The writing was on the wall, but GM couldn't read it.
It has nothing to do with the lack of technology. Between 1996 and 1999, GM produced over 1,000 units of the GM EV1. This was an electric car available in California and Arizona for lease only. This was based on a design created by AeroVironment called the GM Impact.
Based in Monrovia, California — just outside of Los Angeles but within Los Angeles County — AeroVironment Inc. was founded in 1971 and is known for developing human-powered and solar-powered vehicles.
Not far away, in San Dimas, California, is AC Propulsion, the company that developed the tzero — a prototype yellow EV sports car. Only three exist and all three still run. From this came the Tesla limited edition electric sports car which uses the AC Propulsion technology.
The GM EV1 was taken away from the people who had leased them. GM refused to sell them and instead destroyed all but a few that were taken to museums. Why didn't GM have the foresight to continue development of the electric vehicle, even if they knew about the Smart car, a neighborhood electric vehicle?
Why didn't they allow people to buy a car they were going to crush? This is essentially the question that Chris Paine asked in his 2006 movie, Who Killed the Electric Car? Paine had owned and loved his EV1, but like Mel Gibson, was forced to give his up.
When the news came out that GM was closing four truck and SUV plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and cutting jobs, I emailed Paine to ask for his reaction.
His response was quick.
In short two old cliches come to mind.
the writing was on the...
the chickens have come home to...American car makers ignored early warning signs about peak oil and kept betting almost everything on their big profit margin SUVS and trucks. The fact that they willfully destroyed their own electric cars programs in the 1990s in spite of objections from their own board members and so many enthusiasts, makes them especially culpable.
We'll see if they can scramble fast enough to meet the realities of the changing world. Its a fascinating story with many players - which is how our first film came to life. And the story continues...
GM came out with an EV for the U.S. marketplace before Toyota came out with the Prius. Now with the Prius out and plans for a consumer-ready plug-in Prius projected for 2010, GM is trying to catch up. That will come too late for the estimated 10,000 workers who will lose their jobs.
Article comments
1 - Jason M. Hendler
It's been explained countless times, poor battery tech, the falling price of oil and consumer demand for better performing and more comfortable vehicles killed the EV1. Today, Li Ion batteries intended for only a 40 mile range with any type of range extender, high oil prices, consumer demand for low or no gas burning range and much better state and federal policies are bringing the EV (or REEV) back.
It is beyond childish to admonish or punish GM, oil companies, state and federal policies, etc., when all those issues have been resolved, and things are moving forward. Dwellling in the past is the domain of a simpering infant.
2 - Ruvy
Don't feel bad, PT. The Babylonian king couldn't read the handwriting on the wall either. And when Daniel read to him and interpreted it for him, he refused to believe it.
Americans in Babylon-in-the-West should be any different?
Of course, as you say, all this is a little too late to put dinner on the table for those 10,000 people who lost their jobs....
3 - STM
The main problem for the EV was consumer sentiment.
GM could have - and should have - persevered with the concept, but I thoughtb it was interesting that the guy heading up the californian government clean-air group was tied up with a company promoting hydrogen fuel-cell technology.
That aside, it was the American consumer that dealt the real death blow to the EV-1. No one wanted a two-door car that cost more than a normal petrol-powered vehicle, and which only had a range of about 70 miles before it needed recharging (even though the average commute in the US is no more than 30 miles per day).
There are short-term alternatives to gasoline we should be looking at: clean (read: green) diesel technology, which in Europe now makes up most new car sales, and gas conversions to LPG, which now powers many vehicles in Australia.
Clean diesel has low C02 emissions, uses less fuel generally and good power (a 1.6 litre turbo-diesel has the mid-range torque of a good-sized 2.4 litre petrol engine). Most new diesel users in the mid-range four-cylinder engine size report getting fuel-economy figures that match those of the Toyota Prius, but without the drawbacks of extra weight and batter life. With the emissions controls and particular filters now mandatory around the workld, the new diesels are putting out near-clean air. Problem is, as more drivers realise this and opt for the stuff, lo and behold, the price has suddenly gone up. Funny about that.
Diesel takes a lot less energy to refine, less fuel is used and thus supply will last longer if we make more of the stuff and use less refined gasoline.
