In 1996, General Motors rolled-out the infamous EV1. The battery-powered car satisfied California zero emissions regulations (its raison d'etre), sat two, could travel 160 miles (or less) on a charge and plugged into a wall outlet. The General leased 1,117 EV1s. By all accounts, the lessees loved the car. GM killed the EV1 in 2003, claiming they couldn't make a profit on the vehicle. The automaker also maintained that they'd sunk $1b in R&D into the project. GM destroyed the vast majority of the returned EV1s and decided to sue California to recoup their development costs (even though the Clinton administration had deferred $500m in costs). Fast forward five years. Where the hell is the EV1? Forget for a minute all the drawbacks (runs off electricity derived from oil and coal, no storage space, insanely heavy) and think about $4.69 a gallon gas (what I paid this morning). Consumers are clamoring for this very car. Speaking frankly, the people least shocked by the Volt's painful birth has to be General Motors. 2010? Good luck. Why not bring back the EV1 now? Not tomorrow, but right now. Why not?
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I used to see a pair of them traveling around Rochester NY often. I actually saw them both parked at Panera bread on more than one occasion too. I haven’t seen them in probably almost two years now, it’s so sad :(
Good question. I bet they could make some money on them now. The dev costs are already paid and with people paying $7500 for geo metros, they’ll pay top dollar for a EV. I don’t know how much it would cost to bring it up to today’s safety standards, but it would be a bunch cheaper than developing the Volt from the ground up. Plus it will give customers more confidence when the Volt does arrive. It will look like EV version 2 with the bugs worked out.
Not making any money off of it, as opposed to the tons they’re pulling in on the Astra, for example. Doesn’t GM lose money on most of the cars it sells anyway?
Or even just the motor and inverter and make existing models be full electric. Or even a different motor/inverter. But they don’t want to take the thunder away from the Volt.
I have to wonder if part of the Volt isn’t based on the EV. If they dusted the EV off and updated it, they could theoretically hit the 2010 proposal date, although I wouldn’t bet much on that happening.
If you look at it, GM is either farther ahead than we think by building off the EV or dumber than a box of rocks for trying to reinvent what they already had. Time will tell – and that is something GM does not have much of.
Good point Orian. Though it may pain many of GM’s detractors they did it once with the EV1, they may very well be able to do it again with the Volt. For GM and the country’s sake, I hope they do.
Orian makes a good point. I’ve always figured that the oil industry had some kind “input” of the EVs of days past… either with patents or just plain threats towards auto manufacturers. I hope the Volt doesn’t end up the same way as the EV1… and they better not fuck it up. I would probably buy a Volt today if it was a decent looking car with some options on it.
Recently I’ve been looking for a replacement for my STI… I’m not thrilled with paying over $4 gallon for premium.
Jonny, there were two primary reasons GM pulled the plug on the EV-1. It was costing them well over $100k each (inflation adjusted) to build, and it would not meet future (current) safety regs. Also, its range wasn’t 160 miles; more like 50-80 for the lead acid version, and 90-120 for the small number of later NiMh versions. The limited range made it scary for the owners, especially since a headwind or grade could quickly knock that down by 30-50%.
The super-light structure of the EV-1 was not adaptable to current crash tests.
The Volt is not “based” on the EV-1, but GM accumulated plenty of knowledge of EV technology.
Jonny
A buddy of mine worked in San Francisco on the Saturn ad account in SF. I visited him for lunch one afternoon in ’98, He was running late, so his admin. told me I could wait in the lobby or I could drive the EV-1. What a blast that was! Even in crowded lunch time traffic in the city it was fun silently blasting from stoplight to stoplight a quiet rush of torque. I’ll never understand why GM gathered them all up and crushed them. Given how the company thinks they probably thought that their best chance at a lawsuit was to destroy all of the evidence. Too bad they’re gone. The EV-1 was almost as revolutionary and entertaining a car as my first GM built vehicle–a ’62 Corvair Monza Coupe. But that’s another story.
That .19 CoD is amazing. I think it holds the record for most aerodynamic mass-produced 4-wheel vehicle (well, at least on wikipedia). The Prius is at .26, Insight at .25 . Where are the aerodynamic advancements?
