This statement doesn’t really seem supported by facts. Battery technology just wasn’t able to make this car for the mass market 25 years ago. GM continuing to keep this very low-volume car in the showrooms for 15 more years at an unattractive price point would not have changed anything. Even if GM had produced a car like the Model S around the same time that Tesla did in our timeline, that would not have guaranteed them anything, nor would it have constrained Tesla’s founders from taking the risk to start that company and succeeding.
That's an old argument. The Prius hybrid was already running around with the same battery technology. They could have shifted. They could have pivoted. They could have done a very low volume production. The car was killed.
It's the correct argument. Bob Lutz deals with it in one of his books.
The EV1 was a evaluation exercise/hedge against regulation; the impetus was a lunatic assertion in 1990 by the CA gov't: they wanted 10% of cars sold in the state by 2000 to be electric. Nobody outside of Sacramento thought this would be doable, but it was an excuse to do some useful R&D, as well as to demonstrate to lawmakers the difficulties involved.
As for the Prius-the Gen I Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive cost $380 million in 1990s dollars for R&D. Anybody at GM trying to spend that kind of money on an experimental(!) powertrain for a low-volume(!!) economy(!!!) car would've been fired. At Toyota, Shoichiro Toyoda was supportive of such an idea, despite the limited opportunity for near-term profit; and if you have that last name at that company, nobody's gonna fire you.
How much do you think an electric S-10 cleared in terms of net profit, vs. a gas S10? Even before factoring in the development costs for the electric powertrain.
If you had to defend it to a roomful of the guys who would be writing checks for the program (and who, incidentally, decide what your annual bonus will be...) what would that sound like?
If they hadn't lobbied to make small cars more expensive because the margins were lower, they could have built a model that was capable of being EV or gasoline, to get economy of scale for most of the vehicle. Well, worked with Daewoo to make a nicer version of the Chevy Aveo which could be a 4-seater gasoline car or 2-seater EV... Well, problem with that idea is the EV-1 was only popular with Hollywood types because it was a statement vehicle, so everybody knew what you were doing. I guess the dual-purpose vehicle would not.
Honestly, instead of subsidizing EVs themselves, the government should spend their money on initiatives that make them more attractive, and it should probably be carrots not sticks at this point, because a quick read of the room would indicate that most people reeeeally don’t want to feel bullied into buying an EV that doesn’t fit into their lifestyle.
Everybody who thinks that we need heavy-handed mandates and to fully eliminate ICE vehicles is just setting themselves up for disappointment.
The us govt literally tried carrots (tax credits) and now the new administration is threatening owners with sticks (absurdly high national registration fees).
Oh, and everyone who couldn't afford an EV complained about the subsidies.
The easiest way to make EVs more attractive is taxing carbon.
The easiest way to make EVs more attractive is to have a battery w/ the power density of a 14-gallon stamped-steel tank filled with gasoline, at no more than 10% of the total BOM cost of the vehicle.
If you’ve watched these guys videos, you would know it’s not some sort of cartoon villain trap. They took them to Detroit, showed them a ton of stuff, let them talk to a bunch of very sincere and cool engineers, gave them a bunch of unobtainium spare parts, and gave interviews on the record with executives. Let’s just say GM’s PR department is running a lot better than their cars do these days. Someone there saw the initial buzz about this find, and obviously convinced the C-suite that they could very easily score huge wins in public goodwill, partly counteracting all the “Who Killed the Electric Car” hype.
I think looking at every carmaker’s lineup should make it obvious that they don’t give a crap what powers a car, they are just trying to sell what’s popular. EVs were trendy for a couple years and a margin-subsidizing $7000 was available so everybody enthusiastically brought out EVs. Now they’re less popular so they’re all pulling back. Arguably even Tesla is doing so, given that Musk has intimidated that he didn’t really think Tesla was going to keep selling cars forever.
When the demand is sufficient, the cars will be sold in numbers to match it. Demand will increase as it becomes practical to own an EV for more people. This mainly has to do with charging infrastructure at every level, which is capital intensive for both individuals and governments.
