General Motor's EV1 Electric Cars Scrapped

jangobongo writes "Yesterday, the last of General Motors EV1 electric cars were transported to their final resting place, the GM Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona, for "final disposition," which for most of them means crushing and recycling. The experimental GM cars were originally leased (starting in 1996) to owners in California and Arizona for three years while GM developed electric battery technology, but the expected breakthrough in battery technology failed to materialize. GM spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, but concluded that the electric cars would not be profitable. The EV1 program was ended in 2003. Some of the cars were donated to engineering departments of colleges and universities, while others went to museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. Despite protests and petitions, GM would not sell the last available cars to the public due to the lack of replacement parts for repairs, and because of potential liability claims. It's sad to see this chapter on electric cars close."

Comments

What you don't see can't hurt you?

[daveschroeder]

Yes, it's sad to see a symbolic engineering marvel like the EV1 go, but all this does is shift the pollution elsewhere. Not to mention not being very practical at all.

See here for energy densities of various materials.

Could there be a reason that gasoline is the energy storage mechanism of choice for vehicles?

Why not concentrate on GM's current hybrid timeline, or on vehicles that are actually useful and that normal people might buy, like GM's 2007 GMT-900 platform (Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon/Yukon XL/Escalade) which will have a strong hybrid option, with a standard 5.7L Vortec V8, but with Displacement on Demand, disabling 2 or 4 cylinders as conditions permit, and featuring two 30kW electric motors housed in the standard Hydramatic transmission case that doesn't require major resigns and retooling entire truck production lines for use, but still yielding up to a 40% mileage improvement, instead of making ugly little cars on which it is apparently mandatory to have the rear wheelwells covered like hearses?

Re:What you don't see can't hurt you?

[mmkkbb]

making ugly little cars on which it is apparently mandatory to have the rear wheelwells covered like hearses?

Honda also makes/made Civic and Accord hybrid, and Toyota's Prius isn't THAT ugly. There is also Toyota's Highlander hybrid which as far as I know looks like a regular Highlander (and may outperform it but that bit was hearsay)

There are hybrid sports cars on the way, too. Looks like Mercedes has hybrid plans. (google it, there are several articles)

Re:What you don't see can't hurt you?

[wmshub]

Actually, in a way, we won't.

There is tons of oil all over the world. It's just a matter of the cost required to extract it. Right now we're mostly sucking it from big underground pools, where it's cheap to get. But many large rock deposits have oil mixed in, and it is possible to extract the oil - just too expensive. When the cheap oil runs out, we'll still have oil, it will just be at a price that is much higher than we pay today. It may or may not be more expensive than solar or wind power.

In reality, before we totally run out of oil, we will have utterly cooked ourselves to death on global warming. Lucky for the oil companies, ignoring global warming is a lot easier than the problem they would face if we really were running out of oil.

Re:What you don't see can't hurt you?

[sxmjmae]

In Oil and Coal burning we know the effects on the environment are 100% bad. People get cancers and die from the pollution.

In a nuclear planet it may have a problem and then you might die. The pollution can be controlled.

In one case you KNOW that lots of people will get sick and DIE from the pollution. In the case of nuclear the pollutants can be contained and stored and in an accident you might get sick and die.

The difference is that in one you have near 100% chance of killing people (oil and coal burning) and much lower chance in the other (nuclear power).

You get the point??? If you burn oil and coal you know you are going to kill someone via the cancers caused by the pollution. If you safely use nuclear energy you may never hurt anyone via pollution.

Most importantly with nuclear you can control your own energy and not rely upon another country. What would happen if the country you relied upon committed acts of terrorism or was a cruel to its population? Spend $350 billion to stabilize a foreign government so they can continue selling you their oil?

Re:What you don't see can't hurt you?

[amliebsch]

Fields of panels to create the electricity necessary to split the water. 24/7, all around the world,

As a practical exercise, why don't you go ahead and calculate just how much land that would require, and you might see why this is silly.

Re:What you don't see can't hurt you?

