Originally Posted By: racin4ds
TRAV- the thin oil guys are hard to argue with, they refuse to believe its all pushed by CAFE... I guess all those European manufacturers have been wrong all these years...
These credits are worth more than the cost of potential warranty repairs, the manufacturers roll the dice and so far have been winning, like they say follow the money. The last concern of the manufacturers is how well the engine will hold up once out of warranty.
The specious argument that "the engineers know whats best for your car" goes right out the window when you consider the engineers have little to do with it other than tell the sales and marketing dept that the engine will run okay on this oil and the engines should get through the warranty period.
Notice in countries where the engine might get run a little harder than grocery getter duty and there are no credit incentives they don't like those odds and quickly change the "spec" to a higher viscosity. This fact alone should raise questions about whats going on, on the face of it it makes no sense at all.
If xw20 is good enough to protect the engine here and saves fuel why isn't it good enough there where gas cost 3-4 times as much and the xw20 is readily available.
Quote:
Moreover, electric car credits, like all credits, are bankable and tradable. The automakers buy or sell credits to one another, reporting the transactions (but not the prices of credits) to regulators. Tesla, Nissan, Honda, and Toyota build plenty of efficient cars, generating extra credits they can sell. Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, and Ferrari have been buyers.
This has been a boon to electric-car makers, notably Tesla, which makes more money selling regulatory credits — $622 million, between 2011 and 2015 — than it does by selling cars. (Tesla’s revenues from regulatory credits include credits from Zero Emission Vehicle regulations set in California and adopted by nine other states.) Tesla realized about $13,000 in federal and state credit revenue for each car it sold in 2014 and about $6,600 for each car it sold in 2015.