The General Motors EV1 has turned into one of the largest scapegoats in the automotive industry. Many people believe that the futuristic electric car was put to pasture long before its full usefulness had been met, a controversial viewpoint supported by the Chris Paine film, "Who Killed the Electric Car." To those conspiracy theorists, Angus MacKenzie at Motor Trend has another take to offer: blame CARB. While the California Air Resources Board has been blamed for many things, the death of the electric car is not often one of them. But MacKenzie quotes Howard Wilson, a man deeply involved in the EV1 program, as suggesting that the engineering team wanted to make the electric car a hybrid using a small gas turbine engine which could make enough electricity for the electric motors without a large battery. This could have reduced the weight of the vehicle and increased its range exponentially. Why didn't they do it? CARB had mandated that the automakers needed to offer at least two percent of their fleets as zero emission vehicles, which effectively sealed the fate of the hybrid EV1. These happenings left the door wide open for other companies, Toyota in particular, to carve out the hybrid niche for themselves. The rest, as they say, is history.[Source: Motor Trend]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
4agze @ May 19th 2008 7:45PM
i say media killed it
Torrent @ May 19th 2008 8:26PM
I blame GM. GM said there wasn't enough demand for the EV1, but it was sold out. In addition, there was a waiting list with some 200 people on it waiting for their EV1. Not long after, GM began to confiscate the EV1's and destroy them. I mean destroy as in crush, Demolish. Former EV1 owners went to GM's HQ and saw 80 more EV1's in the lot. They offered about 1.4 million dollars for the remaining EV1's, but GM never responded. The former EV1 owners protested outside GM's HQ for about a month and half, then GM called the Police and over a dozen tow trucks to help transport the remaining EV1's to be crushed. The owners gave the EV1 great reviews and had no regrets for buying it. GM never advertised the EV1 enough to make consumers knowledgeable about Electric cars, so not many people even knew about it- When people did know, there was a guarantee that it would be sold out. Honda, Ford and Toyota also created EV's. The only one that made it to production was the 1990's ugly ass Toyota RAV-4 EV. The other EV's soon met the same fate as the GM EV1...........Or something....
I blame not only GM, but CAFE and CARB for having such strict rules. Also to blame: other EV car companies for not believing in a product that could have changed our daily commute as we know it. These manufacturers were selfish and never really cared about the civilians anyway.................. (as of now they have new CEO's, so.....)
What else?
Oh! I love the new Tahoe Hybrid!! (sarcasm) I ain't a frickin EV1 though....
Frickin GM.....
I like GM though. Just put the engine of the GM EV1 into the Volt and we'll be fine.
AND here comes the comments..............
(I hope none are directed to me! (not sarcasm))
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 19th 2008 9:53PM
GM killed the electric car?
First problem was the EV1 wasn't profitable. Once the ZEV mandate was dropped, who would offer a loss-leading electric car? Honda dropped the EV+. Is that GM's fault?
Let's judge the demand for electric cars:
Everyone who wants an electric car raise your hand.
Everyone who can't deal with the limitations of 120 mile range (by buying another car or otherwise) put your hand down.
Everyone who cannot deal with the limitations of a two seater (by buying another car or otherwise) put your hand down.
Everyone who lives in an apartment (and thus cannot rewire their garage/carport) put your hand down.
Everyone who doesn't want to spend $1000 rewiring your garage with a 60 Amp 220V outlet and charger, put your hand down.
Everyone who can't rewire their garage because they rent, put your hand down.
Everyone who doesn't even fit cars in their garage, put your hand down (gotcha, Californians).
Everyone who doesn't want to front the $60K+ for a profitable electric car, put your hand down.
Is your hand still up? Seriously?
That's the problem. People say they want one, but the majority of people who own homes (and thus can rewire their garage) are families, who have little use for a 2-seater.
Also, listen to the guy from Ford (who worked on the Th!nk) when he says "We'd do research, explaining the electric car and what it can do, and how much it costs. When people found out the limitations, they generally said they would expect to play LESS for the car than a normal car, whereas a full-fledged electric car cost more than a gas one." That's how Th!nk ended up making the golf-cart style vehicles. They were cheap.
I am an electric car fan. I've driven a Tango (http://www.commutercars.com/) and charged it at my house (it popped my 220V circuit breaker and pulled 20A off a 15A 110V outlet without popping it, which is somewhat unsafe). But I don't kid myself about the financials now, let alone 10 years ago.
The electric car industry will do well when they can address the needs of car buyers properly, either by the tech changing or the buyers changing their expectations. As long as people keep pretending that it was a conspiracy that killed the electric car, they won't change their expectations and we won't make progress on moving to electric vehicles.
Disgruntled Goat @ May 19th 2008 10:27PM
No, as sexy as blaming CARB may be, it was GM. This isn't a complicated story. CARB said some cars must get zero emissions. GM built the EV1 and sold it for a loss. Eventually CARB realized that no matter how hard they pushed, zero emissions just wasn't commercially viable yet. CARB changed the rules and GM killed the car because it wasn't needed any more. The end.
Could they have continued to sell EV1 and develop the platform into something that would eventually make a profit? You bet. Could they have made it a turbine driven hybrid per the article? Sure, but they chose not to because a) they had no vision of what was to come, and b) no one was forcing them to. Some 2009's are on the road today yet where is GM's hybrid car? It doesn't exist because before last year they didn't want it to exist.
There is no conspiracy here outside of the conspiracy of incompetence running through the core of GM management.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 19th 2008 10:48PM
Goat? What do you mean where is GM's hybrid car?
