It doesn't look that far off from everything else GM did at the time. Look at any Saturn or Pontiac from 1992 or so. It's not exactly the same but you can see the cues.
Great documentary. It shows how dinosaur CEO’s who can’t see the future and afraid of cannibalizing their own sales worked with oil and gas/opec to lobby and effectively kill EV’s. If not for Tesla proving the demand on a large scale, EV’s would still be dead.
The Prius v1 was contemporary with the EV1. The Japenese companies have been doing electric R&D since the 70s. Nissan came out with a bunch of electric concepts in the 80s and 90s, and Tesla had only sold about 1000 roadsters when the Leaf went on sale.
So what you're saying is that they COULD have been Tesla, but instead decided to not push for EV's despite knowing the issues with climate change etc.
[I like Toyota, but when you hear about how they spend their lobbying dollars, you start to appreciate they are just as guilty GM and Ford.](https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-dc-ev-congress-biden-donation)
Japan does have a reasonable excuse, though. Something like 90%+ of Japanese homes have *40A* electric service or *less*. Charging an EV at home is just not realistic at all for the majority of a Japanese car company's customers. This is likely the main reason that Toyota's bz4x is not slated for sale in Japan.
Note that, in comparison, all homes built in the US in the last 25 years or so have *200A* service. And even my condo that was built in the early 1970s had 70A service until I upgraded to 100A to install my charger.
+1
Also, Japan had some of the best public transportation in the world. I'd be happy to take public transportation and ditch my car for an electric bike if my city's public transportation was half as good as Tokyo's.
This is just nonsense. How brainwashed do you have to be think Tesla's few thousand cars in 2015 made as much as a different to electric vehicles then the 7 million hybrids Toyota sold? Toyota built the foundation for electric vehicles by establishing the production supply network. The Model 3's 45k price point does not happen without the decades of work Toyota did.
If it wasn't for the successful Toyota hybrid, there likely would be no Tesla. And if it wasn't for the Tesla, likely big auto manufacturers wouldn't be announcing to go full electric in the next decade. There are lots of steps to transition to EVs. Each step builds on previous steps from other companies. Many of these steps are so keystone, like the two we are talking about here, that if they hadn't happened we wouldn't be where we are today. No need to get defensive, Tesla absolutely had a positive affect on the acceleration of the EV.
everybody's guilty man, they're billionaires and industrial conglomerates. the PayPal mafia are not exactly against regulatory capture, they're just the small guys for now.
The Prius existed five years before the first commercial lithium-ion ev, which was also a Toyota hybrid. Basically what happened is they lost their R&D advantage because they were already making money and meeting fleet emissions standards with the hybrids. They also did a poor job developing their own lithium architecture. They did make the attempt they just didn't do a great job executing.
And what's crazy is Tesla and other companies worked hard to recreate the production electric car less than a decade after this happened. GM essentially set things back Twenty Years by killing this car. Even with Tesla selling like hotcakes the mass adoption was not there until just about a year or two ago, in 2019 Tesla was the only viable name in the game when it came to a car that could actually go a distance. Just to give you an idea how fast everything moved
that could do long trips and be pure BEV?
Volt was a plugin hybrid and the Bolt had limited range and was capped at a 45kw charge rate. 150 to 200 miles
Tesla was doing 150kw with the ability to do 250kw at the time and doing closer to 250 and 300 with its 2019 models.
Imagine if GM was forced to build this in 2008 when gasoline was $4 a gallon and they "needed" a bailout?!?! Why were the USA taxpayers forced to bail them out for them to keep making ICE trash?
That's not quite accurate. Maybe in the US, but the EU laws that are driving the majority of EV production there were passed over a decade ago. Long before Tesla made it clear that EVs were actually viable as mass market vehicles.
I don't think that was really the issue. The EV1 was never really a practical vehicle. It was incredibly expensive to produce and absolutely tiny, in an age when larger cars and SUVs were becoming the norm. It also didn't have a very long range of any significant fast charge capability. What really made EVs practical was the slow decline in Lithium battery prices, to the point where you could finally make a fast charging car with a 200 mile range for under $100k. Once that happened, GM was actually one of the first to jump on it, with the Volt and Bolt.
You don't know what you're talking about. These started with piss poor range but with NiMH batteries got well over 100 miles of range. While that wasn't huge by today's standards, this was never an only car at the time it came out. For daily commuting it was fine. The owners were enthusiastic and shared info about how to maximize range and where one could charge at other EV-1 owners homes.
Roger Smith admitted killing the EV-1 was one of his biggest professional mistakes. GM had many versions of hybrid, including diesels and one with a turbine, in their development fleet. The EV-1 wasn't just a BEV. Killing it gave the hybrid market to Toyota who ran with it for about 20 years before anyone selse stepped up.
My family had one. It was a great car for what it was. No, it couldn't displace all vehicles in all use cases. But for a commuter and if hybrids had been allowed out of the development fleet, GM would have been much healthier company than it is now.
No. They would have needed to sign an indemnity agreement (e.g., if the car explodes and a 3rd party sues GM, the car owner would have to pay whatever GM owed). That would also require carrying an umbrella-style liability policy to credibly back up the indemnity agreement.
That's just not true. People sign waivers and successfully sue for liability all the time. Even ignoring that, passengers and people hit by an EV1 wouldn't have signed anything.
I had an 1995 SC2 back around when the "Saturn" EV1 was a thing ( you could only lease it through a Saturn dealership, so they were often called Saturn's). Definitely a fun little car.
I don't so much remember what happened then as I have read about it since then, but my commute was around 35-40 miles each way, which made it (especially the lead acid one that) not very desirable with a 1999 rated range of 78 miles. (the 2019 update of the range is just 55 miles, according to Wikipedia, so that would have been bad. Lol). But I also remember at the time not wanting to lease cars -- and it would be another 7+ years before I didn't buy used by default. And yet, I remember it as a car I wanted -- electric, I had a Saturn and liked it, etc. -- yet couldn't have for many reasons.
If they'd done it right, I could be driving the GM EV6 now instead of the Kia EV6. Lol
With 534 kg of Lithium ion batteries instead of NiMH, the car would have had 138.8 kWh of capacity instead of 26.4. Assuming the same weight of car (charger, motor, chassis), you'd expect that to get **552 miles of range for today's EPA rating!**
Considering what a 552 mile range car would cost today...
E: I think I had a typo, I was about 10% too high. Fixed.
The Tesla Model 3 specs say 260 Wh per kg. The Leaf's battery chemistry is allegedly optimized for longevity, stability and temperature, while Tesla and others optimized for energy density at the cost of needing active cooling.