[Retric]

Solar cells work they produce way more energy over their lifetime than it takes to make them. But there are other methods of generating energy from solar power that are much cheaper. One simple method is to use a solar collector to heat water then either use that water directly to say heat a house or use it to generate electricity. Another is to have a tracking solar collector to magnify the amount of light hitting your solar cell thus giving you 10x the energy from that solar cell over it's life time with the cost of some cheep plastic lenses.

As to fusion it's really only 30-50 billion$ away from production use. We are just not putting that much money into research. In 2000 there was a plan to create a 1500MW fusion power plant by 2020 but it was scraped to cost's. We could easily make a fusion power plant the only real problem is lack of funding. It would take about 5 billion a year for 20 years, which is really a tiny fraction of our GDP, but hey 20 years is way to long for most people to think about.

PS: There is still some hope on this one look into ITER which is one of those you want one in Japan and you want one if France... I say fine let's build two and stop #^$&ing around.

NPR

[blackmonday]

Search NPR.org for an interesting article. According to GM, there where only 50 people committed to buying an EV1. That didn't stop environmentalists from chaining themselves to the last enclave of EV1s in Burbank, CA.

My neighbor drives a very nice Honda Insight (Hybrid). Seems like a lot less hassle than an electric-only vehicle, until hydrogen (or the next big thing) comes along.

Bummer

[bitswapper]

Too bad. Seems odd, though, that GM sites lack of parts and liability as reasons. After all, if they were really worried about liability, why would they have allowed them to be purchased in the first place.

Here a link to pics of the remains.

:-(

Passing blame to the laywers.

[Kainaw]

GM would not sell the last available cars to the public due to ... potential liability claims.

I wonder if this is a red herring or not. Sure, lawyers have turned the U.S. into a lawsuit-happy country where people are visited in the hospital right after surgery with promises of grand malpractice suits (I work in a hospital, so that's the only example that comes to my mind right away). But, it is possible that GM made some damn good electric cars. Maybe they don't want people using them so they can force-feed a few more SUVs to the nation. Either way, I'm of the opinion that we should drastically increase our fossil fuel usage. The sooner we use it up, the sooner we will stop using it.

One question about electric/hybrid cars

[Anita Coney]

I've read that it costs $8000 (of course in US dollars, you godless heathen!) to replace the batteries for electric and hybrid cars. And furthermore, they need to be replaced every three years.

If that is true, (please tell me it's not true) how in the heck are you ever supposed to sell them in a used market?! They would essentially all become scrap, sort of like a two year old iPod. How is that environmentally sound?!

Re:One question about electric/hybrid cars

[mfarver]

I didn't think the power plant emissions were relevant, but a bunch of posts have given the "moving the pollution" argument so I'll address it.

1. Moving the pollution is actually a bit of a good thing. Pollution is bad anywhere, but cities have more people getting lung cancer. Most power plants are spread out and away from population centers.

2. The control issue... its a lot harder to clean up 100,000 tailpipes than one power plant. Bigger scrubbers aren't cheap but still cheaper than the pollution controls on the car. CO2 sequestering really isn't even possible at the car level, but might soon be at the plant level.

The problem gets worse when you look at how little maintainence the emissions controls get on most cars. Approx 15% of cars in the US are driving with the "Check Engine" light on, indicating some reduction in power and emissions. Add in the the people actively subverting the emissions controls for increased in performance. Search google for "drilling out the cat" for some fun stories. Getting high horsepower in an EV doesn't require increasing pollution when the car is being driven normally.

3. Pollution and cost improvements by using electric cars to avoid expensive and often inefficient peaking power. Electric cars can charge at night using cheap base load electricity, and help balance the day/night usage swings. Some tests have even had the EVs putting power back into the grid from their batteries during daytime emergency brownout situations.

3. An extension to the control issue is that while an large fleet of electric cards would be only be about 25% -50% less polluting with todays electric grid (which relies on a lot of dirty coal) is that the cars now have a choice of fuels. We can keep generating power from dirty but plentiful US coal (avoid Mideast oil). Or we can add clean renewable sources, or nuclear, etc. If something better comes along: fusion, solar energy sats whatever it can be quickly integrated, without waiting 10 years for the cars to be taken off the road. 90% of the current air pollution is cuased by less than 10% of cars on the road (mostly 70's and 80's cars still in use and built with minimal pollution controls.)

