Just to add more details from the show, apparently a few people had leases on these EV-1s. When the lease period ended GM asked for them back and gave the owners no option to buy. They were setting on a lot somewhere waiting to be destroyed when the protests started.
Enthusiasts offered GM a check for the residual value on all of the leased vehicles, but GM turned them down and crushed the cars. My question is why? Why didn’t GM just say, “Sure, you can have the cars, but we offer no support, no warranty, we aren’t liable, etc.” instead of just destroying them?
The show made it seem like it was a big conspiracy with the oil companies, but I know that is nonsense. But it never did say why GM just didn’t let them have the cars.
This is what I thought, but then it got me thinking more. Is there no way to absolve myself of liability for something if you insist that I give it to you? Even something that I’m going to throw away?
There’s no way for me to give a widget to you, but transfer all liability out of my hands? If not, that seems pretty wasteful.
My guesses: concern that if something went wrong with the (orphaned) experimental technology (batteries violently exploding at the 10 year/100K mile mark; some doofus claiming the EM field from the motors shorted out his tinfoil hat), GM would have had to spend money fending off the lawsuits; concern that proprietary technology or design incorporated into the EV1 would fall into competitors’ hands to be reverse-engineered; concern that the vehicles would shortly develop 1972 Chevy Vega-scale suckitude and poison the well for future GM projects; concern by competing design teams within the company working on the next-gen version that keeping this first-gen on the road would lead the company to assume that was what all next designs shoudl be based on; simple and plain failure of the imagination along the lines of “What do you mean they want to buy them? We designed the experiment to include picking the cars up and disposing of them. We can’t change now!”; or simple pigheadedness along the lines of “who the hell has heard of such a thing, giving people what they want? I’ll sell you a car when I’m good and ready to sell it!”
That sounds like the whiteboard at a brainstorming session, except none of the ideas is especially bad. Except the last one, but that was GM’s thinking for decades, anyway.
yeah, that was my guess, too: the car just plain sucked. The documentary showed us a couple of tree-hugging Californians who loved their electric car like it was part of the family. But they didn’t tell us that for most Americans, the car was a joke*. If the late-night comedians got a hold of it, it would make GM a laughing stock, like the Yugo. And to the suits in the wood-panelled offices, corporate ego is as important as stock dividends
*(As I recall—:Very limited range, and it took all night to recharge. You could maybe drive it to work and back, but you couldn’t take it out again to the grocery store at 8:00 p.m and then go to work the next day.And it had no air conditioning. And probably no cup holders…)
No. There have been many lawsuits that demonstrate that you cannot have your liability waived, even with a legally binding contract. Love Canal was the first example I could think of, but there are others.
electric car?
Requirements are:
[ul]
[li]Good range [/li][li]quick recharge[/li][li]good performance[/li][li]Low cost[/li][/ul]
You may pick any two.
The EV-1 had low cost, and maybe OK performance. But the low cost was because they were leasing them at way below what their costs were.
Btw, what is it that drives up the cost of lithium batteries? Why does it take tens of thousands of dollars to power one car. And what is going on with all the quick-charge lithium technologies? There have been so many reports of success, but it doesn’t seem they’re on the market.
I am quite certain that in Europe there’s legislation that forces car makers to have parts available for a number of years after a model is no longer produced.
Also this is not the first time a car maker has bought back cars to avoid supporting them in the future. An example is the Citroen GS Birotor, there might be others too.
There are a lot of reasons why the EV-1 was not sold out. A lot of it had to do with liability, as people have mentioned. Some of it was that GM had a few management changes and the EV-1 was shelved to prevent GM from spending further money on developing an electric-only car when there was no need to do so under the current/incoming administration.
Of course, a lot of the EV-1 technology is in the Chevy Volt, so it wasn’t wasted.
But the EV-1 was a perfectly acceptable daily driver, which had a pretty good range, especially with the 2nd gen batteries that they put into the car. There is a lot of common knowlegde out there that electrics still aren’t “ready”, but it’s a myth. The Tesla roadster isn’t much more advanced than the EV-1 was, and can pretty easily get 100 miles per 6 hour charge. Sure, Top Gear only got about 20 out of the car, but racetrack use is a lot different than normal driving. (BTW, the Tesla’s real problem has been with the transmission due to the high torque of the motor.)