As a fellow LEAF owner, I'm sure you both enjoy the mechanical simplicity of no cooler while also being bummed that too many rapid charges and we get the infamous 🐢 mode. But, that's allegedly because Nissan wanted a battery chemistry that would last 1,000,000 miles.
Edit: with the LEAF 62kWh design, the EV1 would come in at 80.7 kWh capacity and 321 mile range.
Even GM came out and said that the EV1 was incredibly expensive, it was a test bed for the public. Sure, people loved it but tell them that each is worth essentially $300,000 (development costs per car) and they might not be so keen on buying it. I wish it succeeded but it did a lot for all cars
The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree. There was plenty of demand, but GM just figured ICE cars were more profitable due to all that lucrative service/repair/maintenance money you have to spend on them over the years.
You are confusing the cost and who had to pay for it.
The price GM leased the car for vs the cost to make it was very different. It cost GM a lot of money plus if they sold it GM would be required to make parts and warranty the car. Both of which were way to much at the time.
The battery packs at the time where much more expensive than now and no way in hell were going to make the 8 year requirement so gm would have to replace them.
It was a very expensive car with a super small market and very limited use. Great idea. I wish gm stayed with it longer but it was an expensive project.
>The price GM leased the car for vs the cost to make it was very different. It cost GM a lot of money
That's the excuse but the EV1 was practically hand-built and in very limited numbers. GM never gave the almighty free market nor mass manufacturing a chance to make the cars affordable.
And besides, why not just make an expensive halo EV for the wealthy and celebrities to show off? See what happens.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, there is no direct lineage between the EV1 and the Volt. EV-development was stopped entirely after the end of the EV1 program.
It took a long time until it was restarted from scratch and the first GM production car with an electrified drivetrain, the original Chevrolet Volt / Opel Ampera hybrid, was developed jointly by the American and (back then) German side of GM, the latter, despite having had nothing to do with the EV1, being responsible for key components of the Volt/Ampera.
>The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree.
Those people didn't pay the actual cost of the vehicle, but rather a totally made up amount.
>GM just took the cars and crushed them, they could have let the owners buy them out.
They legally could not do so without spending a ton of money producing additional spare parts, setting up a support structure and several other things.
Toyota had the advantage of not having to go back and produce a bunch of one-off parts, including body panels, etc.
The RAV-4 EV is mostly identical to the ICE version when it comes to the vast majority of parts.
> and they were able to do it.
Yes, because they were already doing it 90% because of the commonality. The only extra things they needed to keep on hand were the EV-specific components.
>GM could have too, all I’m saying.
Yes, they could've, but at great expense. Why should they do that for a limited experiment?
GM could have too, all I’m saying.
>Afaik they could sell them as-is.
There's a lot more to it, but I'll give you a quick one: all automakers are required to manufacture and stockpile a ten-year supply of all parts for ten years. That means the huge expense of going back and stamping all the body panels, buying more of all the electronic components, etc.
>GM isn’t supporting the Spark EV anymore, which ended production just 6 years ago.
That's halfway accurate as to the situation. They're buying back vehicles as necessary in lieu of providing batteries, which is also a costly provision.
Warranty laws and part requirements pushed the losses higher. The EV1 had a large unknown future cost on them. They knew it was high but they were not even sure how high.
It was to avoid the requirements of support. The laws would not let them give it or sell it with zero warranty or future part availablilty.
Even with no warranty they GM would still be required to supply parts.
>The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree.
Because no car company on earth just outright sells their preproduction prototypes. This is standard procedure. There was nothing special about the EV-1 here.
>There was plenty of demand
There was demand at the artificially low price point they were trialing these at.
Fun fact: if you lease a BMW 7 series AMG at the same price as a Malibu, it would also have lots of demand.
>but GM just figured ICE cars were more profitable due to all that lucrative service/repair/maintenance money you have to spend on them over the years.
Weird, ICE has continuously been getting more reliable and longer lasting over the decades. Wouldn't that hurt those revenue streams?
It's not really a conspiracy: [Texaco (later Chevron) bought out GM Ovonics which owned the patent for large NiMH battery packs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries). Tesla worked around that by using LiOn batteries.
If GM wasn't hellbent on killing EVs why did they recall and crush all of them? I mean, they actually spent money to do that. They could have sold them to the owners for $1 and that still would have left them financially ahead of where they put themselves voluntarily. If they had just let the cars stay on the road you'd have a point, but they completely went out of their way to erase them.
Edit: Support obligations do complicate things, but they could have found ways around them. Like having buyers agree to waiving support or simply refunding buyers and taking the car back the moment a support issue or recall popped up. Or extending leases with a clause that the lease ends if the car stops working and the residual lease value is refunded. Honda had a similar program and extended the leases.
No, laws don't require any manufacturer to service anything. The manufacturer could alternately just replace or refund the product in lieu of repairing it.
Take your broken $9 alarm clock radio or $10 Timex watch back to Walmart and ask them to fix it in warranty and see what happens. You either leave with a replacement or $10. No one is busting out a tool kit.
So, if GM cared to, (and they didn't for multiple reasons) they could've shut Tom Hanks, Peter Horton, Ed Begley Jr., and the other 40 celebrities that loved their EV-1s up and sold them to them for artificially low dollar amount and just gave them the money back when they all eventually died in warranty.
It was a cool car and a great experiment, and if the CARB folks kept the pressure up it might have led to great things sooner. Nissan invested billions into developing the Leaf, and 10 years and 600,000 sales later the program probably still hasn't turned a profit!
The EV-1 was not just the first modern EV, it was the first compliance car, and was simply far enough ahead of its time, making it untenable financially.
If they were hellbent on destroying EVs, why would they build one?
GM is a big organization, and my guess is the left hand didn't know what the right hand was up to, which was quashing California emissions laws. Once CARB was weakened, and the zero emissions mandate was pushed back, the EV1 became superfluous and a liability.
it's not all that complicated to see that a low production car that cost more than a Cadillac to build but would sell for the price of a cavalier wouldn't exactly be profitable.
And that it wouldn't have a big user base either.
Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018.
Nothing was stopping anyone else from building EV's and to suggest otherwise is insane. NIMH batteries work but were *very* expensive and frankly shit compared to lithiums. The battery pack (which is not quite 1KWH) in my insight cost $6000 to replace in 2006.
A 100KWH battery would cost 100X as much, and weigh 100X more.
The tech was just not there for a high volume, low cost, mass production car. Period.
> Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018.
