Where Did It All Go Wrong?

To pinpoint one single place that Arcimoto went wrong might not be possible. Much like a plane that crashes, it can often take several things going wrong to make it crash. And that, my friend, is what I think happened with Arcimoto. So let’s go through my thoughts one at a time, in no particular order. Much of this is conjecture, educated guessing, and predicted outcomes.

1. Great concept, too early.

Yup, there are a lot of early adopters that love their little vehicle. It gets you from point A to point B without a lot of fanfare (well, there are people that will stop you to talk and ask questions). But right now, a vast majority of people expect electric vehicles to take the place of their gas vehicle counterparts. Completely. And that isn’t going to happen until gas prices get so high that people are forced out of gas cars and manufacturers are then willing to experiment with alternative forms of transportation. 

In addition, battery technology is amazing, but not amazing enough. It needs to be far smaller, cheaper, and less flammable. The push away from gas will encourage this line of technology. And until the technology develops better batteries that compete with gas cars, EVs will play second fiddle to their gas counterparts.

2. Too expensive.

Yup, that cheap gas car and their used car alternatives are simply too much competition for people eking out a living. You need a cheap, under $15k, simple vehicle (with full doors!) for people that need to commute or get around.

3. People want a big car that does *everything*.

The Arcimoto FUV doesn’t carry a whole family for hundreds of miles on a charge. It doesn’t have full doors, heating, or air conditioning, or even a roof rack. It isn’t a car. And it isn’t a 4500 lb Tesla. Sometimes simple is better. But in Oregon, doors are an absolute must.

4. Lots of mechanical issues.

A reliable vehicle that has low maintenance costs is what people want. That requires a vehicle engineered with less parts. And those parts better be over-engineered to hold up over time. When the Greenwatt on board charger ($1000) goes bad every year or two, that is a serious problem. When manufacturer decides to put a $50 12v battery in your vehicle that gets killed if you forget to charge for a week, you have a customer experience problem. When you under-design a brake system that is undersized and difficult to adjust, people end up having to change out pads and rotors in as little as 5000 miles. When you have fender brackets breaking 2, 3, 4 or more times, you have a design issue. And if it gets too cold, the inverters are programmed to give an error putting you in limp mode until you turn off the vehicle and start it back up. And, well, that is just plain dumb, and fixable by updating the programming.

The little beta Arcimoto is a great start but it needs years of fine-tuning to get it more reliable.

5. No service manual or parts list.

It goes without saying that the ability to keep your hooptie running requires manuals and parts. We’ve been asking, and Arcimoto has been ignoring us. I asked around at Arcimoto and found they have a web-based tech manual. They were hoping to capitalize by offering a subscription. And this will likely never happen. I also found they do have a parts list. But either analysis paralysis, lack of priority and/or money, or assembly line changes causing various vehicles to have potentially different parts have kept them from releasing this information. I also heard that some techs had to reverse engineer in order to trouble-shoot problems.

6. Selling a vehicle that has no doors.

In January 2019, we got an offer to purchase a FUV with a $5000 deposit. Assuming they were ready to manufacture, I threw in the deposit. I had no idea they didn’t even have FVMSS testing completed, let alone needed changes in order to pass the aforementioned federal safety standards. Even worse? They had no idea of how to design the doors. It took all of 2 years to make doors they were happy with. Then another year to figure out how to manufacture them.  So people getting their Evergreen FUVs had to wait for the doors that they had paid for. And the saddest part? There are still people waiting for doors to this day. Their vehicles have been long out of warranty.

7. Alluding to full doors that were simply not possible.

Alright Rick, there are videos that allude to the full doors. Yes, full doors were mentioned. They were never promised. That said, they designed the vehicle without doors, then tried to add them on after the fact. It just doesn’t work with all the curves and angles to have hinges and doors work correctly, especially if the doors are next to each other on a frame that bows both outward and at an angle. The upper frame looks cool but geez what a door nightmare.

8. Missed most goals.

We got that mass production was the goal. We got that the cost of parts was 40% higher because they weren’t purchased in quantity. But the chicken and egg problem might have been better managed. I really don’t understand why they put themselves in a do-or-die position by purchasing the RAMP manufacturing plant. They spent so much time, energy, and money just cleaning, painting, re-wiring, and re-designing the plant. It just feels like they put the cart before the horse. I wish they would have stayed at the AMP’s smaller manufacturing plant until they were actually putting out, say 50 vehicles a week, instead of the 3-6 that they never seemed to get past.