And the other arguement is "just wait for fuel cell cars":

Fuel cells are not a replacement for electric cars. They _are_ electric cars, just with a different battery tech. All of the research investment in electric cars applies. Right now the auto industry is using fuel cells as a stalling action. By saying that fuel cells are still immature, and electric cars impractical they avoid retooling their production for 10 years or more.

Seemed inevitable

[VolciMaster]

Electric cars have that nasty feature of needing to be recharged constantly also. I'm far moer interested in hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles, personally. THe technology exists now, is fairly cheap to manufacture, and (like another poster pointed out) the vehicles don't have to look like futuristic dwarf hearses.

Several manufacturers (Ford, Toyota, Honda, GM) all have hybrids in production, or near production. They get better mileage, accelerate faster, brake quicker, and (at least the recent entries) look like the normal vehicles on which they're based.

To heck with hybrid/electric ...

[La0tsu]

Let's get on with diesel. Why?

1) Better efficiency than gasoline

2) Longer engine life

3) Diesel fuel can be produced from non-fossil sources such as soy and corn (even hogfat!)

But aren't diesel engines dirty, you might ask? Not inherently. The problem is the quality of the fuel, specifically the level of sulfur. Here in the States, in less than a year the standard will reduce that nasty impurity by huge amount.

A whole lot of goodness, no? Plus, it is a way for our struggling farmers to increase demand for their products.

For more info:
http://www.biodiesel.org/

Re:To heck with hybrid/electric ...

[QuantumRiff]

They have these, they are called Locomotives. Check out Howstuffworks.com's article on locomotives. The big (okay HUGE) diesel engine goes between 300-900 rpm, all it does is power a generator, that runs an electric motor on each axle. Instant tourqe, lots of power, regenerative braking, and no big, heavy, nasty to work on transmission.. (the article talks about a transmission strong enough for a locomotive to get up to over a 100Mph would require a 32 speed transmission that would weigh twice as much as the locomotive)

Why can the train companies develop these huge, fuel efficient engines decades ago, but we can't seem to learn any lessons from these and apply them to cars.

Re:To heck with hybrid/electric ...

[CodeBuster]

Because train locomotives have a lot fewer limitations with respect to size and weight than cars.

Re:To heck with hybrid/electric ...

[DerekLyons]

Why can the train companies develop these huge, fuel efficient engines decades ago, but we can't seem to learn any lessons from these and apply them to cars.

Mostly because diesel engines don't scale very well. It took a long time (and a lot of work) to get them down to a size where they were useable in cars. It will take more time (and work (money)) to get them down to the size where they can share space with the hybrid end of the equation.

That's setting aside the problem of diesels not liking cold greatly, cooling problems, etc... diesels are in many way better than gasoline IC, but they are not without additional problems and difficulties.

Re:Hybrids replaced electric cars

[n1ywb]

You get BETTER range and BETTER milage in CITY conditions. They electric system is only beneficial during acceleration, so it's great in stop and go traffic. Cruising on the highway it provides no benefit, in fact the extra weight reduces your mileage slightly. People don't understand that and that's why some people have been whining that their hybrids don't get the mileage they expected. If you do mostly highway cruising you really are better off with a normal, fuel efficient gasoline vehicle.

Of course on the highways here in the NYC area, and in most metro areas, stop and go is the rule.

Sounds like the Chrysler Turbine Cars

[MajorDick]

MOPAR Did the same thing with the Chrysler Turbine Cars, they expected to use them as a mobile test platform while they deveoped the means to make it work

In the end nearly all but 3 or 4 went to the factory to be cut up into teeny tiny bits....sad but it happens....

Re:No surprise, this.

[einTier]

Car and Driver had an excellent article about these cars a few years back.

Basically, people were paying $525 a month to lease a car that cost nearly 1.5 million each to build. Small wonder they liked them, and small wonder that GM scrapped them.

Re:No surprise, this.

[Nefarious Wheel]

GM's first foray into commercial electric cars was named the "Impact". Does that sound like they wanted them to succeed, rather than a sop to the green movement? Heck of a thump to the subconscious. And they do know their subconscious marketing cues.

Another idea for disposal

[JonTurner]

These cards didn't need to be destroyed.

