A compliance car is an alternative fuel vehicle that is explicitly designed to meet tightening government regulations for low-emission vehicle sales, while the automobile manufacturer restricts sales to specific jurisdictions to meet the rules, or limits production, or both. While the introduction of compliance cars by the largest car manufacturers is sometimes explained by the companies arguing that they could not manufacture electric cars profitably and sell them for more than their cost to produce them, another mechanism could be behind the auto companies practice of releasing EVs only in limited quantities and in limited markets. Since Tesla has shown profitability producing electric vehicles—with four consecutive quarters of company profitability as of July 2020—the large legacy manufacturers could also be facing the dilemma of the Osborne Effect. They are behind Tesla in building both the battery technology and EV assembly/service expertise of the frontrunner, while facing the inexorable problem that announcing high-quality mass market new EV vehicles will eat into the present sales of the internal combustion engine cars they currently produce in volume, and the exclusive current source of company profits. History Legislative authority to add the force of government mandates on automobile manufacturers to increase the penetration of electric and hybrid automobiles into the operating "fleet" of all automobiles have been put in place in several national jurisdictions, notably the United States and Europe. Although the General Motors EV1 was conceived as an electric vehicle to be built from the ground up in the late 1990s, a significant part of the rationale for designing and producing the "mass-produced" EV was to meet the environmental mandates then coming in the US, initially in California. The EV1 was available in only a few select local markets in the US, was not sold but available only by lease, and few vehicles—less than 1,200—were ever produced, with GM ending production in 1999. The EV1 was therefore a compliance car, albeit an innovative one that was much loved by customers. GM lobbied to get the early government mandate killed, and they were successful; GM then shut down the EV1 program by 2002 and recalled all leased vehicles by February 2002. By 2012, the state of California—through legislative authority given to the California Air Resources Board (CARB)—successfully promulgated long-term regulations to require the six most popular automakers in the state (Honda, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and Chrysler) to offer a zero-emissions vehicle ZEV. Failure