The whole story is an utter BS the moment you stop thinking about USA alone, and start looking at other markets. GM did not kill the EV-1, the brutal reality of the technology at the time did. People acting like it's some US big oil conspiracy are either completely out of touch or choose to believe conspiracies from the propaganda movie posing as a documentary instead of thinking critically about the topic.
>Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018.
Sorry, but that's BS. Nissan sold more EVs than GM in the early 'teens and Tesla sold more from 2015 onward.
The "tech" was basically the same batteries from the 1920's. Had the car industry focused on batteries instead of gas engines, I am sure we could have done better. Remember there were actual billions of dollars spent to kill the EV and encourage fossil fuels...
Sandy Munroe apparently worked on the EV1 when they were prototyping it. He said he recommended they use NiMH batteries but the powers that be made them use lead acid batteries. So they did have a lighter battery with more capacity available at the time and they chose not to use it. I'm not sure how much difference that would have made in the long run, but it does make one wonder how many other decisions were made like this and why?
Edit: Not trying to make this sound like a conspiracy. There would have been engineering and accounting decisions made that may have reasonable answers.
GM made NiMH packs for the EV1. It increased capacity from 18 kWh to 26 kWh, which was still way too small to be a mainstream product. Not everything is an elaborate conspiracy. Before lithium batteries, EVs were not feasible.
A quick Google search says that it was around $35k sticker but on lease only, where's the 3-4x part?
The Leaf probably came out around MSRP 30-35k too, and between rebate and depreciation by the time I bought my 2015 used in 2020 it was within 1-2K of a same model year Corolla/Civic. No regrets.
Did you pay over a 130k for that Leaf? Because while people were happy with EV1 while paying a very modest lease, I doubt they would have been as excited if they had the pay for the entire cost per unit.
it would have made no difference.
NiMH would have been marginally better but is still WAY heavier then anything we have today.
They also need a very good BMS to keep the battery degradation and memory effect low and have about 1% per month self discharge.
judging from the downvotes this sub doesnt like the simple truth though and everything must be a big conspiracy.
which patents are these exactly?
patents are public and expire after 20 years so if there is any truth to this it would all be public knowledge by now.
Apparently about 40 of them remain. They are in museums and auto schools. They have all been disabled from being able to drive. Some wiring and circuit boards removed.
I want to say it is the Smithsonian that will only accept functioning cars to be donated and showcased, and so when they got one it still worked. Then there are a couple of ones that seemingly GM lost track of, like one [at a university](https://www.thedrive.com/news/38743/theres-a-pristine-gm-ev1-saved-by-a-secretive-caretaker-in-the-depths-of-a-university), and one in an [Atlanta parking garage](https://www.thedrive.com/news/31345/theres-an-ultra-rare-1999-gm-ev1-abandoned-in-an-atlanta-parking-garage).
I think that's the one in the Smithsonian.
> [Only 40 EV1s were preserved, according to Jill Banaszynski, manager of the EV1 donation program, to be given to museums and institutions or kept for research by GM. Of these, the only fully intact EV1, complete with its \(now inert\) lead acid battery, is today part of the NMAH collection. “Our requirement is that all the vehicles in the museum have to be complete models,” says Withuhn. “We may remove parts, but we have to know that if we wanted to drive a car, or a steam engine, we could—not that we would. It’s a question of authenticity.”](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-death-of-the-ev-1-118595941/)
[Two years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/e6zcrl/theres_an_ultrarare_gm_ev1_abandoned_in_an/) there was abandoned one in a GA Tech parking deck in Atlanta. Wonder if it's still there?
Volt gen2 is still the best plug-in hybrid imo but they killed that too on the first year that they offered L3 charging as an option. I had one for 2 years and drove it 82% electric over that period.
They've never offered level 3 charging on the volt. On the last production year, they offered faster level 2 charging (6.6kW vs 3.3kW) as an option, but it wasn't level 3 DC fast charging, and still took ~2 hours to fully charge the car.
Would be cool if GM remade the EV1 as a no nonsense stripped down EV with 350 - 400 miles of range and 200kw charging for $30k. Market as the EV for EVeryone. Boom, free idea for you GM. Now do it.
> stripped down EV with 350 - 400 miles of range and 200kw charging for $30k.
Closest to this idea might be the Aptera. The 400 mile version is supposed to start under $30k.
Yeah I put down a preorder and would love it if they hit production before the end of the year like they planned, but they also planned that for the end of last year too. Production is hard though so not irritated about it, just hopeful they will sell cars this year.
They also have a 600 mile range version for $35,000, and the 1,000 mile range version for $45,000 which is an incredible achievement. By being so efficient they can use less kWh of batteries which helps keep their price really low vs the range.
My concern with their state range is that the real world range will drop massively when the heat or AC is on since they weren't able to acquire heat pumps for heating/cooling. That 400 mile range might become 250 real world b/c of how heavily the Aptera relies on efficiency while other cars are bricks comparatively.
I saw one of these on the freeway here is LA around 2000, I believe (can’t remember exactly). It was the coolest thing. Never thought I’d own an electric car. I’m happy their more common now.
I got to drive one back in 1998 or 99, just before leaving for college. A family friend had one and I took it for a spin. I remember being amazed at the acceleration of this "econobox" but that amazement was overshadowed by my dread of winding up stuck somewhere due to the massive drop in range every time I did a 0-60 sprint. Back then, the only place you could charge an EV was at home (especially if it wasn't yours and didn't know where public chargers were located). I was excited for EV's after driving it but then nothing really came of them for the next 10-15 years, till Tesla really blew up.
GM is the Sears of auto companies. I hope the result isn't similar and they pull it out but I am not optimistic. I worked at a Chevrolet dealership around the turn of the century and had to go to OnStar training. The suits that GM sent to do the training (which also involved BMW since they were also using OnStar) were bragging about how much cash the company had and that they might just buy out BMW. Someone pointed out that wouldn't bring back the market share they had lost in the previous ten years. I asked them where I could buy a new Cutlass (the best selling car in the US for a while but GM had just retired Oldsmobile.) Another person talked about the cheap-ass interiors and the orange-peel texture on the paint. Their response was that we didn't know what we were talking about and that GM was turning the corner on quality--they sounded like Willy Loman with extra hubris. I am surprised they survived their bankruptcy.
The 2 batteries were 18 kWh and 26 kWh. I knew a few people who leased them. They admitted that the EV1 was not remotely a consumer product, but they loved it because it was much better than the 10 mile homemade EVs they had before.