Rather than crush the cars, why didn't GM just let it be known that they were going to dump/abandon these vehicles, with keys in the ignition and blank title paperwork in the glove box, in their desert holding area? Then, with a wink and a nod, inform the community that if anyone wanted to *steal* the vehicles it wouldn't be in GM's interests to prosecute.

Presto - problem solved. If anyone cared, they could have a car. If they injured themselves, GM could say "tough doughnuts -- you STOLE it, after all!"

I'm sure a lawyer can come up with a good reason why this wouldn't work. Spoilsports. :(

Re:Another idea for disposal

[dabigpaybackski]

Here's an idea for disposal:

Auction them off to collectors, and make the buyers sign an "as is" contract. No proviso for spares, servicing, or liability from the manufacturer. They'll sell every one. Some will be driven, others tinkered on, and some will become museum pieces.

I wish GM would reconsider. There's no shame in failure, especially a failure as innovative as the EV1. Keeping the remaining specimens out in public will help spark interest in more advanced technology, as well as GM's brand name.

Re:Hybrids replaced electric cars

[huge colin]

The gas-electric hybrid sounds good, until one realizes that they're heavier, more complex, and therefore substantially more expensive than an equivalent gasoline-engined car.

If you want great gas mileage, diesels are unbeaten. Driving normally, [British motoring journalist] Jeremy Clarkson got 75mpg out of a Volkswagen Lupo diesel.

The hybrid-engine cars of today are a silly fad.

I wouldn't mind that hybrid Honda Accord

[IronChefMorimoto]

Both Autoweek http://www.autoweek.com/ and Car & Driver http://www.caranddriver.com/ have had some excellent reviews about Honda's new top-o-the-line Honda Accord Hybrid V-6. Both magazines noted that, for buyers who want to get more MPG for their money without something as unconventional looking as an EV1 or a Prius, the Accord may fit the bill.

Not to mention the fact that the new hybrid Accord sits at the TOP of the Accord lineup for Honda. Friggin' $30K for a hybrid V-6, but you DO get 255HP and a nice car.

I wonder, though, if this prices what could be a very nice, standard hybrid sedan out of the reach of the consumers that Honda hopes to reach -- those that want something "normal" instead of a stylized Prius. Certainly, the Civic hybrid is an excellent, cheaper alternative, but it's not nearly as roomy, and for long trips, it's gonna be cramped/inadequate, say, for a family of 4.

The Ford Escape Hybrid has also gotten lots of good press from these magazines. And the hybrid Lexus RX400 (2006? yes? no?) is supposed to be a marvel of hybrid innovation and luxury technology.

I guess we'll have to see how the hybrid phenomenon goes forward. I thought this morning, as I sat behind a Civic Hybrid on my morning commute, about how soon hybrids are going to NOT BE ENOUGH to help with an emerging energy crisis. This while I'm listening to an NPR report on the US Senate vote on drilling in ANWAR for oil. It's going to be an interesting next few years, I'm afraid. Hope my rather inefficient Subaru Forester doesn't become a MPG killing liability.

IronChefMorimoto

Re:What's wrong with hybrid/electric?

[huge colin]

...and I believe you forgot "higher initial cost than pure diesel".

Re:No I can..

[Stormwatch]

I'm guessing 3 is "time travel, back to 1955"...

Re:AAAaaah

[MightyMartian]

Costs are still a bit up there. As well, the Toyota dealer area in which I live couldn't sell them when I was looking because the Fire Department hadn't take the course. I gather that on electrics, using the Jaws of Life in the wrong spot can introduce a rescuer to the gripping Maw of Death awfully quick-like.

What's up with all this renewable energy nonsense?

[homerito]

Seriously. Open your eyes.

Why such a big fuzz for electric cars? they are feeding from the grid that is powered by fossil fuels. That the fossil fuel plants are more efficient than car engines? well yeah but by the time you transport the energy (heat + electromagnetic losses) + charge the battery (heat losses, batery inefficiency) + feed computer + electric motor (more heat and electromag losses), you end up with the same efficiency than a normal car or even less. Then you have to add the enviromental cost for building all the batteries/fuel cells in terms of energy. (freaking cars cost more than 1 million!)

