Why did GM crush the EV1s?

[280Z Turbo]

It doesn't make any sense to me. Why couldn't they have sold them? Many of the people who leased them could have bought them. Why would they crush them? Why didn't they disassemble them before scrapping them?

[sandertheshark]

GM's corporate structure runs on the tears of hippies.

[GoCougs]

This is very common practice amongst pretty much all manufacturers; from skis to TVs to electronic toothbrushes to farms.

Sometimes it's liability, sometimes it's cost, sometimes it's legacy/reputation protection, and probably lots of other reasons.

If I'm GM CEO I don't want such a cantankerous product perpetually in the hands of the public for fear of backlash.

[280Z Turbo]

Here's some more fuel on the fire:

http://www.ev1.org/

"When GM crushed the EV1, it drove away its own customers, who went to Toyota. Toyota was happy to take our money and sell us the Toyota RAV4-EV, last sold in Nov., 2002. If there was no "liability" issue for Toyota, GM did not have that excuse either. "

Those people are nuts if they think GM could have been saved by the EV1. On the other hand, crushing them was the worst PR move ever.

[2o6]

It doesn't make any sense to me. Why couldn't they have sold them? Many of the people who leased them could have bought them. Why would they crush them? Why didn't they disassemble them before scrapping them?

The Same reason Mazda crushed the perfectly good 3's and CX7's. It's more cost effective and insurance friendly to crush and scrap an expensive/failed project rather than sell it off.

[280Z Turbo]

The Same reason Mazda crushed the perfectly good 3's and CX7's. It's more cost effective and insurance friendly to crush and scrap an expensive/failed project rather than sell it off.

Was that from the whole failboat fiasco a few years ago?

[2o6]

Was that from the whole failboat fiasco a few years ago?

Yes.


----------------------------

Another note: Did you know GM had experimented with making an all Eco marque (essentially) based off of the EV1 platform? It had been lengthened to accomidate 4 passengers and was given more "regular" powertrains.


Like This EV1 Series Hybrid (notice the longer shape)


60MPG to 100MPG.

[the Teuton]

The Next Generation Vehicle program got huge amounts of federal support, lest we forget about the EV1, the aborted Dodge ESX program, and the Ford Synergy 2010 concept.



But the government pulled the funding on it, and alas, SUVs made way too strong of a business case in the mid-1990s for these things to matter.  Heck, I remember in 1997 when gas was 89 cents a gallon.  No one could give a crap that their car could only get 12 mpg.  It didn't matter.

A lot of great innovations came out of the 1990s that were never cultivated or that the Big 3 are finally starting to put into production out of necessary rather than a strong urge to make them.  If CAFE and this economic bullshit didn't exist, there would be no domestic hybrids still.

I don't like government intervention, but it's not like the car companies were in any hurry to reinvent the wheel in 1995-1999.  Nothing was really dire at that point at all.

[Laconian]

Sneak into the fenced area of WWU's VRI and you can ogle one of the last EV1s in existence. It's a sweet looking car in the metal, inside and out, although the center console is really imposing!

[the Teuton]

There's also an EV1 at the Crawford Museum in Cleveland.  It really is a pretty cool car, but it probably wouldn't have faired well in the cold Ohio winters.

[Gotta-Qik-C7]

I see they removed all the tires and wheels before they crushed them!

[SVT_Power]

GM crushes a lot of things. I heard GM is basically gonna scrap a bunch of Vue's (I think they're the hybrid versions) because they actually did make some in 2008 but they didn't make enough so instead of upgrading stuff to 2009 MY standard equipment, they're just gonna scrap whatever they made already. They won't even sell them at a discount to employee's due to possible legal complications (what legal complications could there be?).

[BimmerM3]

(what legal complications could there be?).

If you don't think there could be legal complications, you're giving the US legal system waaaayyyyy too much credit. There are always possible legal complications.

[GoCougs]

GM crushes a lot of things. I heard GM is basically gonna scrap a bunch of Vue's (I think they're the hybrid versions) because they actually did make some in 2008 but they didn't make enough so instead of upgrading stuff to 2009 MY standard equipment, they're just gonna scrap whatever they made already. They won't even sell them at a discount to employee's due to possible legal complications (what legal complications could there be?).

Legal complications could run the gamut of warranty and repair issues, to documentation issues, to title issues, to even tax/finance issues.

Manufacturers are hyper sensitive to selling nonconforming product. GM would have been INSANE to sell the EV1 to the public.

They were originally lease-only because GM full well knew that they were a science experiment on wheels.

