03/23/02: "After four very happy years, our EV-1 went back to GM today....Full circle. The salesman who checked it in was the same one we dealt with four years ago. He said, "I could place ten of these a week; it is a real shame GM doesn't make them available." I said I'd be back for the GM fuel cell car in the year 2079."
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08/15/02: GM may try to "give away" enough golf carts to meet not only their ZEV mandate numbers, but also those of other automakers, selling the credits through the ZEV exchange company mentioned in the article.
This would allow GM to singlehandedly ensure that no EVs more expensive than a golf cart are sold to earn ZEV credits, because cheap credits whose price is set by golf carts will be for sale "on the exchange."
I'll bet Enron thought it was being clever when it gamed the California energy trading system like this too...
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"If there are cars available then why is there a [wait] list?" June 28, 2000
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(1999: by Don Devlin)
"[...]GM and their surrogates have talked to us dozens of times but what they have said has just about never been correct or honored by them.
"[...] a couple of weeks before the recall GM's new president Harry Pearce announced GMs ending of electrics in favor of hybrids? What a commotion! Someone hadn't filled Harry in on the CARB game. For the first time GM CORRECTED the press. 'Harry didn't mean it. We'll build as many as people want...' (They don't seem to be saying that anymore). 'Gee Harry you gotta be more careful next time...' Of course at the introduction of the EV1 in Detroit Jack Smith had said to reporters "You'd have to be crazy to get one of these things they get twelve miles in winter" (something close to that.) In early 97' the then head of Saturn advertising (marketing) said that they were changing the terrible advertising. Didn't happen. in Late 97' we were told by Bob Purcell that many of us would receive the NIMH EV1 in the last quarter of 97'. The rest in the 1st quarter of 98'. Didn't happen. Thirteen more times we would be given dates that didn't happen. Time and time again we were told they would change the absurd advertising.
They didn't. Then the new brand manager told us he had brought on his own people and fired HAl Riney.(huge applause from everyone at the EV1 club meeting) [...] Never happened! Then GM told us they would supply all the new electronic equipment in all new EV1s . They even showed us a new EV1 with their new Satellite system. Never happened and on and on."
"[...]
"[...] Leased to me in DEC. 99'my GEN2 NiMH was built in August 98' The car sat for the better part of a year. undriven, in the baking heat of San Bernardino . The battery makers begged GM not to release some of the NiMH vehicles ..that they might fail after their extraordinary ordeal. GM released them anyway. A few modules did fail. No explanations offered. Mine has behaved flawlessly.""[...]Doesn't [...] know anything about the history of GM? The goons, the murders, blindings by acid ? More recently the war against safety devices, Air bags, Known faulty fuel tanks, catalytic convertors and the war against improved mileage standards, the 'clean air' wars led by GM to prevent higher anti pollution standards?"
"GM and the other auto companies have fought CARB from day one. They begged, threatened,cajoled and used political pressure to delay the mandates for five years, from 1998 to 2003'. To get those mandates delayed they had to pay a price. They had to make and advertise and sell electric vehicles. The penalty for not doing so was huge fines and very bad publicity. And more fines to come.The bigger the company the greater the quantity of EVs , the greater the fines for failure to comply. GM was the largest Corporation in the world. But what if they advertised and nobody knew and even if they stumbled across an ad but didn't know what they were looking at? What if all they basically said was "the Electric Car is here" Not even who makes them who distributes them . No people, no fun, no reason to buy-(Can't buy) lease them. They're about to mount an even greater attack in the coming months. "CARB is out of control nobody wants these things" Why did they lease all those Gen 2s in DEC. 99 and then come to an almost halt?
"Some suspicious types say that DEC 99' was the last month before those huge fines. Well of course it could all be an incredible coincidence."
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Letter Submitted to LA Times, May 26, 2000:
Dear Editors,
I must respond to the somewhat misleading letter from Mr. Ken Stewart of GM, printed in your Wednesday edition.
GM is fond of trumpeting how much money they spent to advertise the EV-1, and then pointing to the small number of cars in service as proof of the lack of demand. This is entirely disingenuous. While the EV-1 is a fine car and a technological tour de force, I'm afraid that the same cannot be said of the marketing efforts.
If you take a look at the ads which GM actually ran, you will notice that at no time did most of them provide ANY information about where to go to see the car!
Customers persistent or clever enough to track down a dealership qualified to lease the car were asked to make an *appointment* to take a test drive. If they expressed interest after the test drive, they were subjected to extensive "qualification" screening. *Then* they were put on a waiting list, often for up to one year!
Now, I ask you: if you marketed any product in this fashion, and made potential customers jump through hoops in this fashion, how many do you think you would sell? It is a testament to the desirability of this vehicle that *any* were leased under such circumstances!
I applaud GM's innovation in building this fine car. I applaud their success in building charging infrastructure and a fine service organization. However, they have utterly failed to make a credible effort to actually market and sell these vehicles.
Sincerely, [name and address deleted], Delighted (and very persistent) EV-1 driver
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A post from the yahoo message boards:
Conspiracy
theory vindicated by: dkctx (99/M/CA) 4/19/00 11:45 am
Msg: 5938 of 5947
The only reason Panasonic (Matsushita) was able to come out with a NiMH battery was that they improved on the original, faulty GM/Ovonics product.
The Matsushita product is a whole different battery, that's why they do not have to pay royalties on it--only if they use the so-called "gen2" and "gen3" from Ovonics.