Australians use a lot of LPG to power their cars, and it's available at most service stations, and kits on the market to convert from a petrol engine are big sellers. They pay for themselves quickly as LPG is half the price of petrol, even though you use slightly more.
In the meantime, we can keep working on those electric engines - which are probably the way of the future ultimately.
But people do need to explore all the options here, and be aware of what they are, before going off half cocked in support of hybrid fuel/electric and hydrogen fuel-cell technology.
4 - BBHY
One small nit, the Smart car is not a neighborhood electric vehicle, it's simply a very small gasoline powered car. It's been very popular in Europe for years.
Yes, the EV1 was not ready for prime time, but that doesn't mean that GM couldn't have had better long range thinking. They could have recognized that the era of cheap, abundant oil would not last forever. They should have known that when it ended so would the days of highly profitable big iron vehicles.
A little more foresight would have had them continue to work on developing EV technology, making it work better and figuring out how to make it cheaper to produce, even while raking in profits on Hummers and the like.
A good driver is always looking down the road, planning the next curve even while finishing the present one. A bad driver is not prepared to change course until halfway into the curve, and has to make drastic course corrections to avoid ending up in the ditch.
Observe the automakers now making drastic course corrections, closing plants, laying off thousands of workers. They are frantically converting truck and SUV plants into making small cars, and developing alternative drivetrains just as fast as they possibly can. We'll see if they can stay out of the ditches.
5 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
But people do need to explore all the options here, and be aware of what they are, before going off half cocked in support of hybrid fuel/electric and hydrogen fuel-cell technology.
Sure,STM is very accurate in this statement about "burning bridges" but even as we speak, schools like MIT are working on synthetic versions of gas. As well as finding new ways to create Biofuel without the use of crops but buy using weeds,etc..
I also agree that one day electric cars, possibly hybid with a synthetic man made gas & even smaller more compact & more efficient/powerful solar panels, will be no more science fiction than Quantum computers in the home.
I will say one thing though... You can't blame it all on GM or any other car company when Congress & other local governments are also at fault for not supporting these new technologies!
6 - Purple Tigress
The EV Smart car went on display in 1998 at a car show in Europe.
As for the problems with the GM EV1, if people want to buy a product why destroy it? There are plenty of earlier EVs still on the road that do not have a great range or AC.
What we don't have is EV mechanics (I'm looking for one).
GM was looking into developing an EV1 hybrid but abandoned it.
The tzero should have indicated that it was possible to extend the range.
And Tesla Motors shows where GM could have gone.Toyota also promises a plug-in Prius in the future.
BTW, the Toyota RAV4 EV was saved. That's a case of Toyota actually listening to consumers.
7 - Purple Tigress
The documentary doesn't totally blame GM; it also blames the government and the consumers.
When I was writing this, I was also thinking about all the other things where we had the technology, but didn't have the foresight to use it.
Think of the bullet train. I ridden them in Japan and France. I've been waiting for a bullet train from San Diego to Los Angeles.
Solar power is another technology where we should have looked into it. In Southern Cal, it should be a no-brainer.
Water conservation strategies such as the usage of gray water.
The government and consumers failed to support these as well.
8 - Juan Francisco
The easiest and most efficient thing to electrify is the railroads. Solar power stations along the right-of-way could easily power them.
All that water and not a drop to drink. Tidal power and desalination should go together.
Now tie these two together, and add car-trains so EVs can extend their distance.
9 - Douglas Mays
We just better start doing some speed reading. Time to fix it, quick!
'global warming' is just another word for 'environmental concerns'.
DM
10 - bliffle
Anyhow, GM doesn't read the writing on the wall. GM writes the writing on the wall. If government regulations displease GM they get them changed. If customers don't buy their crappy products they use advertising to change customer desires.
It has always been thus. Sloan set the pace by getting anti-trust rulings overturned so he could freely acquire his competitors with unfair monopoly practices and predatory pricing.
GM is pretty cold-blooded about doing the writing, too.
11 - Cannonshop
Heh, honestly, the U.S. has a really bad record for handling ANY sort of alternative energy, and Electricity needs a source.
the Rolling Brownouts in the wake of the Enron debacle, the destruction of Hydroelectric plants in the west in the nineties, and the killing off of one of the most likely (it certainly works in France) sources in the Atomic Power industry. (if your power plants are still using fossil fuel, you're not saving anything, you're just moving the concentrated output somewhere else-more load on the power plant means you need more output, best KW/pound of resources are either nuclear, or fossil fuels.)