[r0tor]

Autoweek ran a story about the EV-1 and what happened to the program and where all of the developers went... think it was a week or two ago i saw it in the magazine and its probably online by now

If I remember correctly, they were all lease only vehicles and they were more or less working prototypes.  There was a next gen planned but then GM screwed up horrible in the PR and marketing departments and things were shelved.

[MX793]

I saw an EV1 hidden away in a parking garage at Cornell University 5 years ago.

And I love all of these people who drool over "zero emissions" vehicles like they're the holy grail.  Where did that electricity come from to charge the car.  Unless you happen to get power from a hydroelectric station or nuclear plant, it probably came from burning coal or natural gas, both of which create "emissions".

[Gotta-Qik-C7]

I saw an EV1 hidden away in a parking garage at Cornell University 5 years ago.

And I love all of these people who drool over "zero emissions" vehicles like they're the holy grail.  Where did that electricity come from to charge the car.  Unless you happen to get power from a hydroelectric station or nuclear plant, it probably came from burning coal or natural gas, both of which create "emissions".

I've been saying the same thing for years!

[Rupert]

I saw an EV1 hidden away in a parking garage at Cornell University 5 years ago.

And I love all of these people who drool over "zero emissions" vehicles like they're the holy grail.  Where did that electricity come from to charge the car.  Unless you happen to get power from a hydroelectric station or nuclear plant, it probably came from burning coal or natural gas, both of which create "emissions".

Big power plants are way more efficient than cars.

[GoCougs]

Big power plants are way more efficient than cars.

Not really - any internal combustion process from fossil fuels (coal, oil, NG) won't be much be much better than a car, and then you have the power line losses over scores, hundreds or even thousands of miles to get the power to local substations.

Now what about wind, solar, hydro and other "green" or "renewable" source you say - better but you'll still have power line losses, and the fact that entire regions of the country have none of this available.

And we must not forget efficiency losses in batteries (= tell-tale heat when being used) and electric motors (anywhere from 10 - 50% depending on the type).

[AutobahnSHO]

any internal combustion process from fossil fuels (coal, oil, NG) won't be much be much better than a car, 

I agree with the rest of the post, but a lot of a car's fuel is wasted in heat. Power plants use the heat rather than the explosive force, so I'd need convincing on this one.

[the Teuton]

Could GM have sold them with a liability waiver?

[2o6]

Could GM have sold them with a liability waiver?

Liability wasn't the issue.


IIRC, GM would have had to keep the infrastructure for 15 more years and for a project that was already costly, keeping the infrastructure for one car is expensive. And since toyota and other electric car manufacturers weren't able to use the infrastructure (and IIRC weren't willing to) the entire thing was too expensive.

[MX793]

I agree with the rest of the post, but a lot of a car's fuel is wasted in heat. Power plants use the heat rather than the explosive force, so I'd need convincing on this one.

Contrary to popular belief, the internal combustion engine doesn't use "explosive force", it uses heat.  Chemical energy in the form of fuel is injected into the air, burned/oxidized (and it is a controlled burn, not an explosion) to convert chemical energy to heat, the heat is used to cause the volume of air to expand, the air expanding causes pressure to rise in the cylinder, the pressure rise pushes the piston down.  An external combustion engine (steam engine or Sterling engine) operates on the same premise, except the conversion of fuel to heat takes place outside of the cylinder/turbine rather than inside like in an Otto, Diesel, or Rankine cycle.

[ChrisV]

Big power plants are way more efficient than cars.

Well, they are cleaner than cars by an order of magnitude, when factored in the number of vehicles they would provide power for. It's vastly easier to maintain and clean a single central facility than millions of remote mobile point sources.

[AutobahnSHO]

Contrary to popular belief, the internal combustion engine doesn't use "explosive force", it uses heat.  Chemical energy in the form of fuel is injected into the air, burned/oxidized (and it is a controlled burn, not an explosion) to convert chemical energy to heat, the heat is used to cause the volume of air to expand, the air expanding causes pressure to rise in the cylinder, the pressure rise pushes the piston down.  An external combustion engine (steam engine or Sterling engine) operates on the same premise, except the conversion of fuel to heat takes place outside of the cylinder/turbine rather than inside like in an Otto, Diesel, or Rankine cycle.

Hmm-
Howstuffworks has a different opinion. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine1.htm

Wikipedia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion
it's not a detonation but deflagration, like the force used in guns. But you'd call those gases as a small "explosion" wouldn't you??  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflagration

You are correct that the deflagration is the more "controlled" type of sudden burn.
An article on a cool new concept jet engine says the pulsed detonation is "effectively an explosion instead of burning." (Burning being deflagration, which is the car engine.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_detonation_engine

What is an explosion?
"An explosion is a sudden increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion
Maybe those small shockwaves are why you hear that loud noise out of a car running without mufflers...

