Transportation Freedom Act and its ramifications for Lotus/Emira

[cryptovince]

Pertaining specifically to US Emira owners:

As I'm sure some of you know, the bill was introduced back in February and will shake up the trajectory of the car industry if it eventually passes.

There's many facets to this new piece of legislation but I'm mostly specifically interested in the emissions part of it, and it'll be fun to speculate on if it'll affect the Emira or not.

I was already told by a couple of car shops that they wouldn't help me do a 3rd cat delete (or install an exhaust that involves one) here in SoCal because of CARB regulations, and it just so happens that some YouTubers covering the bill speculate that it could spell the end of CARB as a whole.

I'd definitely welcome that change, as I'm sure all fellow CARB state Lotus owners would. I hear it may also spell the end of smog checks too, but of course this is all to be taken with a grain of salt until the bill actually passes.

I'm curious about everyone's thoughts about this and the possible effects down the line. Maybe best case scenario, CARB goes away, and Lotus gives us a better stock tune for all our cars, as some have suspected they detuned our Emiras just to get CARB certification in the first place.

Perhaps it's just wishful thinking on my part but one can dream.

 

[Beachbum]

You think US cars are detuned ?!?!?! At least you get 400bhp, us poor sods on the other side of the water only get 360bhp. Now thats a detune

 

[Nova]

Personally I think it's not going to be that meaningful. I don't see Lotus putting out some monster new engine in a hotter version of the Emira. I also strongly doubt that AMG will provide an even more powerful version of the M139. Their next engine package, if they continue to work on this platform, may be a hybrid from Geely. It'll get them more performance and is better aligned with the global market instead of just the US.

 

[cryptovince]

You think US cars are detuned ?!?!?! At least you get 400bhp, us poor sods on the other side of the water only get 360bhp. Now thats a detune

Sorry,I should have been more specific:

I meant compared to the Evora which it directly replaced. Same engine, and there were 400HP variants but the later variants had 416 and even 430HP @7000 RPM.

That's another thing, our redline sits at 6800 RPM stock and I've seen talk about these numbers being toned down due strictly to constantly tighter CARB emissions between the time the Evora was going out of production and the Emira came into existence.

 

[Orchardbike]

I’m not sure I follow this logic. If Lotus are happy to offer the i4 in the US with 400BHP, but 360BHP in the UK, they’re clearly happy to have different engine performance for different markets. So why would the UK V6 output be restricted to 400BHP for the UK, because of US CARB emissions? There has to be another reason. I don’t believe there were any internal hardware (pistons, rods etc.) changed in the 430 Evora, compared to the Evora 400. So why the de-tune?

 

[MIGZ]

if something were to pass it would be at the federal level, safe to assume states could still decide locally.

See what has happened with medical marijuana and abortions