"The companies you mentioned probably had their own seed capital" - Elio definitely had seed capital. Last time they listed, it was $110M.
"Would you say there's definitely enough engineers available locally anywhere there's people?" - There are enough when you are in a place like Shreveport. If you look at the south, you'll find many manufacturing plants out in the middle of nowhere. Yet they seem to be able to attract those manufacturing engineers. I know as I was a manufacturing engineer for many years. It's much easier to attract good talent when you are using a metro area like Shreveport as opposed to some place like a plant that's in Danville, VA.
Also, you might remember that GM went bankrupt and thus to get out of that, they had to restructure. So, they took under performing plants that were building products that were to be discontinued, and thus closed them down. Shreveport was on the list as it met those criteria. Same for the Dayton, OH plant.
As for foreign firms, they do rely on people from the motherland. On the other hand, the majority (at least 95%) are from the country that they have the plant in. The 5% that are from the motherland, are usually on a 3 year expat assignment or the dozen or so that actually move here permanently. Plus, companies like Rivian are US based. They are operating out of a plant in Normal, IL. Trust me, there's way more to do in Shreveport than in Normal. You'd think that it would be really hard for Rivian to get manufacturing engineers, yet it wasn't.
Why would Ford want to rent out space? You do realize that they just can't take a spot and rent it out to whoever they want. In car plants, they have main operations (i.e. stamping and welding) that's in a central location which feeds a few assembly lines. Thus someone like Elio would have to get Ford to somehow stamp Elio parts and their own. Then hope that the Elio guys are not just wandering around on the Ford side stealing ideas. If you think automotive companies are not strict about privacy, then you are living on a different planet. Again, Chicago will never happen. Plus, if Ford had the extra space, why didn't they rent that out to Rivian. Ford invested $500M in the company and instead of using this unused space in Chicago, they made them go out into the farmland of Normal.
If you look at manufacturing in the US, it's robust and growing. So, Elio could have gotten onto this bandwagon and literally were gifted with having a ready to go plant in a decent sized metro area. Just because Elio blew their money on stuff like helmet laws, lining their own pockets and a traveling road show yet not developing the product to completion, is the real reason why they failed. Elio admits they are not even to 50% developed for the product. All you have to do is not speculate but do research into official Elio documents.
Maybe you need to just research your free thinking statements before posting them.
