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Comment by atburrow | Hacker News Reader

Why was there a regulation in place preventing this in the first place? I don’t get it.

How does it pass safety regulations without an integral part of the vehicle? How do they publish performance data if it can't move on itself?

Not that those are insurmountable obstacles, but a law that says "You can't claim your vehicle does 200 miles on a charge if it doesn't include a battery" or "You can't claim your vehicle is safe in a frontal crash because the battery absorbs some of the energy except you're not including the battery" don't seem unreasonable.

Can't you just design/test it with OEM batteries, but allow the end user to buy it without the OEM batteries?

That's pretty much what this law allows now

It'd probably be treated as a kit car under the existing regulations, which I imagine means it wouldn't have a VIN assigned at time of sale.

So this probably adds exceptions specifically for battery-less EVs to still get a VIN and be sold as a complete vehicle.

Viewing this from a US perspective anyways...

There is no specific regulation, other than selling incomplete products as completed products.

For example, its perfectly legal to advertise a car as saying its a car without engine. You just cannot advertise it in such a way that the viewer thinks he can buy the car and just enjoy it.

How's this any different than the situation with PC parts? You have CPU and GPU manufacturers advertising their products with images of games being played, yet you need to buy half a dozen other parts before you can start gaming.

Its other way round, you can sell CPU / steering only, but you can't say you are selling a PC/Car without it.

I expect that in many places it’s not legal to sell a new car that doesn’t drive out of the “box.”

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