back. I love funky little things!
I knew these cars looked familiar as they are derived from the 3 wheeled cars (Corbin sparrow) that were in Austin Powers In Goldmember where Goldmember gets away with preparation H loaded in the back haha
This car does show up as a police vehicle in the Amazon series Upload.
Weird vehicle for a police car hah