From Wikipedia on the EV-1:
“According to GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, the worst decision of his tenure at GM was “axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids. It didn’t affect profitability, but it did affect image.” According to the March 13, 2007, issue of Newsweek, “GM R&D chief Larry Burns . . . now wishes GM hadn’t killed the plug-in hybrid EV1 prototype his engineers had on the road a decade ago: ‘If we could turn back the hands of time,’ says Burns, ‘we could have had the Chevy Volt 10 years earlier.\'”
And this is the problem with GM. The lack of long-term interest, the lack of resources for r&d in the long run. What would Toyota have done?
“What would Toyota have done?”
No need to wonder, the facts are out there. Toyota built the RAV4-EV all electric vehicle and although the program was wound down in 2003 and some lease returns were scrapped, many are still on the road. Wikipedia has a good overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
Once California dropped it’s EV mandate, Toyota refocused it’s efforts on the gas/electric hybrid and went on to produce the best selling Prius. One of the reasons given in the Wikipedia entry for the RAV4-EV production wind down is battery availability:
“Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the nigh EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron’s unit won a $30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for the large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco.” Conspiracy theories anyone?
I’ll take the E10 (an S-10 with EV1 drivetrain), although some the green women might find the EV1 Sexier.
I’d vote with neidemeyer:
the ~ 100k cost…
of course, maybe someday… – of course, we could ask the same thing of a lot of things…
A couple years back I met a very proud E10 owner here in Los Angeles. A retired man with an electric pickup, I can’t remember the real details but I want to say he got it in Georgia perhaps, as it had been bought as a city or state utility vehicle – something like that. Anyway, he was part of a tight knit enthusiast group who love and maintain these trucks. Useful.
Paul,
$100K?
Big deal. Honda’s Clarity, which will be leasing like hot cakes, is going to cost over a $1 million a unit (at least). And they’re still going to lease them for $600 a month.
And Paul, no huge offense meant, but I’m using you as an example:
I like how some people around here criticize every single step GM makes — except killing the EV1, which is somehow the single most brilliant thing any corporation has done ever.
Talk about politics…
jonny,
i don’t really have much personal opinion one way or another, but:
how many claritys will Honda lease at 600/month (given a 1 million dollar cost)?
I assume, that the clarity, like the EV1 is a feasibility project. Economics will dictate the ‘production’ volume…
once the project budget it spent (be it 500 million, a billion, 2-3 billion, whatever), it will be required to turn a profit to continue, or at least break ‘near-even’
600/month on a 1 million capital cost no where near close to breaking even
improvement_needed,
Oh, maybe 150, or 300. Nad you have to live in a specific zip code.
At first.
As production ramps, costs will fall.
But, Honda’s looking at it long term. For instance, if the 35 mpg CAFE standards happened tomorrow (not in 2016 or whenever) guess which automaker would be uniquely ready for it?
And for the record, the EPA lists the Clarity as a 68 mpg vehicle.
This is interesting because I was just talking with some friends this morning about the EV-1 and how GM has this technology, yet the Volt is years off. Also, we were talking about the Aveo review in Consumer Reports and the gas mileage was horrible, as was fit and finish. GM wonders why they are tanking, it’s because they ALWAYS cut corners and turn their heads to products like the EV-1 that would have put them ahead of Toyota and their hybrids!
Even with the EV1 scrapped, there was a ton of development done that could be used to get a good start on the Volt. So the Volt may not be based on the EV1, but it could certainly benefit from the lessons learned from its predecessor.
the gall of GM with the EV1 program was not that they stopped making them, it was that they destroyed perfectly good cars at the end of the program.
i would be happy with an electric second car with the range of the EV1. i commute 30 miles total each day, so the low range does work in some cases. EV1 owners loved their cars.
Jonny: And Paul, no huge offense meant, but I’m using you as an example:
I like how some people around here criticize every single step GM makes — except killing the EV1, which is somehow the single most brilliant thing any corporation has done ever.
No offense taken, and I’m trying to understand your comment. Do you mean that the EV1 was “the single most brilliant thing any corporation has ever done?” If so, I would beg to differ.
First of all, despite my job of writing GM DW’s, I have always had a healthy respect for GM’s technical prowess. The problem has usually been the the last 5%; cutting corners and rushing the latest new thing to market before the bugs were worked out (Corvair, Vega, V8-6-4, X-bodies, diesel, etc., etc.) GM’s bean counters are mostly to blame, and/or ultimately a culture that allowed things like these many mistakes to happen.
