Pch101

Impact of GM Destroying the EV1

The conspiracy theorists do their cause no favors. The failures of the battery-operated car are obvious: the range is inadequate, and the recharge (refueling) time is too long.

Unless these problems are fixed, there will never be a market that is large enough to serve profitably.

Electric cars have existed for over a century, but no one has ever solved these problems. That is a strong hint that these problems may well be insurmountable, or are not worth the effort.

GM created the EV1 lease program because of the California Air Resources Board's then-pending Zero Emissions Vehicle requirement. None of the automakers wanted the ZEV requirement, but had no choice but to comply in some modest way. The goal of the car makers was to show that the electric car was ultimately impractical and unachievable, so that the ZEV rules needed to be modified. When the car companies were able to get the rules changed, they canceled their ZEV cars and went back to business.

There is nothing wrong with electric cars per se. But there is something terribly wrong with using batteries as a fuel storage medium. There is no point in building large quantities of products that nobody would buy, and to sell or lease them at a significant loss. Getting a few hundred bucks per month for a product that costs six figures to produce made no sense at all, for anyone.