The 1996-1999 GM EV1

Wait a minute, isn’t that a photo of Honda’s Insight? That silly-looking little two-seat hybrid which seems to have quietly driven off into the sunset?

No. But you’re so close I’ll award you a lovely consolation prize just for trying. It’s the GM EV1, an electric vehicle produced for about four years in the late 1990s and marketed through select Saturn dealers.

What made the EV1 different, apart from the obvious, was the fact that you couldn’t actually buy one. Because GM wanted the cars back for evaluation, the only way to obtain one was through a four-year lease for around $500 per month. Although that may not sound too bad for cutting-edge technology, keep in mind you also had to add a charger to your home (or wherever) to keep the thing going—an expense which could have run into the thousands.

Why bring all of this up now, 10 years after the fact? Well, it seems someone has decided to produce a film about the car’s demise: EV Confidential: Who Killed the Electric Car? It’s a not-very-flattering look at GM and how the movie’s producers perceived the decision to kill the car.

The 4-1-1 on the EV1: As I mentioned, the it was available for lease only and carried a list price of almost $34,000. Pretty steep for its time. According to GM records, 800 cars were leased, costing the General more than $1 billion in development and marketing. If you do the math that comes to more than a million bucks a car. Ouch. All 800 were two-door, two-passenger coupes (although a four-passenger prototype was built) and were equipped with driver and passenger airbags, ABS, traction control, self-sealing puncture-resistant tires, am/fm/CD/cassette system, power windows, locks and mirrors, and daytime running lights. A few things which the brochure proudly points out as missing were: engine, transmission, starter, exhaust and muffler. I’m surprised they didn’t mention gas tank. Maybe I should be in marketing!

Zero-to-60 time was listed as less than nine seconds. Top speed was 80 miles per hour. Its motor was rated at 137 horsepower, and the EPA estimated its driving range at 70 miles in the city and 90 miles on the highway, using 85 percent of the battery’s charge. And therein lies the rub. Realistically, you couldn’t drive the thing more than 35 miles from a charging station, unless you wanted to push it back. The whole idea hinged on charging stations popping up like gas stations, but costwise it was never gonna happen. There are dozens of Web sites out there devoted to the EV1, and on one of them I found a diary kept by a couple who each had an EV1. They could only charge one car at a time, so they’d carpool most of the way to work, park it at a charging station—there were quite a few located in California—pick up the second car and drive the rest of the way. The couple also owned a gasoline-powered car for longer trips.

You can see why this just wasn’t going to work without some major modifications to the vehicles and/or the technology.

Some people were ticked off when GM took back all of the cars at the end of the lease period. More people were really ticked off when the General sent most of them to the crusher. (You can see photos of stacked-up, crushed EV1s on the EV1 Club Web site. Just Google “EV1 Club.”) Vigils were held, “funerals” were attended and now a movie has been made. A movie that is not yet playing in our small market area. We may have to look for this one when it comes to home video. Should be interesting.