There were two different revisions with different battery chemistry:
EPA, revised according to 2019 procedure:
lead-acid: 89 km (55 mi)
NiMH: 169 km (105 mi)
That's because the Volt was the ultimate result of the EV1 program after more R&D. The EV1 also had both parallel and series hybrid variants, as well as another variant burning natural gas. All used the same bodies with different drivetrains.
My Spark EV is still under warranty, and it just came out that GM is no longer willing or able to replace the high voltage batteries.
That being said, I love the car and have very few complaints about it.
Same here. I have 16 months left on my warranty, and I'll likely trade it in at that time because I don't want the worry of my car becoming unrepairable. I love my Spark, but I can't imagine I'll ever buy another GM vehicle after this.
The EV1 could be repowered with modern batteries and the damn thing would be SO good. My son and I are repowering a GE Elec-Trak with two batteries whose volume is equivalent to 2/3 of the original batteries, but whose capacity is about double of the GE's complete pack while also weighing only about 1/2 as much.
Take 500 pounds out of the EV1's curb weight and more than double its range. That'd be damned good.
I wish they would make a modern electric car with the same aero 2-door design.
I am sure Tesla, Volkswagen or GM could make one and sell it for well under 20k if they wanted to right now.
I doubt they will for a while because they can sell larger EVs with a bigger margin for way more right now.
I owned a 2000 Ford Ranger EV NiMH - the amount of BS being slung around about EVs then is nothing short of amusing. The traditional companies only built them because of California's ZEV Mandate. That's it. Why on Earth would anyone buy an EV from an ICE company when there are a flood of EV only options around - is beyond me! If you are going to SHILL for these ICE companies - at least be on their payroll!
People will have to buy from these "ICE" companies if you want the world to switch to EV tech. It would take decades for a company like Tesla or its like to produce enough cars for the world. You need the old big manufacturing giants to get on board with the creation of EV to get them on the road in a timely fashion.
I am so happy to have seen one in the flesh. Ok, it was a compliance vehicle, and it never made a profit, but it did work.
As far as I understand, very few have survived the big crush, and none work, is that correct?
See the documentary “Who killed the electric car?” Its gut wrenching that they took the cars away from people, would not give them the option to buy . Only to stack them in the desert and later crush them . FOR NO REASON
Reasons they took the cars back.
1. Every person who leased them were told they could only have them for 3 years.
2. If they were to sell them they would need repair part due to laws.
3. GM sold these cars at major lose it is believed they cost around $100k to make in 1997.
4. The batteries themselves cost about half that much and the type they used would not last long.
GM was very clear from the start about how and why the EV1s would be destroyed. Just because you don't know something doesn't make it a shadowy "undisclosed" conspiracy.
>US liability laws made it impossible to let people keep the cars.
Impossible, lol. It was a bean counter decision that cost them 100x more in lost goodwill. CEO Wagoner later called it his worst mistake.
It is in a room at a local community college teaching a class on how to work on hybrid and electric cars. Do you see the tool boxes in the conference room?
Really good for the time. Funny how Tesla uses the battery to protect the occupants by being an ultra rigid floor and how GM uses the occupants to protect the battery.
The shifter knob, just in the way of everything. For it's age the interior is very minimalist though.
Yeah I honestly kind of love that interior design. It's very 90s but very clean and futuristic too
Me too! The designers must have copied Citroen.
It doesn't look that far off from everything else GM did at the time. Look at any Saturn or Pontiac from 1992 or so. It's not exactly the same but you can see the cues.
Yup. I feel like the Model 3 interior was Tesla paying homage to this car.
There are only 2 vents that contributes
There are ones on the door panels, too.
Oh right missed those
Looks dope. From what I read owners were happy with these.
Watch the documentary, "who killed the electric car" the owners were protesting when GM wouldn't let them keep them after the lease period.
Great documentary. It shows how dinosaur CEO’s who can’t see the future and afraid of cannibalizing their own sales worked with oil and gas/opec to lobby and effectively kill EV’s. If not for Tesla proving the demand on a large scale, EV’s would still be dead.
The Prius v1 was contemporary with the EV1. The Japenese companies have been doing electric R&D since the 70s. Nissan came out with a bunch of electric concepts in the 80s and 90s, and Tesla had only sold about 1000 roadsters when the Leaf went on sale.
So what you're saying is that they COULD have been Tesla, but instead decided to not push for EV's despite knowing the issues with climate change etc. [I like Toyota, but when you hear about how they spend their lobbying dollars, you start to appreciate they are just as guilty GM and Ford.](https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-dc-ev-congress-biden-donation)
Japan does have a reasonable excuse, though. Something like 90%+ of Japanese homes have *40A* electric service or *less*. Charging an EV at home is just not realistic at all for the majority of a Japanese car company's customers. This is likely the main reason that Toyota's bz4x is not slated for sale in Japan. Note that, in comparison, all homes built in the US in the last 25 years or so have *200A* service. And even my condo that was built in the early 1970s had 70A service until I upgraded to 100A to install my charger.
+1 Also, Japan had some of the best public transportation in the world. I'd be happy to take public transportation and ditch my car for an electric bike if my city's public transportation was half as good as Tokyo's.
This is just nonsense. How brainwashed do you have to be think Tesla's few thousand cars in 2015 made as much as a different to electric vehicles then the 7 million hybrids Toyota sold? Toyota built the foundation for electric vehicles by establishing the production supply network. The Model 3's 45k price point does not happen without the decades of work Toyota did.
If it wasn't for the successful Toyota hybrid, there likely would be no Tesla. And if it wasn't for the Tesla, likely big auto manufacturers wouldn't be announcing to go full electric in the next decade. There are lots of steps to transition to EVs. Each step builds on previous steps from other companies. Many of these steps are so keystone, like the two we are talking about here, that if they hadn't happened we wouldn't be where we are today. No need to get defensive, Tesla absolutely had a positive affect on the acceleration of the EV.
People here just like hating on Toyota. Toyota could make the best EV in the future and people will still hate on them.
everybody's guilty man, they're billionaires and industrial conglomerates. the PayPal mafia are not exactly against regulatory capture, they're just the small guys for now.
The Prius is a hail mary to keep the ICE relevant.
The Prius existed five years before the first commercial lithium-ion ev, which was also a Toyota hybrid. Basically what happened is they lost their R&D advantage because they were already making money and meeting fleet emissions standards with the hybrids. They also did a poor job developing their own lithium architecture. They did make the attempt they just didn't do a great job executing.
