johnlocke wrote:Doesn't really matter if the Leaf is a "compliance" car or not. Or if It is sold around the world. The purpose of selling Leafs in the US is to raise the CAFE mileage average so Nissan can sell more expensive SUV's and big pickup trucks with bad gas mileage and much higher profit margins.
I wish I had the chart or sales numbers showing that Leafs sales outside the US outnumber US Leaf sales.
As for your CAFE assertion, I don't think that true.
CAFE has changed over the years and has gotten more complicated with "footprint" being taken into account, but in the past, there were always 3 separate fleets: DP (domestic passenger cars), IP (imported PC) and LT (light trucks). Leaf is counted as a DP now whereas it was IP for MY2011 and 20112. Leaf is definitely NOT classified as LT. Minivans, SUVs, crossovers, and even some passenger car looking vehicles (e.g. most Subarus except the BR-Z; Chrysler PT Cruiser) are classified as "light trucks".
Unless you can point to me something that says you can now use IP or DP results to help LT or that they're only enforcing a combination for an automaker rather than looking at each fleet separately, then your assertion's wrong.
From
https://one.nhtsa.gov/cafe_pic/cafe_pic_home.htm, you can look at
https://one.nhtsa.gov/cafe_pic/CAFE_PIC_Mfr_LIVE.html and still see 3 separate fleets.
However, a purpose in selling EVs in CA and CARB emission states is the CARB ZEV program. See
http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=379 for pointers along with
https://web.archive.org/web/20130821091 ... icles.html. You can see balances at
https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/z ... redits.htm and
https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/z ... redits.pdf along with some of the transfers.