Same exact reason 90% of people don’t use the Shortcuts app. This stuff is obvious for you and me, but tedious and painful for everyone else, and it’s still easy to miss one thing that leaves it easy to circumvent. There are people whose full time job is managing MDM in IT departments, and it’s not just because of the number of devices they manage. It’s because this stuff is complicated. And that’s for grownups, whose judgment is expected to be better than 12-year-olds, and who can be fired.
Also Screen Time is a little better in a few ways than what Android offers, but it’s still a joke, is incredibly Byzantine, and limits your options as a parent.
Judge the tree by its fruits. Children are showing very real signs of addiction, and unlike known quantities like video games, or TV in past generations, parents are being pressured into handing children a device, usually completely or effectively without any safety controls, a private screen with which everyone in the world, every corporation, foreign country, friend or foe, can pour propaganda, toxicity, lies, porn, etc. directly into their brains. We should be careful with this.
Before the smartphone did all this, no one would have come out and campaigned to build a new kind of free library outside every middle school where all these things were advertised and made readily available to kids anonymously. We do have real libraries, but they don’t just automatically accept and push books donated by any random company, foreign country, or random pervert. Because that’s an insane thing to do.
The burden should have been on the “smartphones are good” people to prove that giving kids all that was worth the downsides, or to have shown how any supposed benefits could be had more safely, without requiring all parents to become experienced MDM admins, which they just won’t do.
I don’t think it was all that mysterious, or even sinister. The car was a compliance car, it was mandated by the state to exist, and was not at the time a profitable model. All of them were leased. When the mandate expired or whatever, selling the cars instead of taking them back would have meant supporting this very different car for a long time with parts and repair service. This would have been a huge headache, and not worth it by any measure. Yes, they could have attempted to make BEVs happen for the mass market in general, but every carmaker was free to do so and they all seemed to agree that it wasn’t a good risk until Tesla came years later and made that bet with the S and the 3. But that was 15 years of advancement later.
And GM could have crushed all of them, but apparently was proud enough of it and not afraid people would ‘discover its secrets’ and build a new EV, since they decided to just park a half dozen or whatever at schools for students to poke and prod at. I get that the optics of crushing them made them look like a villain from the “Captain Planet” cartoon, but it would have been foolish for them to do anything else.
It's not just that the car was a compliance car, it's that these were experimental models. They were not able to be registered by individuals because they didn't go through all of the mandated safety regulations that normal models do.
It's eternally fascinating that people can't or won't grasp that the cars cost far more to produce than they could put them to market for, instead deciding that it was a big conspiracy.
It took until ~2015 for batteries to become practical for expensive mass market cars.
I am not an expert but I believe that US regulations require that manufacturers make a range of vehicle types to sell on the US market. You don't need to sell a lot of, say, compact cars - but you need to offer a compact car in order to sell your cash-cow large trucks.
CAFE didn't work like this, it was a lot dumber. Basically it weighed the fuel economy for vehicles under 6000 pounds between two categories: passenger cars (sedans, coupes, wagons) and light trucks (vans, SUVs, crossovers). Passenger cars had an MPG target of ~8 MPG higher than light trucks. Car manufacturers that couldn't get their MPG (weighted between sales of the two categories from that manufacturer) below the targets were fined. Essentially this incentivized car companies to sell fewer passenger cars and more light trucks so their target MPG was lower. This is why crossovers have basically taken over the market in the US. Car manufacturers modified their designs to count as light trucks (lowering the MPG by 1-2), but since the target for light trucks is 8 MPG lower than passenger cars, they look more compliant on paper. We've gone from passenger cars making up ~50% of US car sales in 2000 to ~20% of car sales today.
I use the past tense because the Trump admin has gotten rid of the fines for this regulation so it basically doesn't matter anymore (one of the few good moves it's done). It'll be interesting to see if small cars are able to make a recovery in the US, or if it's too late.
I am sure it'll be a few years as manufacturers will worry that a future admin (if we get such a thing lol) could un-remove the fees - but it would be wonderful to see actual small trucks again.