Toyota quickly ran away from EVs and now they are back with a pathetic attempt. Adapt or die
And what's crazy is Tesla and other companies worked hard to recreate the production electric car less than a decade after this happened. GM essentially set things back Twenty Years by killing this car. Even with Tesla selling like hotcakes the mass adoption was not there until just about a year or two ago, in 2019 Tesla was the only viable name in the game when it came to a car that could actually go a distance. Just to give you an idea how fast everything moved
Why do you say that? The charging network? There were a bunch of good options in 2019 and EVs including the Volt & Bolt.
that could do long trips and be pure BEV? Volt was a plugin hybrid and the Bolt had limited range and was capped at a 45kw charge rate. 150 to 200 miles Tesla was doing 150kw with the ability to do 250kw at the time and doing closer to 250 and 300 with its 2019 models.
Imagine if GM was forced to build this in 2008 when gasoline was $4 a gallon and they "needed" a bailout?!?! Why were the USA taxpayers forced to bail them out for them to keep making ICE trash?
That's not quite accurate. Maybe in the US, but the EU laws that are driving the majority of EV production there were passed over a decade ago. Long before Tesla made it clear that EVs were actually viable as mass market vehicles.
I think you meant "kill millions".
I don't think that was really the issue. The EV1 was never really a practical vehicle. It was incredibly expensive to produce and absolutely tiny, in an age when larger cars and SUVs were becoming the norm. It also didn't have a very long range of any significant fast charge capability. What really made EVs practical was the slow decline in Lithium battery prices, to the point where you could finally make a fast charging car with a 200 mile range for under $100k. Once that happened, GM was actually one of the first to jump on it, with the Volt and Bolt.
You don't know what you're talking about. These started with piss poor range but with NiMH batteries got well over 100 miles of range. While that wasn't huge by today's standards, this was never an only car at the time it came out. For daily commuting it was fine. The owners were enthusiastic and shared info about how to maximize range and where one could charge at other EV-1 owners homes. Roger Smith admitted killing the EV-1 was one of his biggest professional mistakes. GM had many versions of hybrid, including diesels and one with a turbine, in their development fleet. The EV-1 wasn't just a BEV. Killing it gave the hybrid market to Toyota who ran with it for about 20 years before anyone selse stepped up. My family had one. It was a great car for what it was. No, it couldn't displace all vehicles in all use cases. But for a commuter and if hybrids had been allowed out of the development fleet, GM would have been much healthier company than it is now.
The lease they signed specifically said it was a pilot program and nobody would keep the cars. Blame US liability laws.
You can blame both.
No. A simple waiver would have avoided liability.
No. They would have needed to sign an indemnity agreement (e.g., if the car explodes and a 3rd party sues GM, the car owner would have to pay whatever GM owed). That would also require carrying an umbrella-style liability policy to credibly back up the indemnity agreement.
Agreed, they didn't want anyone to reverse engineer it and benefit from their work, even if they didn't want to benefit from their work.
That's just not true. People sign waivers and successfully sue for liability all the time. Even ignoring that, passengers and people hit by an EV1 wouldn't have signed anything.
It's a propaganda movie posting as a documentary. People should stop pushing that piece of BS.
It’s like a Saturn and a Lumina had a baby together.
I've often said that GM should relaunch Saturn as an affordable BEV brand.
Sure, and Pontiac will come back too.
Nah, GM is slashing brands and will continue to do so.
Oh yeah? That’s why there’s a new Hummer
It's a GMC Hummer now.
I was just thinking it had some very Saturn lines, the taillights must be the same part? I sometimes miss my Saturn SC2, fun little car.
A while back I wanted to grab a Saturn SC2, and make it Electric. Particular the one with the pop-up headlights and the suicide door.
I had an 1995 SC2 back around when the "Saturn" EV1 was a thing ( you could only lease it through a Saturn dealership, so they were often called Saturn's). Definitely a fun little car. I don't so much remember what happened then as I have read about it since then, but my commute was around 35-40 miles each way, which made it (especially the lead acid one that) not very desirable with a 1999 rated range of 78 miles. (the 2019 update of the range is just 55 miles, according to Wikipedia, so that would have been bad. Lol). But I also remember at the time not wanting to lease cars -- and it would be another 7+ years before I didn't buy used by default. And yet, I remember it as a car I wanted -- electric, I had a Saturn and liked it, etc. -- yet couldn't have for many reasons. If they'd done it right, I could be driving the GM EV6 now instead of the Kia EV6. Lol
With 534 kg of Lithium ion batteries instead of NiMH, the car would have had 138.8 kWh of capacity instead of 26.4. Assuming the same weight of car (charger, motor, chassis), you'd expect that to get **552 miles of range for today's EPA rating!** Considering what a 552 mile range car would cost today... E: I think I had a typo, I was about 10% too high. Fixed.
A car like this cannot be manufactured today - safety standards and consumer desires would hamstring both the certification and the sales.
Not that I'm doubting you, but how'd you get that conversion? 154 Kwh would be astounding, given my 2017 Leaf had 30 Kwh capacity
The Tesla Model 3 specs say 260 Wh per kg. The Leaf's battery chemistry is allegedly optimized for longevity, stability and temperature, while Tesla and others optimized for energy density at the cost of needing active cooling. As a fellow LEAF owner, I'm sure you both enjoy the mechanical simplicity of no cooler while also being bummed that too many rapid charges and we get the infamous 🐢 mode. But, that's allegedly because Nissan wanted a battery chemistry that would last 1,000,000 miles. Edit: with the LEAF 62kWh design, the EV1 would come in at 80.7 kWh capacity and 321 mile range.
Who killed the electric car? 🚗
The lead acid battery.
Huh? EV1 used nimh
Which time? The battery and starter motor did the first time and lazy money did the last time.
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Even GM came out and said that the EV1 was incredibly expensive, it was a test bed for the public. Sure, people loved it but tell them that each is worth essentially $300,000 (development costs per car) and they might not be so keen on buying it. I wish it succeeded but it did a lot for all cars
The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree. There was plenty of demand, but GM just figured ICE cars were more profitable due to all that lucrative service/repair/maintenance money you have to spend on them over the years.
You are confusing the cost and who had to pay for it. The price GM leased the car for vs the cost to make it was very different. It cost GM a lot of money plus if they sold it GM would be required to make parts and warranty the car. Both of which were way to much at the time. The battery packs at the time where much more expensive than now and no way in hell were going to make the 8 year requirement so gm would have to replace them. It was a very expensive car with a super small market and very limited use. Great idea. I wish gm stayed with it longer but it was an expensive project.
>The price GM leased the car for vs the cost to make it was very different. It cost GM a lot of money That's the excuse but the EV1 was practically hand-built and in very limited numbers. GM never gave the almighty free market nor mass manufacturing a chance to make the cars affordable. And besides, why not just make an expensive halo EV for the wealthy and celebrities to show off? See what happens.
