Compliance Car is not a phrase automakers would use at all, nor in the copy they give writers to use (the automaker's staff do the writing-work for the writers, and the writers tweak a few words and then take the credit for the piece). So, of course the newswire is not going to state the Soul EV is a compliance car.
It is easy to know what others define compliance car as https://www.google.com/#q=%22compliance+car%22+define As for myself, having seen automakers hem and haw, not wanting to sell EVs for decades, I consider an EV design a Compliance Car if it does not show an automaker's long term commitment to EVs, or to their EV model being sold to the public. An example of an automaker's non-EV-commitment is TMC's RAV4-EV-gen2. TMC did not even do the work to design the retrofit of their RAV4-ice model to an EV (they paid Tesla). And while they put a few of their EVs out for the public to buy, all the while TMC were actually seriously working on their fcv model that they 'are committed to'. Once their fcv was going to be sold to the public, TMC discontinued selling their EV. IMO, the RAV4-EV-gen2 was just a smoke-screen effort to keep CARB happy/off-their-backs. The Production EVs that I consider are Compliance Cars is because their design is a retrofit of an existing ice model (non-purpose-built), and or the automaker only plans to sell enough EVs to be compliant, so they can sell their more-profitable ice models: - Toyota (TMC) EV - Honda EV - GM EV - Fiat EV - Ford EV +more By comparison, lets look at the EVs that I consider are not compliance cars. Purpose built EV designs: - Tesla EVs - Nissan Leaf EV - Mitsubishi iMiev EV - BMW i3 (EV only option) +more One include the Smart EV in with the above list, even though most people for years only knew of the Smart-ice model. Way back in the 1990's, the Smart was actually originally designed to be an EV. It was their management that caved-in when they were heckled by the European press, and pulled their EV from the European market. After that experience, their management decided to not offer their EV in N. America. They did successfully sell their ice-retrofit version of the Smart in Europe, and years later in N. America. {brucedp.150m.com} - BM : I was wondering how do we know they plan for the Soul EV to be a compliance only model? I don't remember anything in that article saying so. Isn't "compliance vehicle" a pejorative we bestow after they sell them in low numbers only? Or is it an official term that the manufacturer would admit to? - -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-2015-Kia-Soul-EV-will-be-sold-in-CA-OR-NY-NJ-MD-video-tp4669915p4669924.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
