How about NOT crushing the cars this time.

[XTX229]

Last time GM built an electric car they thought it would be a great idea to take them back and crush them. GM paid a lot of money to people make those stupid decisions. I'm giving you my ideas for free!

[kubel]

The EV1 was a lease-only vehicle, meaning it was GMs car after the lease was up. Every lessee knew this. It's not like they were stolen from peoples driveways and then thrown in a landfill.

A lot of anti-GM people come in here with posts similar to yours and never blame GM for recycling the EV1, they always blame them for crushing it. But crushing is simply the first step of recycling, and recycling is a good thing. 75% of a car, by weight, is recycled when it's crushed. 25% of a typical new cars weight comes from recycled material.

GM chose to recycle the EV1 rather than sell them because they felt at the time that it was a better business decision to pull the cars off the road. When you have a car on the road, you have to provide service for that car, you have to provide spare parts for the car, and you have to deal with the liability issues that will pop up. While it may have been a good business move, it was a PR nightmare.

To address your concerns: We don't know yet if the Volt will be available for purchase, or if it will be like the EV1 and be lease only, or if the car will be available for purchase and the batteries leased. GM will probably not make the same mistake twice. So the Volt, when it fails, will probably not be crushed.

[omnimoeish]

Rick Wagoner, GM's old CEO said that was the biggest regret he had while CEO. He still didn't feel they would ever make money off the EV1, but felt like the PR of the whole thing couldn't have come at a worse time as Toyota released the 2nd Gen Prius around that time (2003) and it was getting millions of free publicity dollars from movie stars driving them, which completely changed the way people looked at green cars, GM was suffering their worst reliability reputation problems in their history and consequently hemorrhaging market share, and mounting UAW legacy costs were sucking up any and all money they had hoped to use for staying competitive, things got worse instead of better as gas prices climbed and just when they thought things couldn't get any worse, someone made a movie to publicize the whole fiasco with well known celebrities like Mel Gibson speaking out against them. The irony of it all is that GM spent about $1 Billion on the EV1 (including the original concept car that inspired the ZEV mandate) only to have it be the catalyst that pushed them off a cliff.

Bottom line was the EV1 had half the range of a Tesla Roadster (if that), took twice as long to go from 0-60, only sat two (like the Tesla Roadster), looked like a geek mobile vs. an Exotic Sports Car and Tesla has sold less than 2,000 vehicles in the last couple of years. GM does not build small volume cars by hand commercially like that, and they tried to tell people that it wasn't worth their time, but obviously from this thread, people still don't believe it.

[Itching4it]

As my ID here suggests, I am gung ho, ready to buy a Volt as soon as I can. While I understand and appreciate what the two previous posters have said, I have to admit that at a personal, gut level, there is one thing that would stop me. I will not lease a car, or a battery, from GM.

[Zythryn]

In my mind, GM blundered big time by not immediately building on the technology of the EV1 as Toyota built on the technology of their Rav4ev.
However, that is really neither here nor there.
GM has a huge incentive to make EVs work this time around. Unlike last time (where all companies building EVs were pretty much only doing it because they HAD to) there is competition out there that will be building EVs.
They are getting out the gate early with the Volt, no, not first, but very early. This is good.
If they kill the Volt, other brands will be more than happy to pick up the pieces.

[omnimoeish]

In my mind, GM blundered big time by not immediately building on the technology of the EV1 as Toyota built on the technology of their Rav4ev.
However, that is really neither here nor there.

In some ways this is completely backwards. GM HAS built on their EV1. In 1999, they came up with a concept car to combat range anxiety but still retain the electric power train, it was called the EV1 series hybrid. Read about it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV1#EV1_series_hybrid

It would've been completely impractical to implement, run boosted octane gasoline, and maintain a turbine engine especially for a cramped 2 seater especially with no trunk.

Around this time, several companies were making advances in Lithium Ion batteries, especially the Korean electronic companies who were being backed by the Korean government.

In 2006, GM revised the concept using their two-mode hybrid system to control the ICE interface as a spring board, and their engineering knowledge (even some of the original head engineers) of the $1 billion they spent on the EV1. This allowed for smaller thus cheaper batteries while completely overcoming range anxiety. It's also rumored they are going to be using HCCI technology that they are developing which uses adiabatic combustion ignition to increase fuel economy, and after a year of rigorous battery testing, they determined LG Chem to have their battery supplier contract although I think that the Gen 2 will likely be powered by the MIT developed A123 nanophosphate cells once they have their new cell production facility built. GM is 9 months away from launching the Volt.

Toyota on the other hand began work on the Prius in 1994, had the true Gen 1 available in Japan in 1997 and the Gen 2 came to the US as our 1st Gen in 2000 and I read a few months ago that they are going to continue to test plug in Priuses throughout the US Gen 3 phase (hopefully for fleet use at least, not just internally).

[Jason M. Hendler]

Spilt milk.

The Volt will not only redeem GM - it will prove them right.

[Desertstraw]

GM was always a rogue company.

"General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," said Bradford Snell, who has spent two decades researching a history of the world's largest automaker. "Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds. GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM."

GM conducted a deliberate and successful campaign to destroy electrified public transportation in this country. The details are in Edwin Black's "Internal Combustion".

1937: Labor espionage has been "wiped out" at the General Motors Corporation plants as a result of the investigation by the La Follette Senate subcommittee,"

GM may have seen crushing the EV1 as good for their profit but it was not good for the country.

[Zythryn]

In some ways this is completely backwards...

Good point, some of the timing is off.
And I am happy GM took some of what they learned when working on the Volt. It just seems to me there was a multi-year delay where they did nothing but bury it.
I still think that if they had them available they could have made a killing with them when gas hit $4/gallon.
Hopefully they will be in position with the Volt to make a killing with it next time gas hits $4/gallon.

[WopOnTour]

Good point, some of the timing is off.
And I am happy GM took some of what they learned when working on the Volt. It just seems to me there was a multi-year delay where they did nothing but bury it.
I still think that if they had them available they could have made a killing with them when gas hit $4/gallon.
Hopefully they will be in position with the Volt to make a killing with it next time gas hits $4/gallon.

Funny how people think "crushing" cars is an attempt to hide something. In fact crushing developmental cars is a routine activity in a large car company. In fact, ALL the EV1s were destined for the crusher long before car #1 hit the Cali roadways. It was an engineering exercise (and in this case combined with a market research study) and the primary reason why the EV1 was never offered for sale.(1 year leases only)

The facts are GM didnt "bury" anything, and continued to develop electrical powered technologies even after the EV1 was cancelled (case in point, the 2-mode transit busses, and parallel hybrid pickups in the early 2000s)
These are merely terms used by conspiracy theorists...

WopOnTour