9. Misuse of money.

I loved the idea of the Mean Lean Machine. Except for the name. And likely weight. And the fact that Arcimoto took $10M and a lot of time, energy, and resources to buy Tilting Motor Works which led to the MLM prototype. Granted, TMW is probably the only money making machine they have. But it sure is going to be hard to make money when there is no power in the building they are using to do the conversions.

10. Lack of communication with customers.

Oh lordy did Arcimoto take the old saying to heart: “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.” The lack of responses to calls and emails plagued Arcimoto from the very start with “where is my Evergreen in the queue.” Holy shit did they mismanage the whole Evergreen rollout. From taking $5000 deposits to actual delivery took between 8 months and 18 months. Nowhere near the start of sales did they inform people the vehicle hadn’t even passed FMVSS testing. That took 6 months.

Once deliveries took place, service had to be planned and implemented. So they decided to take one or two guys to simply trailer the vehicles from the owners (limited to Oregon, California, and Washington sales area) and haul them back to Eugene for service and warranty repair. In the meantime, customers are asking “when can I get service?” and “when will the service be done?” often with days or weeks of radio silence.

And it is sad of me to admit, but as of March 2024, the lack of electricity and internet at their Eugene Service Center smells of the final days of Arcimoto. And it makes me cry. So naturally there are no returned calls. No returned emails. And I have no idea of how the few FUVs I saw in the service center are getting back to their owners.

11. No dealership or national service system.

Servicing a vehicle is an absolute necessity. It seems Arcimoto focused solely on manufacturing, then tried to figure out the servicing part afterward. Which is weird. It seems that you would need to do both at the same time. What I do know is that Mark Frohnmayer preferred to release all needed service manuals and documentation. But for whatever reason, it didn’t happen in any sort of way. So not only do THEY not have a full shop manual that includes schematics for their own internal service techs, but owners won’t have one either. And even though the intention is to have Arcimoto do all the service work, you either can’t get to a service tech or they can’t return calls requesting service. So you are now stuck with a vehicle that can’t be serviced without Herculean effort to reverse engineer in order to troubleshoot by someone that isn’t with Arcimoto. 

In the beginning, Arcimoto hauled vehicles all the way back to Eugene, Oregon for warranty work. And that is super expensive. They then hired mobile service techs, only lay them off or have them quit to find a more stable job. So servicing, for the most part, really is up to the owner - who has no parts list or manual.

12. The ATVM loan never came through.

For a few years, Arcimoto was hoping to qualify for an Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVM) loan through the Department of Energy to expand their manufacturing. The application was never approved so that funding ($25M-$50M) never came through.  

13. Three wheelers were left out of federal subsidies/tax credits.

An absolute huge boon to Arcimoto would have been making 3 wheelers available for federal tax subsidies through tax credits. Even $2500 would have made a big difference. In Oregon, we go a $2500 manufacturer’s rebate bringing the $19,900 Evergreen model with doors down to $17,400, a pretty good price for everything you got. But noooooo, only 4 wheeled EVs and 2 wheeled EVs qualified. It is really too bad Oregon’s congressional representatives could fight harder. And we even had Defazio on the transportation committee 🙄.

14. Started with bros in a frat house and never really grew up.

If you watch one of the Arcimoto Youtube videos, you find Mark saying “we’re in our 40’s now, it’s time for our marketing to mature and get super professional.”  I just don’t think that ever happened. I had come across one person that was hired by Mark off of Twitter. That’s not “super professional.” 

15. Board of Directors were not diverse.

Which brings me to their board and absolute lack of diversity. For many years it was all men, most that Mark knew. They finally got one woman. 

16. Founder didn’t care about money.

And finally, Mark had admitted he didn’t care about money. He didn’t want to become rich, he just wanted to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the word was they spent money like drunken sailors. You could see how many marketing people they hired (to run around to campsites?) and how much real estate they bought, rented, or leased. It was a lot. They were spread all over Eugene. At one point they had people in 6 buildings. 

So where is Arcimoto now? 

In a very, very bad spot. If you own a FUV and are not able to fix it yourself, it isn’t a good thing to own at this moment. Many of us are waiting for the shoe to drop: Arcimoto has a large loan that was due last month. I suspect they have been working on a Chapter 11 to re-organize and make agreements with companies they owe money. It greatly saddens me and I still love all that they did and all that they stood for. You could feel it in the people that worked there: they loved the idea of the 3 wheeled EV motorcycle. We had a blast with the various rallies and events. It felt like family.

I’m hoping that even if Arcimoto is no longer there to service the vehicle, we, as owners, can band together to keep them going. Like a family, we support each other through thick and thin. I’ll tell you, I won’t give up on my FUV and I’ll do everything to help you with yours.