ElectraMeccanica once promised to bring electric cars to the masses with small cars. Single electric vehicleNow, a pile of those dreams are discarded, forgotten in a junkyard in Arizona.
First discovered by the Automatic, The EV pile was filmed by a junkyard hunter, desert survivalist, and Local Motors engineer who goes by the TikTok handle StartupSlick as he hung out at the Pull-n-Save junkyard in Gilbert, Arizona. So what could make an EV startup dump such a bunch of cars? It all started a few years ago.
ElectraMeccanica had big dreams for the Solo. A single-seater that wasn’t technically classified as a car, ElectraMeccanica sold the Solo for $18,000. That makes you a single seater electric car Measuring just 10 feet long, four feet wide, and four feet tall, it is powered by a single electric motor that produces 82 horsepower. With a 17.4 kWh lithium-ion battery, it can travel 100 miles and takes three to six hours to charge.
In 2022, an owner complained to both National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and ElectraMeccanica that their Solos lost power while driving. Eventually, many other owners came forward with similar issues. ElectraMeccanica’s engineering team found a fault in the Solo’s “motor controller and inverter or battery controller” that caused the loss of power. However, the company was unable to find a fix for the problem. Eventually, a recall in February 2023 resulted in a recall of virtually every Solo ever sold—just over 400 vehicles. A month later, ElectraMeccanica told customers that it would buy back the vehicles from them.
ElectraMeccanica was eventually acquired by another EV startup called Xowho apparently manufacture electric commercial vans. The whole situation has led to what you see above, Solos piled up, waiting for the crusher. According to the Drive, A scrapyard employee told a visitor that the destruction of the Solo would be supervised. As for why the company never figured out a fix and decided to just destroy the cars, Drive Contacted Xos for answers but didn’t get much response.
CD driver reached out to Xos for an official answer as to why all those EVs were sent to be crushed, rather than repaired. All Xos could share was that “Following the recall, buyback, and ElectraMeccanica discontinuing sales, the vehicles were partially disposed of through the facility in [the] video link. After being acquired by Xos, ElectraMeccanica closed some of its remaining operations.”