You could get really pickily semantic about it and you'd probably be right. But i still say those are small explosions which increase the volume of the gas in the engine cylinder (through burning/heat)... If it was just heat alone it wouldn't be enough force to move the pistons fast. It has to be 'explosive heat'... 

[MX793]

Hmm-
Howstuffworks has a different opinion. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine1.htm

Wikipedia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion
it's not a detonation but deflagration, like the force used in guns. But you'd call those gases as a small "explosion" wouldn't you??  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflagration

You are correct that the deflagration is the more "controlled" type of sudden burn.
An article on a cool new concept jet engine says the pulsed detonation is "effectively an explosion instead of burning." (Burning being deflagration, which is the car engine.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_detonation_engine

What is an explosion?
"An explosion is a sudden increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion
Maybe those small shockwaves are why you hear that loud noise out of a car running without mufflers...

You could get really pickily semantic about it and you'd probably be right. But i still say those are small explosions which increase the volume of the gas in the engine cylinder (through burning/heat)... If it was just heat alone it wouldn't be enough force to move the pistons fast. It has to be 'explosive heat'... 

There is no rapid release of heat in a steam piston engine, yet it works like an internal combustion engine.  There is no rapid releases of heat with a Sterling engine either, and it too works in a similar fashion to the internal combustion piston engine.  They are all heat engines.  They all work by using heat to cause an expansion or contraction of a gas (steam or air) to move a piston.  In fact, some the earliest internal combustion piston engines didn't use the combustion to move the piston directly, they used the subsequent cooling of the air after it had been heated by combustion, and associated decrease in pressure, to move the piston (granted, these were not efficient and didn't run very fast).

And the exhaust stroke happens after combustion (the "explosion") has already occured.  The noise coming out of the muffler isn't from the actual combustion event, it's the sound of compressed air being dumped out of the cylinder into a lower pressure environment (akin to popping the cork off of a champagne bottle, which also does not classify as an explosion).  The air in the cylinder still has some pressure after the power stroke because the engine doesn't let the gas charge fully expand (another way of saying it doesn't utilize all of the heat in the fuel).  A Jake Brake also makes a heck of a racket, and there's no combustion happening when the Jake is engaged.  It's just the sound of air being compressed in the cylinder and then dumped out the exhaust.

[SVT_Power]

I saw an EV1 hidden away in a parking garage at Cornell University 5 years ago.

And I love all of these people who drool over "zero emissions" vehicles like they're the holy grail.  Where did that electricity come from to charge the car.  Unless you happen to get power from a hydroelectric station or nuclear plant, it probably came from burning coal or natural gas, both of which create "emissions".

Thus the non-idiotic people consider WTW emissions?

[r0tor]

Not really - any internal combustion process from fossil fuels (coal, oil, NG) won't be much be much better than a car, and then you have the power line losses over scores, hundreds or even thousands of miles to get the power to local substations.

Now what about wind, solar, hydro and other "green" or "renewable" source you say - better but you'll still have power line losses, and the fact that entire regions of the country have none of this available.

And we must not forget efficiency losses in batteries (= tell-tale heat when being used) and electric motors (anywhere from 10 - 50% depending on the type).

A car engine is usually about 30% efficient.  A powerplant burning natural gas or coal or oil is closer to 40-50% efficient due to using every last drop of heat you can suck out of the flue gas (as in taking 1800 deg F firing temps and passing them through heat exchangers in a steam cycle until the exhaust is just above 212 deg F so you don't rust out your stacks)

Also line losses on a powerline with high voltage (low current) and using alternate current cuts them down to not a whole lot...

[Galaxy]

As for the power line looses, the new close to 1 million volt overland lines built by both Siemens ans General Electric significantly reduce that problem.

[AutobahnSHO]

There is no rapid release of heat in a steam piston engine, yet it works like an internal combustion engine. ...  They all work by using heat to cause an expansion or contraction of a gas (steam or air) to move a piston. 

I'll give you the muffler sound DOESN'T = explosion.

But you're totally wrong on the steam engine. That works from high pressure steam (which is already heated and high pressure) going into the cylinder, pushing the cylinder, then being released.

The internal combustion engine works because when the gas ignites it creates gas that has more volume than it did coming in. An explosive reaction per se. WHILE blowing up, that gas creates heat, too.