Tons of of single-seat EVs are awaiting destruction at a scrapyard

ElectraMeccanica as soon as promised to deliver EVs to the plenty with the small Solo EV. Now, piles of that dream have been thrown away, forgotten in an Arizona scrapyard.

First noticed by the Autopian, the pile of EVs was filmed by a scrap yard hunter, desert survival aficionado and Native Motors engineer who goes by StartupSlick on the TikTok as he wandered the Pull-n-Save scrapyard in Gilbert, Arizona. So what may make an EV startup simply throw away a bunch of vehicles like that? It began a few years in the past.

ElectraMeccanica had huge desires for the Solo. A single seat automobile that technically wasn’t labeled as a automotive, ElectraMeccanica bought the Solo for $18,000. That acquired you a single seat EV that was simply 10 toes lengthy, 4 toes broad and 4 toes tall powered by a single electrical motor placing out 82 horsepower. With a 17.4 kWh lithium-ion battery, it acquired 100 miles of vary and took three to 6 hours to cost.

In 2022, an proprietor complained to each the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration and ElectraMeccanica that their Solo had misplaced energy whereas driving. Ultimately extra house owners got here ahead claiming the identical difficulty. ElectraMeccanica’s engineering group discovered a defect within the Solo’s “motor controller and inverter or the battery controller” that led to the lack of energy. Nonetheless the corporate couldn’t discover a repair for the problem. In the end, a recall in February 2023 led to almost each single Solo ever bought being referred to as again — simply over 400 autos. A month later, ElectraMeccanica knowledgeable clients it could be shopping for again the autos from them.

ElectraMeccanica was ultimately bought by one other EV startup referred to as Xos, who apparently manufacture electrical industrial vehicles. All the state of affairs has led to what you see above, the Solos piled up, awaiting the crusher. In keeping with the Drive, an worker of the scrapyard instructed a customer that the destruction of the Solo’s goes to be supervised. As to why the corporate by no means discovered a repair and determined to only destroy the vehicles, the Drive reached out to Xos to get a solution and didn’t get a lot again.

The Drive contacted Xos looking for an official reply as to why all these EVs had been despatched to be crushed, reasonably than fastened. All Xos may share was that “Following the recall, buyback, and ElectraMeccanica’s cessation of gross sales, the autos had been disposed of partly by way of the ability in [the] linked video. Following the acquisition by Xos, ElectraMeccanica few remaining operations have been wound down.”

A model of this text initially appeared on Jalopnik.