CAFE wasn't 'dumb', it was designed to prevent the 'big three' from manufacturing (new generations of) small cars outside the USA (i.e. in Mexico), with non-UAW labor. CAFE was not designed to protect the environment or reduce emissions; that was just a PR veneer to make it more palatable. You're completely correct that it led to strange designs, perhaps most notably the PT Cruiser (which was classified as a truck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_PT_Cruiser).
And it killed a bunch of useful smaller truckish vehicles because they scored poorly. The Ford Ranger, the Chevy Astro, the Crown Vic and every other sedan with a big ass.
And even now, the fantasy of the $30,000 EV hasn't really been realized. In the US, your only option right now is the Leaf, but good luck finding one for under $32,000.
There are insanely good values for used Teslas right now. Buying used cars is a bit like investing well in the stock market -- when everyone wants something you will pay a lot, but when the public mood turns sour, that's the time to buy. If you are looking for an EV, I'd really look at a used Tesla over anything new right now. I also heard they are cheapening the Tesla, er, "value engineering", so get the good stuff while you can.
If that was the fantasy even 6 years ago, the fantasy should have been updated for inflation to a $40,000 EV. I don’t even mean to exaggerate — that’s how much inflation we’ve had since 2020. We have plenty of sub-$40k EVs.
I thought they destroyed them all because they didn't want to have to provide the legally required parts and service for them. Now that they are in classic car territory, those requirements no longer exist.
I find the obsession with ev1 very US centric. There were many many other electric cars released before EV1. I think that documentary is to blame for this, GM was not the only company exploring EV's and there were other players as well. They just, for some reason or another, did not commit to it fully.
It's nice, and special, and purpose built, and quasi-production, and so on. Not just a Peugeot hatch or BMW 2002 or VW Golf or some Aixam quadricycle bejaardewagen with an electric drivetrain crudely crammed in, but a proper car designed by a major manufacturer from the ground up as an EV. I think it's pretty cool. I wish somebody would take molds off an EV1 and sell a kit car or Miata body shell.
Indeed. If you squint a little, it kind of looks like the machines are trying to shift to a world where we are just meat puppets to do the tricky stuff there aren't robotics for (yet). :(
The average person generally seems less than neutral to see me.
Many people aren’t just openly hostile, they make a point to immediately let you know they aren’t here to help, they’re here to make everyone’s life less pleasant.
With people, there are many scenarios where if you’re out of line, disagree, that’s it. You’re done. They’ll never ever consider you worth any reasonable sort of treatment.
Europe will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient.
Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.
A standard wall socket doesn't provide enough amperage to charge an EV at reasonable rate if you use your car more than once or twice a week. Maybe this is less of a problem in the EU where people generally have shorter commutes, but I could definitely still see it being an issue.
I know multiple people that have had to upgrade the main electrical panel in their home to support an EV charger, because their older building did not have enough capacity.
Don't forget that in the EU household circuits tend to support higher loads than US household circuits.
EU typically from what I've read uses 240 V compared to 120 V in the US. They are usually 16 A compared to 15 A in the US.
That gives them 3840 W vs 1800 W for the US, but that would just be for intermittent loads. For continuous loads you are supposed to derate that. In the US the continuous limit is 1440 W. From what I've read it is 2800 W in much of Europe.
At 3.5 miles/kWh that gives 5 miles/hour charging in the US and 9.8 miles/hour in the EU.
In most of the EU that would be enough to cover the average daily commute with 2 hours of charging.
Most homes in the EU have a three phase connection and can support 22kW wall charging.
Homes in the EU can draw more power than homes in the US as we use 240V with the same amount of amps. That’s also part of the reason why we use kettles as we can boil water roughly 2x faster (they can draw up to 3kW while operating!)
>Most Europeans don't live in single family homes for this to be a practical advantage.
Uh, where are you getting that from? From what I can tell at sources like [0] "most" Europeans overall (though with very significant country variance) do live in detached or semi-detached housing. Most also own it. Further, even for those in flats the higher voltage EU's grid runs at still means easier higher kilowatts at parking lot or garage chargers, so it's still an advantage anyway?
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