The EV-1 was a terrific piece, and I had plenty of respect and enthusiasm for it. But it was flawed: the range really was too short for it to succeed beyond the EV freak market. And it was too expensive.
But do you mean that my comments about the EV-1 absolve GM for killing it prematurely? No way. They should have stuck with it. But that’s easy in hindsight.
Don’t forget (can do no wrong) Toyota and Honda walked away from their CA-mandated EV’s too. So whatever opinion or judgement one has about GM killing the EV1 applies equally to Toyota and Honda. The only difference is that Toyota let a handful of RAV-EV’s stay in the market, while Honda and GM withdrew theirs. In the big picture, that decision, despite all the focus on it, is not the real story.
All three of them abandoned their EV’s because dirt-cheap oil and a changed mandate from CA made them essentially irrelevant. It means nothing for you, me or Rick Wagoner to bemoan the decision now. Times change, and in hindsight the EV1 looks brilliant. Many things do. But it was no technological breakthrough.
It had very old-tech lead-acid batteries, and the only way to get any kind of range and speed out of them was a very aerodynamic body. Nice work, but obvious and not radical. Rumplers and Tatras had similar aerodynamic Cd numbers in the 1930’s.
The key to making EV’s really practical is higher energy-density from batteries. Lithium-ion was still a gleam in the engineers eye when the EV1 (and Toyota/Honda EV’s) was built. THAT’s the real breakthough to usuable range and cost-effectiveness. The EV1 had neither of these, therefore, was flawed.
Time to move (look) forward. Lots of cost-effective EV’s are on the way. Patience!
Apparently, Toyota learned something from the EV effort — and they sold a million of them.
I wrote a cover story on Paul MacCready of Aerovironment, the brains behind the EV1, for Insight Magazine, back in 1990, when prototypes of EV1 came out. My reaction then and now is that it would be really neat as a gas powered car. Put a small engine (1.5 liter, maybe) five or six speeds, and you could have great mileage and pep, by my standards, if not by Jonny Lieberman’s standards.
If GM kept this car around, they would be way ahead of Toyota and customers would have some real options to switch today.
David Holzman:
Right on! with a modest engine giving 60-70 hp, this car could have probably gotten 70+ mpg. – heck, a 1991 metro could achieve 60 mpg in a 5 door hatch.
Similarly, you can find people who took the hybrid system out of the insight and put in a type-R motor. Awesome performance plus 50 mpg. (kinda like a modern CRX)
I’ll add one more thought on the EV1: Both the good and bad that came from the EV1 (and the Hondota EV’s) are the result of a government mandate to build EV’s. Bad idea. Raise gas prices through taxes: yes. But don’t tell manufacturers what to build. If EV’s had been built as a direct consequence of consumer demand and the manufacturers hadn’t been forced to subsidize them, the EV1 and the others would never have happened. That’s why they were flawed, and GM walked away.
I certainly agree about technology neutral.
Anyone want to address the argument that EVs would take business away from the manufacturer and dealer networks in terms of maintenance and repair parts?
I still want an EV. A RAV4-EV would be perfect if it was a Jetta sport wagon sized and styled vehicle.
Am tired of waiting. The technology is here now but banks don’t generally like to finance homebuilt EVs so most of us will be waiting (or saving) for the store bought variety.
By saying the tech is here now – I mean a good 100 mile car with some compromises (want max A/C? You’ll get less range). Still a 100 mile range EV would fill the needs of my family and most of the people we know. There are exceptions…
Get them on the road and the tech will evolve quickly. Within a decade we’ll wonder why we drove these polluting fossil fuel powered cars of today. Of course alot of economic shifting will take place. Gone will go most gas stations. There just won’t be a point to most of them anymore. You can charge at home and not buy gas except to power your ICE vehicle for out of town trips.
Gone will go the radiator shops. Much of the FLAPS businesses. Muffler shops. Etcetera.
I am beginning to think the big guys see the big shift coming (decade or two?) to electrics and big oil is trying to get their profits while they can.
I really love our ICE cars but would be just as happy to power them with electricity.
Hey dude your EV1 is gone man.
‘Cause the institutional investors told the board, and the board told Wagoneer, and Rick told the EV1 team. No electric cars buddy. We have lots more $$ tied up in Oil shares than in GM shares so can that EV1 OK!
So Rick sold the battery patents to Exon
And got 300 million for them – way easier than selling cars…
(and we kept the govt research grants too hehehehe
so really, we made a profit)