The cause of the several-months-long 4T Genuine Stella delay is revealed thanks to FOIA request. The emissions stickers weren’t sticky enough, and the idle mixture screw wasn’t sufficiently tamperproof. I don’t know if “Epoxy coating” means they were supposed to glue them in place, or if that’s referring to the dumb plastic cap that covers the 1/2″ hole in the airbox (Nevermind, looking at my photos of the prototype, the 4T carb isn’t inside the airbox), but either way, that seems like a pretty minor issue. And honestly, that screw is there because it sometimes needs to be adjusted.
I applaud the U.S. and California governments for looking out for our security, safety, and ecological future. I’m absolutely glad they’ve ramped up enforcement. But they basically screwed Genuine here, badly, after ten years of letting anything with two wheels enter the country.
The real irony? The pollution created by shipping these buggers back to India and back (1000+ scooters, by land and sea) has a measurable environmental impact that surely outweighs the infraction. But that’s (mostly) outside the U.S., so who cares, right? Way to save the earth!
Props to Ralph for taking the trouble to find out instead of speculating on the boards for four months, like the rest of us.
As I speculated previously, there’s a D.C. lobbying firm taking money from Chinese industrialists that made this happen. I’d bet good money on it.
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I think Jimmy Fallon thanked the US for this in his thank you notes last week….
thanks for the update BB
looking again at my photos of the prototype, it’s clear changes were made later, because the later prototypes (as pictured in Scoot! magazine earlier this year) have a plastic (?) cover over most of the carb and the evap gizmo is located differently. So my old photos are nothing to go from. I’ve also found that (at least some) other scooters ship with the fuel/air mixture screw epoxied in place, so that’s not unheard of, and possibly even standard practice.
But still, hyper-lame. The thread on modern buddy includes a lot more insight into the process now (and a lot of speculative bickering).