Reflections on GTM over the years

Originally Posted by Mike@GTM

For starters, CARB is a real challenge. Back when I worked for the State of Washington, I reviewed Energy Life Cycle Cost Analyses submitted by contractors that were either building new state facilities or upgrading existing ones. There were a lot of hoops the contractors had to jump through to even get approval to do the project. Often, we would ask them to analyse other alternative methods or review their calculations and assumptions with more scrutiny. Basically, what I'm saying here is that environmentally conscious state agencies will put you through the ringer and make you jump through a lot of hoops which costs money. Especially if they've never worked with you before.

But that's only part of it. The other part is that Sam only kinda wanted to get it done. It sat on the back burner for years and every now and then he'd give it another shot. He just wasn't that motivated to overcome any obstacles CARB put in his path. In his mind, the kits were selling well enough without it. Sure, it would have increased sales a bit, but as any business owner can tell you: is the additional cost/risk worth the potential reward/profit? I don't know if he ever actually sat down and crunched the numbers to make a determination or not (although I highly doubt it), but one thing is for sure, there are a lot of people that don't know the rules and regulations for their particular state and automatically assume that CARB approval unequivocally translates to street legal. For most states, CARB is irrelevant but having CARB approval would certainly translate to a lot more sales overall because it is the gold star standard that people recognize. I don't think Sam quite recognized its importance otherwise it would have been done years ago.