The Other Bob @ May 20th 2008 8:08AM
CARB forced carmakers to make cars that were money-losers. GM lost $50,000 on each car, so they did not sell anymore than what was required by CARB.
Does anyone really think GM should make cars that they lose $50,000 per copy on? Seriously?
Who killed the electric car? Economics.
Kevin @ May 19th 2008 7:46PM
Disclaimer: I have not read the MT blog, just the blurb here.
Honestly? It wouldn't surprise me to find out that CARB was part of, if not the sole cause of the demise of the EV1. I mean, this is not exactly a group of intelligent, competent individuals, in my experience. Insofar as I can tell, their employees are, by and large, people that would be incapable of holding down a job where their largest responsibility would be to ask "would you like fries with that?".
They produce very little-if anything-in the way of valuable legislation (heh, valuable legislation... there's an oxymoron for you), serve little purpose other than to inconvenience those of us living in CA (and often times the rest of the country, since other states like to play 'follow the leader' on this BS, nevermind the fact that the people leading the way here should probably be wearing bicycle helmets and shouldn't be left without adult supervision), and often make things worse with their moronic meddling.
Shoeb Khan @ May 19th 2008 7:47PM
Every one on these cars was scrapped. Even the ones in mint condition. If they wanted to make it a hybrid, why not leave the existing cars out there and modify the next gen?
Stuka @ May 19th 2008 8:02PM
Not all of them. Just last month I was driving behind one in Tiburon, CA. (near SF). I was amazed to see it. And it was electric powered, not converted over to gas or anything. I thought for sure all of them had been destroyed.
GT @ May 19th 2008 8:26PM
nope. There's one on display in my college (College for Creative Studies), so almost everyday I get to see it as I pass through my classes ^.^
pmiddle5 @ May 19th 2008 9:33PM
^^^ I couldnt handle that I'd be to pissed off.
gmporschenut @ May 20th 2008 11:00PM
They killed it becuase if they sold the car like companies do when the lease runs out they would be held liable to make replacement parts for the next 5 years. not at all profitable when you only made a few hundred of them.
Instead of blaming gm for killing it why not say at least they tried. I don't hear of vw, bmw, mercedes, trying to make electric cars then.
I work in the aircraft industry, a turbine would be expensive.
AZMike @ May 20th 2008 12:05AM
Stuka,
it's interesting that you saw one in Tiburon, as the only place in California that they were available (and only on a LEASE) was in the Los Angeles area, and also in the Phoenix area...that's it.
I have several EV1 brochures here I picked up when they were new, and have vivid memories of the EV1s sitting on dealer lots; and I do mean sitting. in later years, they became an "order only" item, so dealers didn't have them clogging the lots, and on their financing floorplans.
the lease on early models was "only" $599 per month, and there weren't many takers here in Arizona, where an average commute to work could be over 60 miles. most EV1s were lucky to get 50 miles per charge if the A/C was running; this, many times, wouldn't even get you to work. and what would you do if there wasn't a charging station at work?
it always perplexes me to try to understand why folks who leased an EV1 had a problem understanding that a lease is a rental; you do not have ownership. there is absolutely no question that the lease contract also stated that there was no "buy-out" price at the end of the lease; the car was the property of GM, and it was going back to GM when the lease was up.
these would have also been a nightmare for GM to keep up parts and service availability on (if someone chose to buy one, as so many had allegedly requested), being that there were so few made, and parts were not shared with any other GM model.
I think there would be a separation of the "men and the boys" if there were some parts that would have had a list price of, oh, $10,000-$15,000 or so, don't you?
AZMike
tekdemon @ May 20th 2008 1:49AM
I used to see one on the parking lot of my old college...this was in 2004-2005 or so. I'm of course unsure whether this was after they had crushed them or not (since they crushed most of them early 05), but either way I'm somewhat convinced that I still saw it even after the crushing was ordered.
It had dealer plates of course =p
Steven Levin @ May 19th 2008 7:52PM
I've long held that CARB's insistence on "zero" emissions came at a huge cost. It was clear years earlier that the pure electric simply wasn't going to be practical, and CARB gave no credit towards "partial-zero" or merely "cars 100 times less emissive" -- only credit for zero counted.
So what did the automakers do? They simply went along their way, waited for the deadline, showed that ZEV's weren't practical, and kept doing business.
We easily could have had commonplace hybrids years ago if CARB had counted vehicles that were merely "massive more clean" but weren't "zero emission."
You can't blame the automakers -- they are responsible to the people that own them (stockholders) and those people insist on doing the smart business thing -- which in the case of CARB's "all or nothing" insanity was to do nothing.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 19th 2008 9:58PM
If I were you, I wouldn't look too closely at CARB's SULEVs or PZEVs. You might find it jarring to your belief system.
The mandate back then required the sale of both ZEVs and SULEVs (a difficult proposition back then), and when they dropped the ZEV mandate, they moved the requirement of sales to SULEVs, thus making advancing the development of these very-low emissions vehicles. GM sold a lot of SULEV 3800s, and Honda still sells a lot of SULEV/PZEV Accords.
Zerk @ May 19th 2008 7:55PM
CARB effectively killed the diesel passenger car in the USA and Canada.
Chris @ May 19th 2008 8:00PM
I'm pretty sure that was GM.
Stuka @ May 19th 2008 8:04PM
No, I think it was CARB as well. To this day, you cannot buy a brand new Diesel car in California. You can only import them from other states, and they have to be used with over a certain amount of miles on them. Which is bull$%*&, as they get far superior fuel economy than a gasoline powered vehicle.
Chris @ May 19th 2008 8:30PM
Contrary to what people from California believe, there are actually 49 other states.