No one has claimed that electric cars are a replacement for gasoline cars, but there are no real hurdles technologically for an electric daily driver aside from publicity and market inertia.
It’s not a myth. Until I can get into an electric car and drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike 220 miles west through the mountains at a 60 mile per hour average speed to get to Pittsburgh in an electric car without having to worry about having to stop for 8 hours to recharge, they are not ready for prime time. If they are to be a replacement for a standard, petroleum-fueled car, they have to achieve something resembling that type of performance. That is perhaps not a fair standard, but the markup on the car is cost-prohibitive for a low-income wage earner to begin with, and due to range and recharge limitations they would not under any circumstances be practical for a one-car household.
People do claim that they are to be a replacement. That is their raison d’être, a competing technology intended to replace a significant number of petroleum-fueled cars. Otherwise this is nothing but a hugely expensive science fair project. And for a city car, there are few hurdles. For a do-everything car (see above) there are considerable hurdles.
Common logic fallacy: to be good enough it must be equal in every way to its predecessor. The truth is that Electric cars do not yet have the range of all gasoline cars - but there are a few gasoline cars that couldn’t achieve the task listed above either. Electric cars have a very solid place in the market as a commuter car or an around town car. Give it 5 years and the range will be up around 300 miles. There is always the option of an electric car with a built in gas powered generator - or at least there will be when the Chevy Volt hits the streets.
Here the logic is redefining the criteria of the problem to make chosen opinion the only valid answer.
But, in all honesty, Electric cars are not the replacement for petroleum fueled cars. They may never be. Batteries are simply not to the technology level to hold 300 miles worth of energy in a small enough space. The other arguements about batteries are mostly bogus - they’re toxic waste, etc…Here’s the thing - you’d never throw one away, you’d recondition and recycle. That process undoubtedly has toxic waste, but compare it to how much we get from making 5-10 years of gasoline for one car…
Electric cars have a niche in the market and it will grow as they get better. They may not be right for everyone yet and may never be. But it’s a cold hard fact that the gasoline car’s days are numbered.
The EV1 was scrapped because it just wasn’t good enough for the mass market yet. More precisely - the mass market wasn’t ready for the electric car. Most of the mass market has evolved and matured. We’re now to the point where there is a large enough portion of the market that is ready, which is why we’re starting to see electric cars again.
Why should GM go to the added expense of selling electric cars when they are already structured to sell gas-powered cars? The electric car started out as an experiment and then California wanted to mandate that GM sell a certain percentage of cars. . . and GM said “no way”. At the time, there was no compelling market-based reason for GM to sell electric cars.
Granted, some people think that it’s GM’s “moral responsibility” to sell electric cars. . . GM doesn’t agree.
I did not say that there had to be equality. This is what I said:
Current EVs do not even approach that kind of performance.
Yes, but they are all exotics and/or exceptionally expensive cars, thus having the same exclusivity problems that EVs currently have, and they can be refueled on a regular basis within 10 minutes, so the range issue is mitigated.
That point was already conceded.
And they will still be cost-prohibitive in 5 years. It is estimated that GM will lose several thousand dollars per Volt when they start selling them to the general public. Toyota lost money on the Prius for years. GM can anticipate the same problem.
What option does a low-income wage earner have with regard to electric vehicles? None. It’s currently a fantasy for people who can afford to buy one, someone who already has a second or third car that they can fall back on.
That’s not even to mention that hybrids are not pure EVs, which the EV1 was. Hybrids do not have the same limitations. Let’s not mix apples and oranges.
Not so. California tried to mandate that a certain percentage of all cars sold in the state were electric vehicles. That is clearly an attempt to directly replace internal-combustion, petroleum-fueled cars via legislation.
Don’t bet on that. You may be able to argue that large engines will go away, but ICEs are here to stay.
I certainly have no issues with EVs. I think it’s fantastic technology. But recognizing their limitations for what they are is not, as you seem to think, dismissal of the whole concept.
