danhsu said:
Tony,
What is the consequences of getting a "Compliance car"? I mean in terms of reliability, services etc.. I'm afraid those cars are just to fill up a law hole in the mean time so they can continue selling Gas..l
Well, in general, you can read through the forum and see all the issues with this car. They went from concept to delivery in less than two years, and they did that to keep costs down and get the car sold in 2012 as a 2012 model. Even if the first one was sold in 2013, it was going to be a 2012 model.
So, we are all really beta testers, and it's likely that the Rav4 EV won't ever get out of beta.
For CARB-ZEV Compliance-only - cars like Toyota Rav4 EV, Honda Fit EV, GM Spark EV, Fiat/Chrysler 500e;, they are built because the manufacturer is required to build EV's.
In pure compliance with the rules, the manufacturer makes just the minimum so that they can continue to sell high profit margin oil cars. Anything beyond that is generally in the form of press releases and not cars. These cars are typically sold at a significant loss to their respective manufacturer.
Typically optimized for "100 miles", but practically have closer to 70-80 miles, and can be 40-50 miles with cold weather. Of course, Rav4 EV can really go significantly farther, but Toyota only needed 100 miles to get 3 CARB-ZEV credits. It's no surprise that it's rated at 103 miles by EPA.
Making the car go double the 100 mile range only produces 25% more credit hence no compliance-only cars are 200 mile range. They generally don't have ANY quick charge option, or offer a optional quick charge option that doesn't have charge stations.
Anyway, checking the warranty is very important, I asked about the battery warranty of RAV4 EV they just reply with the simple 8 years, 100,000 miles... I asked and what percentage loss is guaranteed.. they couldn't answer me that.. I was wondering if even Tesla has that? Or maybe tesla buyers are so deep pocketed that they don't care, they can switch the battery in the future paying coupe thousands.. but for the mass market that's not the reality.
Best
Daniel
You can buy an extra battery for the Tesla at purchase, which I think is $8,000 to $12,000.
There is no capacity warranty from Toyota.