And then a friend that works for a new wind power generator turbine was telling me that they were planning on putting some of those on top of the AC units of some buildings and use the convection currents to generate electricity!. Cmon!! if you think that is clever go and ask for a return of money of all your thermodynamics class.

Speaking of wind turbines... well if you build enough to feed the power grid by themselves then they will mess up weather conditions by disturbing the wind patterns. Same for ocean waves or ocean currents.

Solar panels take more energy to build that the one that they will produce in their life time.

Everybody talks about hydrogen and get all exited about it. Well where are you getting the hydrogen from? usualy water so people gets even more exited!. "woow energy from water" Well getting hydrogen out of the water requires huge amounts of electricity to break the link between the hydrogen and oxigen. And that same energy is then released when we burn the hydrogen or put it in a fuel cells.

Methanol from plants? gime a break!!! how much land do you need to clear to grow sugar cane using pesticides altering weather too. We will have to grow sugar cane in all earth surface to provide the amount of energy that we are going to need.

It seems that the only current solutions are:
-make internal combustion engines more efficient and increase hybrid useage
-Nuclear power (what to do with nuclear waste for the next couple of million years?)

The way I see it, oil and gas production will start to decline sharply in about 50 years and then huge wars for oil will happen (they already started!!!coughiraqcough) and energy demands from places like china and india will exponentially grow at the same time.

Not a very bright future if we dont find a real energy alternative that does not mess up earth environment.

Re:AAAaaah

[NaruVonWilkins]

Treehugger just had a great article on Prius versus Echo. It's very close - Echo uses less energy to produce, but Prius gets better gas mileage. If you drive about 7,000 miles with your Prius, you break even with the Echo. Also, less gas overall costs you less. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/03/_less_is_m ore_p_1.php

Re:No surprise, this.

[lgw]

The other huge problem with electric cars being widely adopted that no one seems to consider is that it would roughly double our need to geenrate and distribute power. We use a *lot* of power in vehicle engines. Getting that much additional power online and available in the home is at least a 20 year project, and would have huge transition costs.

This is one reason why hydrogen fuel cells would be an awesome technology - the existing infrastructure would be pretty close. However, practical high energy density hydrogen storage remains as elusive as practical high energy density batteries.

Cheap fusion

[DaChesserCat]

Cheap fusion already exists, and the fuel supply is expected to last millenia.

It just happens to be 93 million miles away.

Photovoltaics aren't sufficiently efficient yet to remove significant amounts of demand from the electrical grid, but PV isn't the only type of solar energy. Personally, I'd like to see a scaled-down version of Solar Two. I mean, think about a couple 3-meter heliostats (the same size as the older analog satellite TV dishes) sitting on top of your garage (or on top of a shed in the back yard; as long as it gets plenty of sunlight), focusing on some small collector on the top of the house.

A 3 meter diameter dish has about about 7 square meters of aperature. If your heliostats are about 85% efficient (you can get reflective films which do this), and the main collector/generator is 33% efficient, that's about 2 kW for each heliostat (7 sq meters * 1 kW solar energy / sq meter * 0.85 * 0.33). That's about 28% efficiency, from the surface of the heliostat to the final output. Considering the fact that most PV's (and all consumer-priced PV) are <20% efficient, that's not too bad. If your generator consists of a steam engine (Rankine or Kalina cycle) or Stirling engine, these typically product AC to begin with, so you don't have to worry about an inverter (which you will probably need with your PV, since they only produce DC).

If you use the molten salts Solar Two used, you could still get power after the sun sets (their research showed this was >95% efficient in terms of energy in vs. energy out). Alternately, you could just do net metering and knock your electric bill down.

Also, if you use the waste heat from the system to provide household heat or hot water, you get an even higher total efficiency. That aspect of it could reduce the amount of electricity you need, as well (if you have electric heat or an electric hot water heater).

You're killing me here!

[Dolio]

What the hell are you trying to do? Kill me?

As if I weren't already awair that they just carted off the last of
the EV1's, Now I have to go over to slashdot of all places and read
all of this crazy Bull Shit. On /. God help us. we're smegin doomed.

