That is not the reason. It makes sense to compile to Erlang AST representation and leverage all the power (codegen/optimisations/…) of Erlang compiler for free.

I have no idea about the bytecode documentation, but Elixir is definitely not transpiled to Erlang.

To be technically correct, Elixir is compiled into "Erlang Abstract Format, which is a standard representation of an Erlang AST using Erlang terms." [1] From there it compiles down to bytecode using Erlang tool chain.

So saying that Elixir is transpiled to Erlang is incorrect: it compiles to Erlang AST.

[1] https://medium.com/@fxn/how-does-elixir-compile-execute-code...

Hah, sorry, also posted a similar response in parallel but on parent! I had to google though, I couldn't remember if maybe Elixir used Core Erlang, I'm still a little fuzzy on where that's used and if any important relation to Erlang Abstract Form

Maybe you heard something about Elixir compiling to Erlang Abstract Form?

http://erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/absform.html