Synthetic Gas is going to cost more than fossil fuels until the ground sources of Petroleum run out-and it ALSO requires large-scale energy production to work.
From an engineering standpoint, to get off the petrol teat, you have to make some kind of sacrifice. Whether it's the Luddite-greenpeace "Solution" of putting everyone into a human-hive and taxing them for breathing, or applying 'scary' technologies that are mostly scary because of historically ignorant application (Tchernobyl, TMI) or sacrificing a minor run of "Wild" salmon (Snake River dams), if you don't want to live like a third-world peasant or freeze in the dark, something has to give, 'cause "Wind power" is only a supplement, it isn't reliable enough to be a primary source, Geothermal requires punching holes where the crust is thin and the geology unstable, Tidal power kills shoreline ecologies by disrupting the mix of currents and sediment deposits, and Solar requires vast areas and sunny days to work adequately, along with large, concentrated energy storage that carries its own negative ecological impacts.
Gasoline is a unit of energy storage, that's all it is- burning it releases stored energy to perform work.
Energy has to be produced in order to be stored.
How does all this relate to the EV-1? Seventy miles between charges isn't enough-especially in modern commuting terms, and the battery life on the car wasn't REAL great either-something on the order of having to replace the car before the Warrantee expires is going to tend to make the bean-counters at GM less than enthusiastic, and the Battery pack was a major portion of the vehicle's structure. Battery systems also have a tendency to degrade with repeated charging and discharging-so it's a bit like paying sixty grand for a car you have to replace the entire drivetrain on every five years.
The destruction also makes sense in that context-those batteries aren't what one might call "Environmentally friendly to dispose of" and in the Nineties, you had companies being sued for the misuse of their products (The Citys filing suit against the gunmakers for gun-crime being a prime example.)
As a liability issue (and large corporations with lots of money worry about Liability more than ordinary folks who aren't easy targets for big-payoff lawsuits filed by opportunists), destruction was securing the company against Tort actions when the batteries finally got to the point where they wouldn't hold a charge anymore and had to be disposed of...not to mention what issues would erupt in the event of an accident that broke them open.
From a technology standpoint, a LOT of tech has been abandoned early in the U.S., and technologically it's a mistake...
But, with manufacturers and producers being easily targeted for lawsuit-borne extortion, and the use of Protestors and activism to stifle other avenues, and the huge payoffs such groups receive, it's really, really, hard to get new tech ON TO the Market, GM's choice was moral cowardice, but given the conditons, it was the most reasonable for the moment.
12 - bliffle
Alternative energy is opposed by the existing oligopolies because it is not amenable to monopoly control. Alternative energy threatens existing monopolies because it will unleash varied new enterprises in a competitive market. It will upset the applecart.
Traditional monopolies such as the oil companies control the government through a system of reciprocal favors, campaign contributions for tax breaks, that allies the interests of the government with the interests of huge corporations.
Real entrepreneurial competitive innovative markets are an existential threat to all the dinosaurs, such as Exxon, GM, etc.
You can't blame them for fighting for their continued existence, but it's no reason for an outsider with no deep involved interest to support them.
Cut 'em loose. Let the dinosaurs sink or swim depending on their ability to survive in new markets. Stop subsidizing them. Stop finding torturous rationales for transfering monopoly control to the dinosaurs.
If anything deserves subsidizing it is the new industries and companies which will participate in our futures and enrich the lives of our children.
13 - bliffle
The financial effect of so-called nuisance lawsuits on major corporations is miniscule.
In any case, people and organizations that inflict harm on people, financial or otherwise, should be held responsible. The only alternative is rigid government control of business operations.
14 - Joanne Huspek
Interesting piece. I live in Motown, so I see the warped fossil fuel mentality. It's all around me. Employees are encouraged to buy monster trucks and SUVs. They're marketed as big American machines that can run over little cars like my Toyota. In the Detroit area, we don't have mass transit (hmm... wonder why?) and people aren't encouraged to recycle or be environmentally concious like they are in other areas of the country. This belief is trickled down from the top to the bottom.
I would have loved to have bought a GM vehicle the last time I went car shopping, but they didn't have anything to offer with regard to the type of fuel economy I was looking for.