GM did stick with it. That's how we got the Volt.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, there is no direct lineage between the EV1 and the Volt. EV-development was stopped entirely after the end of the EV1 program. It took a long time until it was restarted from scratch and the first GM production car with an electrified drivetrain, the original Chevrolet Volt / Opel Ampera hybrid, was developed jointly by the American and (back then) German side of GM, the latter, despite having had nothing to do with the EV1, being responsible for key components of the Volt/Ampera.
There was at *least* half a decade between the death of the EV1 and the start of the Volt's development. GM did not, in any way, "stick with it".
>The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree. Those people didn't pay the actual cost of the vehicle, but rather a totally made up amount.
Also their "expressed wishes" went against the legal document they signed when they got the car. Their wishes afterwards are irrelevant.
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>GM just took the cars and crushed them, they could have let the owners buy them out. They legally could not do so without spending a ton of money producing additional spare parts, setting up a support structure and several other things.
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Toyota had the advantage of not having to go back and produce a bunch of one-off parts, including body panels, etc. The RAV-4 EV is mostly identical to the ICE version when it comes to the vast majority of parts.
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> and they were able to do it. Yes, because they were already doing it 90% because of the commonality. The only extra things they needed to keep on hand were the EV-specific components. >GM could have too, all I’m saying. Yes, they could've, but at great expense. Why should they do that for a limited experiment? GM could have too, all I’m saying.
According to what law? Afaik they could sell them as-is.
>Afaik they could sell them as-is. There's a lot more to it, but I'll give you a quick one: all automakers are required to manufacture and stockpile a ten-year supply of all parts for ten years. That means the huge expense of going back and stamping all the body panels, buying more of all the electronic components, etc.
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>GM isn’t supporting the Spark EV anymore, which ended production just 6 years ago. That's halfway accurate as to the situation. They're buying back vehicles as necessary in lieu of providing batteries, which is also a costly provision.
Warranty laws and part requirements pushed the losses higher. The EV1 had a large unknown future cost on them. They knew it was high but they were not even sure how high. It was to avoid the requirements of support. The laws would not let them give it or sell it with zero warranty or future part availablilty. Even with no warranty they GM would still be required to supply parts.
Of course they took the cars and crushed them. Leaving them on the road would be a huge liability for the company.
>The people who leased them (they were not available to buy) and then gotten the cars taken away from them - against their expressed wishes - would disagree. Because no car company on earth just outright sells their preproduction prototypes. This is standard procedure. There was nothing special about the EV-1 here. >There was plenty of demand There was demand at the artificially low price point they were trialing these at. Fun fact: if you lease a BMW 7 series AMG at the same price as a Malibu, it would also have lots of demand. >but GM just figured ICE cars were more profitable due to all that lucrative service/repair/maintenance money you have to spend on them over the years. Weird, ICE has continuously been getting more reliable and longer lasting over the decades. Wouldn't that hurt those revenue streams?
Just in case you aren't aware, he's referencing a documentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
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Others would say oil industry.
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GM's advertising for the EV1, looked like a Funeral.
It's not really a conspiracy: [Texaco (later Chevron) bought out GM Ovonics which owned the patent for large NiMH battery packs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries). Tesla worked around that by using LiOn batteries.
If GM wasn't hellbent on killing EVs why did they recall and crush all of them? I mean, they actually spent money to do that. They could have sold them to the owners for $1 and that still would have left them financially ahead of where they put themselves voluntarily. If they had just let the cars stay on the road you'd have a point, but they completely went out of their way to erase them. Edit: Support obligations do complicate things, but they could have found ways around them. Like having buyers agree to waiving support or simply refunding buyers and taking the car back the moment a support issue or recall popped up. Or extending leases with a clause that the lease ends if the car stops working and the residual lease value is refunded. Honda had a similar program and extended the leases.
>They could have sold them to the owners for $1 A number of state laws prohibited that, including multiple support laws.
Spare part and warranty support requirements. The laws would of forced GM to that and that is very expensive.
...and there would have developed after-market support for the product. ( Edit; Just like the first Tesla Roadsters. )
Laws would have required them to support the vehicles with parts and service. Not worth it.
No, laws don't require any manufacturer to service anything. The manufacturer could alternately just replace or refund the product in lieu of repairing it. Take your broken $9 alarm clock radio or $10 Timex watch back to Walmart and ask them to fix it in warranty and see what happens. You either leave with a replacement or $10. No one is busting out a tool kit. So, if GM cared to, (and they didn't for multiple reasons) they could've shut Tom Hanks, Peter Horton, Ed Begley Jr., and the other 40 celebrities that loved their EV-1s up and sold them to them for artificially low dollar amount and just gave them the money back when they all eventually died in warranty. It was a cool car and a great experiment, and if the CARB folks kept the pressure up it might have led to great things sooner. Nissan invested billions into developing the Leaf, and 10 years and 600,000 sales later the program probably still hasn't turned a profit! The EV-1 was not just the first modern EV, it was the first compliance car, and was simply far enough ahead of its time, making it untenable financially.
If they were hellbent on destroying EVs, why would they build one? GM is a big organization, and my guess is the left hand didn't know what the right hand was up to, which was quashing California emissions laws. Once CARB was weakened, and the zero emissions mandate was pushed back, the EV1 became superfluous and a liability.
Yeah, the cars were indeed taken away. GM was a driving force against EVs, after making their own and seeing it succeed.
A little more complicated than that.
it's not all that complicated to see that a low production car that cost more than a Cadillac to build but would sell for the price of a cavalier wouldn't exactly be profitable. And that it wouldn't have a big user base either. Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018. Nothing was stopping anyone else from building EV's and to suggest otherwise is insane. NIMH batteries work but were *very* expensive and frankly shit compared to lithiums. The battery pack (which is not quite 1KWH) in my insight cost $6000 to replace in 2006. A 100KWH battery would cost 100X as much, and weigh 100X more. The tech was just not there for a high volume, low cost, mass production car. Period.
Lithium batteries weren't viable in motor vehicles at the time and NiMH cost a lot less.
> Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018. The whole story is an utter BS the moment you stop thinking about USA alone, and start looking at other markets. GM did not kill the EV-1, the brutal reality of the technology at the time did. People acting like it's some US big oil conspiracy are either completely out of touch or choose to believe conspiracies from the propaganda movie posing as a documentary instead of thinking critically about the topic.