The NiMH battery, originally intended for the Impact car, would have never been installed in an EV at all. GM had no intention whatever of putting it in the EV1, which originally came out with (intentionally?) sabotaged Delco batteries, where each pack typically had 3 or 4 bad batteries. Almost everyone had a Delco go bad, stranding us on the street, and forcing a tow. Since they upgraded to Panasonic lead-acid, there were no QC problems at all; however, now they have confiscated all the 1997 models, [...]
The EV1 would never have had the NiMH battery at all. GM's line was that it was too hot, would need expensive cooling, and would not last.
Then Honda, bless them, came out with a car which DID all the things which GM was saying were impossible, by stringing the NiMH batteries in a pack under the car for easier dispersal of heat (duuuuh, GM could not figure this out?). This was, imo, designed to upstage and punish GM, in exemplary Japanese Cultural manner, for their initial lapse, when GM CEO drove the Impact into the 1990 auto show.
What a sublime and tesuji way of paying GM back, and showing how elegantly the problem could be solved!
After that, GM dragged..dragged..dragged its heels, refusing to build NiMH EV1, then building some, holding it up because of a "defect", teasing, holding it up because of a cooling problem, teasing, holding it up because of a "software upgrade", teasing, holding it up because of a "list of priorities", teasing, finally, dumping just enough in the last month of 1999 to avoid penalties.
What a crock. GM has obviously been holding up, delaying, and obstructing the NiMH battery, and, now that Honda has spanked GM (in their view, shold be enough), the Japanes will fall into line, suppressing the battery.
Heck, the hybrid uses a built-up starter and complicated electronics, using...a string of NiMH D-cells! Nothing but a built-up flashlight....
EVs have been killed by the vicious Public Relations campaign by the Oil Companies and the Auto Companies, for now, the general public only asks about hybrids. Promoting EVs would take an entirely different mindset.
After a couple of years, they figure, the hybrids will go away, and they can use another ploy to do business as usual.
A very good investment for GM--maybe 20 million, to stop the battery which might cost them several hundred million, or more, if they had to get serious about EVs.
I think the amazing thing was that the original EV drivers, given
the "trojan horse" battery defects, still managed anyway. The favored few,
GM gave good packs to, with no defects--but remember, these were only lead
acid. EV people were willing to pay (initially) the ridiculous $599 per
month (after Honda's beter EV+ came out for $499, GM was forced to lower
their inferior car to the same price--still with the defective, sabotaged
Delco batteries);
EV people were willing to deal with battery pack failure;
EV people were willing to learn entirely new ways of driving a stupid
car--goes like a jet for 30 miles, then the batteries die.
After the NiMH version of the EV1 came out, or was forced out of GM, all these problems vanished. If GM had even used the panasonic lead acid batteries in the original 1997 release, the car goes flawlessly 100-110 miles, not the 30 to 40 which the Delco yielded.
Not an accident, if you have brains to realize and eyes to see--and are willing to.
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From
"ECDfan" on the yahoo boards:
"As a long time GM watcher and detroiter I can tell you that it [The
Ovonics Joint Venture between ECD and GM] is the most inefficient organization
outside of the US goverment. You can not judge ECD or their NmH business
by this joint venture. They (GM) should have been mass producing batteries
for the world market but they throw away millions like you and I drop dimes."
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Car And Driver, March 2000, "Why EV's Are No-Shows"
"[...]
"A year ago, a GM spokesman told us, "The cheapest way we can get a
decent battery pack is to buy a Toyota RAV4 EV electric vehicle, remove
the nickel-metal hydride battery, and throw the car away." The RAV4 EV
is Toyota's $42,000 electric car; 359 of them went on the road last year,
making it one of the industry's highest-volume electric vehicles."
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05/19/00 From an EV1 enthusiast: [...] it seemed there was going to be an EV1 in my near future. I was excited about this and wanted to learn all I could. Increasingly however, the news is uniformly negative. The Gen II finally arrived with the promised battery improvements, and that's a great thing. But market expansion also should have occurred (based upon statements made by GM in 1996 to the effect that the rest of the country
would get cars when the advanced batteries became available) but obviously did not. It is clear now (to me, at least) that GM is intent on slow-rolling the EV1 in hopes that the ZEV mandates can be overturned before any large scale commitment to market battery EVs need be made. Therefore, it is futile for me to continue to try to learn about a car I now don't expect to be able to drive.
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From a satisfied EV1 owner:
I got a mailer ad on the Prius and it states: "Unlike all electric-only vehicles, Prius's power system is completely self-contained and never needs to be recharged from an outside source." I think I would appreciate a boost from the grid at night, might save a little gas!
I had to use my ICE for the first time in 2 1/2 months last weekend.(The car is 2 1/2 years old and has less than 8,000 miles on it) The last time I bought gas for it,(December 99) it was $.99 a gallon. I had to pay $1.69 a gallon for this trip. I hope I can go another six months without having to buy gas again. I'm considering selling it and just renting a car for long trips.
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I was told that I was not "high profile" enough to get the car on the first day in 1996 and in 1999.
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[...]we are in the same situation as you, if I understand your e-mail - waiting for our (or any) repaired Gen I EV1. Our first lease date was Jan. [], 1997, and we re-leased on some date early in Feb. 2000, just before the recall/repo. Where did you get the information that your ETA was "some time in August, we hope"? I have totally given up on GM's honesty in dealing with us; consequently, I can see no reason to believe whatever they tell me. But since they have told me nothing, it is interesting to learn that they have cooked up some dates for others. I'm one of those who was offered a Gen II NiMH and turned it down right away, so they can not use me as an excuse for delaying anyone else