Why the US doesn't ever get some cars

[RVJ]

I was reading an article this morning about Jason Godsil who's developing the Manhattan V-16. It's a niche car but I found one quote eye opening as to why the US doesn't ever see some cars or options. It was pretty shocking to me, especially the part about seatbelt colors.

"Crash tests and EPA certifications will need to be done but the level that will be required for a fully certified vehicle was an eye opener. We knew things like headlight placement is critical and air bags are required, but it goes far beyond that. Do you want to use a custom headlight that isn’t used currently? Sure, we can look at that for $300,000. Do you want to have multiple options for seat belt colors? Sure, that will be $30,000 for the test of each color. It’s crazy! That is why other countries get some car models that are never for sale here in America."


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[Jeff V.]

I think he's exaggerating a little bit. The US is the largest car market in the world. It can be very profitable to sell a car here, if you've got the sales volume to back up the costs.

The problem is that it's not profitable to sell 3 or 4 niche hypercars while still certifying them. We don't have safety and emissions exemptions for low volume manufacturers. I could be wrong, but I believe that a lot of European countries do. A lot of hypercars go to the middle east as well. The amount of rules you have to follow are inversely proportional to your wealth.

I don't see Christian von Koenigsegg complaining about US certification costs on their '182' Agera RS build, and he's about as low volume as you can get.

http://koenigsegg.com/tag/build128/

With that said, I don't see why it's so difficult to come up with a common base of certifications, so that at least some of the data can meet multiple countries requirements. You could do one set of tests that would satisfy, say, 75% of global requirements, and then do a smaller subset of tests for the US, Sweden, the UK, etc.

[RVJ]

I do agree that in a volume situation the costs can be relatively easily absorbed. I can see how it might impact certain lower volume cars (RS for example).
As to manufacturers though, in previously worked for a company that was a Tier 1 electronics supplier to several auto makers. (Tier 1 means that they accept you components without testing, etc) I know that we had stuff that was far more advanced (think infotainment, etc) but if it cost a nickel more it was very hard to get into the car due to profit margins.

I just found it interesting that the color of a safety component requires individual testing. Maybe there is concern about a dye causing some type of degradation?

It would help explain why certain non-emission related options / cars don't show up here. As you stated, the US is a huge market.

Anyway, just food for thought...


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