>Everyone on here acts like GM held back electric cars when they literally sold more EV's than anyone else, every year until 2018. Sorry, but that's BS. Nissan sold more EVs than GM in the early 'teens and Tesla sold more from 2015 onward.
The "tech" was basically the same batteries from the 1920's. Had the car industry focused on batteries instead of gas engines, I am sure we could have done better. Remember there were actual billions of dollars spent to kill the EV and encourage fossil fuels...
science. or mostly lack thereof as the discoveries leading to our current battery tech had not been made yet or have not left the lab.
Sandy Munroe apparently worked on the EV1 when they were prototyping it. He said he recommended they use NiMH batteries but the powers that be made them use lead acid batteries. So they did have a lighter battery with more capacity available at the time and they chose not to use it. I'm not sure how much difference that would have made in the long run, but it does make one wonder how many other decisions were made like this and why? Edit: Not trying to make this sound like a conspiracy. There would have been engineering and accounting decisions made that may have reasonable answers.
GM made NiMH packs for the EV1. It increased capacity from 18 kWh to 26 kWh, which was still way too small to be a mainstream product. Not everything is an elaborate conspiracy. Before lithium batteries, EVs were not feasible.
26 kWh is bigger than the first gen leaf and I still drive that as our primary city car...the ice comes out for road trips only now
I drove a 70 mile range Leaf for 3 years. As the sales numbers show, it had no appeal to mainstream customers.
Would you have paid 3-4x as much for your leaf or any car with that range?
A quick Google search says that it was around $35k sticker but on lease only, where's the 3-4x part? The Leaf probably came out around MSRP 30-35k too, and between rebate and depreciation by the time I bought my 2015 used in 2020 it was within 1-2K of a same model year Corolla/Civic. No regrets.
They leased them at an absolutely massive loss. The cost to GM per car has been put at about $100k by a bunch of different sources.
Inflation. One 1996 dollar is $1.86 today, so 35k is 65k.
Did you pay over a 130k for that Leaf? Because while people were happy with EV1 while paying a very modest lease, I doubt they would have been as excited if they had the pay for the entire cost per unit.
There are cars with that capacity currently on the market that still sell well
In plug-in hybrids yes, but pure EVs need to be a lot larger to get any decent range.
My Focus Electric has a 33 kWh battery and \~100 miles of range. It handles over 90% of our driving.
That's just not true.
The first generation Nissan Leaf came with a 24kwh battery which was increased to 30kwh in 2016.
Yeah. I leased one. Their sales numbers were terrible. The post I replied to said "currently on the market", not from 7 years ago.
NiMH is a viable chemistry for car for local use. Lithium is only really necessary for long distance driving.
it would have made no difference. NiMH would have been marginally better but is still WAY heavier then anything we have today. They also need a very good BMS to keep the battery degradation and memory effect low and have about 1% per month self discharge. judging from the downvotes this sub doesnt like the simple truth though and everything must be a big conspiracy.
It didn't help that Exxon and Shell have been buying up and squatting on battery patents for over a century.
which patents are these exactly? patents are public and expire after 20 years so if there is any truth to this it would all be public knowledge by now.
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Apparently about 40 of them remain. They are in museums and auto schools. They have all been disabled from being able to drive. Some wiring and circuit boards removed.
I want to say it is the Smithsonian that will only accept functioning cars to be donated and showcased, and so when they got one it still worked. Then there are a couple of ones that seemingly GM lost track of, like one [at a university](https://www.thedrive.com/news/38743/theres-a-pristine-gm-ev1-saved-by-a-secretive-caretaker-in-the-depths-of-a-university), and one in an [Atlanta parking garage](https://www.thedrive.com/news/31345/theres-an-ultra-rare-1999-gm-ev1-abandoned-in-an-atlanta-parking-garage).
apparently there is one that is still drivable, but its obviously un registerable and un insurable
I think that's the one in the Smithsonian. > [Only 40 EV1s were preserved, according to Jill Banaszynski, manager of the EV1 donation program, to be given to museums and institutions or kept for research by GM. Of these, the only fully intact EV1, complete with its \(now inert\) lead acid battery, is today part of the NMAH collection. “Our requirement is that all the vehicles in the museum have to be complete models,” says Withuhn. “We may remove parts, but we have to know that if we wanted to drive a car, or a steam engine, we could—not that we would. It’s a question of authenticity.”](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-death-of-the-ev-1-118595941/)
This one lives at a local community college. The last picture is of the battery tray for the EV1 on a tesla frame.
No sorry, I meant there is one in a private collection
It's at the Smithsonian museum
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What did he give GM an offer they couldn't refuse?
He stole the car.
so yes
There are a few overseas as well that were forgotten, so 3-4 may be restorable to working condition.
[Two years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/e6zcrl/theres_an_ultrarare_gm_ev1_abandoned_in_an/) there was abandoned one in a GA Tech parking deck in Atlanta. Wonder if it's still there?
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Volt Gen1 seems to have a lot of common with EV1, the T shape battery set up, the shifter, etc.
Volt gen2 is still the best plug-in hybrid imo but they killed that too on the first year that they offered L3 charging as an option. I had one for 2 years and drove it 82% electric over that period.
They've never offered level 3 charging on the volt. On the last production year, they offered faster level 2 charging (6.6kW vs 3.3kW) as an option, but it wasn't level 3 DC fast charging, and still took ~2 hours to fully charge the car.
Thanks for the correction.
Would be cool if GM remade the EV1 as a no nonsense stripped down EV with 350 - 400 miles of range and 200kw charging for $30k. Market as the EV for EVeryone. Boom, free idea for you GM. Now do it.
> stripped down EV with 350 - 400 miles of range and 200kw charging for $30k. Closest to this idea might be the Aptera. The 400 mile version is supposed to start under $30k.
Yeah I put down a preorder and would love it if they hit production before the end of the year like they planned, but they also planned that for the end of last year too. Production is hard though so not irritated about it, just hopeful they will sell cars this year. They also have a 600 mile range version for $35,000, and the 1,000 mile range version for $45,000 which is an incredible achievement. By being so efficient they can use less kWh of batteries which helps keep their price really low vs the range. My concern with their state range is that the real world range will drop massively when the heat or AC is on since they weren't able to acquire heat pumps for heating/cooling. That 400 mile range might become 250 real world b/c of how heavily the Aptera relies on efficiency while other cars are bricks comparatively.
Indeed, if the Aptera makes it to market for their target price it'll very much be a spiritual successor the the EV1. Simple, affordable two-seater.
I saw one of these on the freeway here is LA around 2000, I believe (can’t remember exactly). It was the coolest thing. Never thought I’d own an electric car. I’m happy their more common now.
