Still gonna send it...
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Ooof... From what I've just read, it appears that many of the US cars delivered so far will likely have this issue.If it's the same HVAC issue that UK and EU cars have experienced, it's not actually AC related, it's the blower fan resistor pack in the front of the car. A thing that techs are colloquially calling "the hedgehog". Apparently it gets wet due to water following the path of a particular wiring segment from just under the cowl.
To be fair, what has been described here with the AC might be something else... but I kinda doubt it.
I encourage you to read this entire thread, but note the dates.
Air con known issue -no fix yet [EDIT: now with official fix]
Has anyone on here had the air con issue and had it resolved/still waiting on lotus? Air con worked for 2 days, failed, took it to service, they reset it, but explained its a known fault lotus are working on and it would probably go again. It did a couple of days later. Doesn’t need regassing...www.emiraforum.com
Lotus have made a number of production changes to address the problems described in this thread, but it's an ever-developing story, and things may change at any time. The issue could already be permanently fixed. It sure would be nice if they would issue TSBs through their VSIC system so that dealers and independent mechanics (including us) could know one way or the other.
There are many posts describing the resistor issues, but more worrying to me is some wiring harness issues that were mentioned. One poster with a UK car described needing a total wiring harness replacement due to water intrusion at a cost (in dollars equivalent) of nearly $18,000!
As this is new car, we don't really have any pictures or videos of the problem component, so it's hard for me to visualize exactly what is going on. Fan issues are likely related to the resistors. However if fans are "blowing warm", then this might be a failed A/C compressor (which has been mentioned), an A/C compressor clutch problem, or wiring harness issues.
Hopefully changes have been put into production that will solve this problem from now on...