Did you guys know about this?
The Spotted Salamander can photosynthesize through the rows of spots on its back and has remarkable regenaration abilities, even compared to other reptiles. Also, he's black and yellow. Sound familiar???
I thought about Spotted Salamanders before I considered frilled-neck lizards to be the inspiration for Helioptile, since he looked a little too sleek to be a lizard, though both make perfect sense. Originally, I thought his fill-ear things were supposed to roughly resemble live wires in a generator, or something.
Where are you getting this from? Electric types, on average, are more special than physical, and there are more special Electric attacks than there are physical ones. Not that I don't think It's withing the realm of possibility for Helioptile to become physical, but that first part is a bit off.