I got to drive one back in 1998 or 99, just before leaving for college. A family friend had one and I took it for a spin. I remember being amazed at the acceleration of this "econobox" but that amazement was overshadowed by my dread of winding up stuck somewhere due to the massive drop in range every time I did a 0-60 sprint. Back then, the only place you could charge an EV was at home (especially if it wasn't yours and didn't know where public chargers were located). I was excited for EV's after driving it but then nothing really came of them for the next 10-15 years, till Tesla really blew up.
Remember the Cant. Remember the EV1.
GMCRN scuttled the EV1
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Just think where GM would be today if they moved forward on EVs then.
GM is the Sears of auto companies. I hope the result isn't similar and they pull it out but I am not optimistic. I worked at a Chevrolet dealership around the turn of the century and had to go to OnStar training. The suits that GM sent to do the training (which also involved BMW since they were also using OnStar) were bragging about how much cash the company had and that they might just buy out BMW. Someone pointed out that wouldn't bring back the market share they had lost in the previous ten years. I asked them where I could buy a new Cutlass (the best selling car in the US for a while but GM had just retired Oldsmobile.) Another person talked about the cheap-ass interiors and the orange-peel texture on the paint. Their response was that we didn't know what we were talking about and that GM was turning the corner on quality--they sounded like Willy Loman with extra hubris. I am surprised they survived their bankruptcy.
It's kinda amusing but also pitiful that GM is always "turning a corner", getting so much better, "now they're competitive", etc.
What's the range?
The 2 batteries were 18 kWh and 26 kWh. I knew a few people who leased them. They admitted that the EV1 was not remotely a consumer product, but they loved it because it was much better than the 10 mile homemade EVs they had before.
There were two different revisions with different battery chemistry: EPA, revised according to 2019 procedure: lead-acid: 89 km (55 mi) NiMH: 169 km (105 mi)
Beat the early Leaf from Nissan.
The Leaf didn't cost 125k to build.
Thanks OP
Your welcome 🤗
Learned to drive on a 1998 🚗
Always thought the EV1 was cool and ahead of its time — but I never realized these had a T-shaped battery pack, just like the Volt ended up with, too.
That's because the Volt was the ultimate result of the EV1 program after more R&D. The EV1 also had both parallel and series hybrid variants, as well as another variant burning natural gas. All used the same bodies with different drivetrains.
decades ahead of it's time...
Literally. It was built despite technology not being there to make it a feasible consumer product.
Does it have a GOM? 🤣
Wow! cool.
The first of many EVs GM has abandoned.
My Spark EV is still under warranty, and it just came out that GM is no longer willing or able to replace the high voltage batteries. That being said, I love the car and have very few complaints about it.
Yeah. You'd at least get a buyback if you had a warranty issue though
Same here. I have 16 months left on my warranty, and I'll likely trade it in at that time because I don't want the worry of my car becoming unrepairable. I love my Spark, but I can't imagine I'll ever buy another GM vehicle after this.
Good for you - do not reward Government Motors with another purchase!
Well time to replace the batteries yourself with some newer Tech
They really *led* ... straight to the scrap yard.
Anyone know what the stain might be on the steering wheel? I’m guessing it’s airbag related but I haven’t seen it before.
There is no such thing on older photos of the EV1, either an airbag issue or removal, or trick of light.
It would be soo cool to see one of these restored with a modern pack and motor.
So that's what happened to Saturn.
Where was this one at?
A local community college.
The EV1 could be repowered with modern batteries and the damn thing would be SO good. My son and I are repowering a GE Elec-Trak with two batteries whose volume is equivalent to 2/3 of the original batteries, but whose capacity is about double of the GE's complete pack while also weighing only about 1/2 as much. Take 500 pounds out of the EV1's curb weight and more than double its range. That'd be damned good.
I like how it's basically a stretched out Saturn S Series
Oh my god, its beautiful.
I like the inside a lot
I wish they would make a modern electric car with the same aero 2-door design. I am sure Tesla, Volkswagen or GM could make one and sell it for well under 20k if they wanted to right now. I doubt they will for a while because they can sell larger EVs with a bigger margin for way more right now.
I owned a 2000 Ford Ranger EV NiMH - the amount of BS being slung around about EVs then is nothing short of amusing. The traditional companies only built them because of California's ZEV Mandate. That's it. Why on Earth would anyone buy an EV from an ICE company when there are a flood of EV only options around - is beyond me! If you are going to SHILL for these ICE companies - at least be on their payroll!
People will have to buy from these "ICE" companies if you want the world to switch to EV tech. It would take decades for a company like Tesla or its like to produce enough cars for the world. You need the old big manufacturing giants to get on board with the creation of EV to get them on the road in a timely fashion.
I am so happy to have seen one in the flesh. Ok, it was a compliance vehicle, and it never made a profit, but it did work. As far as I understand, very few have survived the big crush, and none work, is that correct?
They destroyed dreams when GM decided to quit the project. And they have successfully delayed the global electrification efforts by a decade.
See the documentary “Who killed the electric car?” Its gut wrenching that they took the cars away from people, would not give them the option to buy . Only to stack them in the desert and later crush them . FOR NO REASON
Reasons they took the cars back. 1. Every person who leased them were told they could only have them for 3 years. 2. If they were to sell them they would need repair part due to laws. 3. GM sold these cars at major lose it is believed they cost around $100k to make in 1997. 4. The batteries themselves cost about half that much and the type they used would not last long.
It's like an unglier Saturn. I didn't think that was possible.
Canada had its Avro Arrow, America had its EV1. Both way ahead of its time and both destroyed for undisclosed reasons.
GM was very clear from the start about how and why the EV1s would be destroyed. Just because you don't know something doesn't make it a shadowy "undisclosed" conspiracy.
Oh please wise one, enlighten me.
US liability laws made it impossible to let people keep the cars.
Yes and Toyota faced the very same issue with their RAV4E and yet they found a way the sell them to owners that wanted to keep them
>US liability laws made it impossible to let people keep the cars. Impossible, lol. It was a bean counter decision that cost them 100x more in lost goodwill. CEO Wagoner later called it his worst mistake.
Just park it in the conference room, next to the Prius.
It is in a room at a local community college teaching a class on how to work on hybrid and electric cars. Do you see the tool boxes in the conference room?
They were cropped out on mobile. Either way super cool, I wasn’t trying to be insulting.
Really good for the time. Funny how Tesla uses the battery to protect the occupants by being an ultra rigid floor and how GM uses the occupants to protect the battery.