(A Friend of mine) wrote:
> http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/03/16/19921 7.shtml?tid=126&tid=14

What the hell am I supposed to do:

- "My Echo gets 3mpg less than a Prius" (sic)
Sure it does, if you drive half the speed.

- "couldn't possibly get insurance on a vehicle who's brakes can
- "not be replaced due to the part not being available" (sic)
There's nothing wrong with the brakes, I quote "electronic brakes" ie
regen brakes via the Motor, it surely still has a duel-zone Hydralic
system and standard brake rotors and pads! ( required by law )

- "but all this does is shift the pollution elsewhere."
Tell me, Have you ever tried to drill & process oil from your back yard?
Well, It's entirely feasable to collect your own "solar" (wind, hydro,
pv) energy via the roof of your house and drive this car with ZERO oil.

- "See here [xtronics.com] for energy densities of various materials."
Yes, but an ICE only yields 20% of that energy, BEV's yield 80-90%!
BTW. Did you include to discovery, drilling, processing, and calaratal
damage (I mean cost) of the gassoline that you pump into your car?

- "According to GM, there where only 50 people committed to buying"
SIC SIC SIC That's total nonesense, even today there were at least
78 individules willing to buy them as salvaged vehicles, and GM finally
admitted that there were several thousand people on waiting lists.
They even refused to sell ONE EV1 to Jay Leno for a cool Million.
BTW. There's a 1 in 25 chance that you happen to live in a state where
these cars were "Available". I don't call that trying to sell them.

- "After about 10 minutes, a fully changed car was almost dead."
SIC SIC SIC SIC TOTAL NASTY SMELLY RUNNY GREEN BULL SHIT !
You would have to be burning off the energy at a rate near 120kW.
CONTINUOUSLY! That means you ran it up to a brick wall and then
spun the tires, HELL even that wouldn't work, you'de have to.....
I rented and drove a GEN 1 Lead-Acis version 110 miles in LA!
I also had it SOLD! in less than 3 hours! GM LIES, and the LIES MORE.

- "I wonder if they just made them inoperable (to avoid liability
- "concerns) and sold them as collectable on ebay "
Funny you should ask, all the ones that went to musiems and universities
were "severly disabled", ie:no run, prior to the donation. Empty Shells.

ONE thing is certin, GM sure as hell wants to make sure that noone who
hasn't already driven one of these cars will EVER get the chance.

L8r
Ryan

Re:Hybrids replaced electric cars

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

Just to get started, the vegetable oil costs 2.50$ a gallon. In bulk

That depends on what oil you are using pure vegetable and peanut oil are very expensive and are not the best choice for bio-diesel. Soy and rapeseed are far better choices and are cheaper that 2.50 in bulk. It averages in the $1 per gallon area in futures trading.

Add the costs of processing to turn it into bio-deisel and you've got a very expensive solution.

Methanol and lye are both very cheap and used in small amounts in the process as well most of the methanol is recovered to use again. Blending is a fairly automated process for the manufactures just pour in all the ingredients and out comes bio-diesel pretty much. Refining Diesel is as much if not more labor intensive.

And that's not taking into account of the skyrocketing price when large numbers of people start buying up the oil.

No actually there may be a small spike at first but what will happen is that farmers that are now sitting on crops that they cannot move will start to migrate to producing oil out of them not to mention that many farmers would love to have a new cash crop to grow. Right now the ability to produce far outweighs the demand for the product in fact as production ramps up you may actually see a decrease in the price as it does not require the farmers to grow a special crop for low demand. If the roles where reversed and bio-diesel where the main fuel source diesel would be very expensive as there would have to be special refineries to produce diesel for what would amount to a limited demand hence the refineries would have to charge a premium to cover the increased cost to produce a fuel with limited demand. Right now that is bio-diesel and that is the only reason that bio-diesel is expensive but with the current skyrocketing diesel prices there is now no reason to by diesel fuel. I currently purchase B100 at a local supplier for $2.10 a gallon well under the $2.30 a gallon that they are charging for diesel. The bio-diesel they are selling is soy and rapeseed derived and all virgin so they are not sucking out the local McDonalds vat to reduce their costs. The alternative fuel tax breaks have made it competitive with regular diesel.

Take a look at this it has some good info on cost to produce bio-diesel.