How many times have you seen a ridiculous proposition publicized solely to make a less ridiculous but still dangerous proposition look better?
It happens ALL THE TIME. Give 'em six months. They'll come out with a new $30 levy that'll seem perfectly reasonable.. and passing it will be tacit acceptance of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
That kind of tax would never disappear, even if the sum Dutch population suddenly shunned file sharing. It's like a toll road; just because they've paid off the asphalt doesn't mean they'll stop collecting the fee!
Interesting, interesting car. I was only 10 or 12 at the time, I don't recall the details of the arrangement with GM, but we certainly weren't paying the lease price. Or any price, for that matter.
A few things stand out in my mind. The inductive charging system in particular was pretty cool. They installed a futuristic charging unit some five feet high in our garage attached to a wire and plastic paddle. Shove the paddle in a slot where the engine would traditionally be, and in a few hours we'd have a 75% charge. Impossible to electrocute yourself.
I don't agree with the poster above comparing it with a Geo. The EV1 has the second lowest drag coefficient of all time of any vehicle, and the lowest of anything mass produced. If GM removed the speed limiter (80 MPH, I think), it'd top out north of 170 MPH. There was no wind noise at any speed, nor motor noise. Slight tire noise was the sum of it.. given the craptastic rubber the Ev1 was shod in, it's no surprise that was the only sound apparent. Absolutely eerie compared to our old GMC Suburban and any car at the time, luxury of otherwise.
The dashboard was another trick feature. It was a thin digital panel that wrapped around the plastic just below the windshield. Range and battery meters, obviously, standard equipment. I could never get enough of it, I wish they'd put something similar in a traditional car.
Range on our EV1 blew. It was quick, definitely.. 0-60 in the 8s, which was nice, but regular driving wouldn't push us far beyond 45 miles. Max range would have been 75 miles or so, if we'd driven like a grandmother and were actually willing to run it to empty.. but you don't do that when there's no good way to charge away from the house. Given how badly lead-acid batteries respond to a full discharge, it wouldn't have been in the interests of the car to try it anyway.
Surprisingly however, there were a number of places with driving distance of our place that had EV1 charging stations. I question if they still exist. Doubtful.
Anyway, the EV1 was as much an engineering project for GM as anything else. In that, it was a success. When a key component of the business plan was 'incorporate awesome yet-to-be-invented technology', they couldn't have been seriously banking on it as a mass-produced alternative.
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How many times have you seen a ridiculous proposition publicized solely to make a less ridiculous but still dangerous proposition look better?
It happens ALL THE TIME. Give 'em six months. They'll come out with a new $30 levy that'll seem perfectly reasonable.. and passing it will be tacit acceptance of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
That kind of tax would never disappear, even if the sum Dutch population suddenly shunned file sharing. It's like a toll road; just because they've paid off the asphalt doesn't mean they'll stop collecting the fee!
u15
Interesting, interesting car. I was only 10 or 12 at the time, I don't recall the details of the arrangement with GM, but we certainly weren't paying the lease price. Or any price, for that matter.
A few things stand out in my mind. The inductive charging system in particular was pretty cool. They installed a futuristic charging unit some five feet high in our garage attached to a wire and plastic paddle. Shove the paddle in a slot where the engine would traditionally be, and in a few hours we'd have a 75% charge. Impossible to electrocute yourself.
I don't agree with the poster above comparing it with a Geo. The EV1 has the second lowest drag coefficient of all time of any vehicle, and the lowest of anything mass produced. If GM removed the speed limiter (80 MPH, I think), it'd top out north of 170 MPH. There was no wind noise at any speed, nor motor noise. Slight tire noise was the sum of it.. given the craptastic rubber the Ev1 was shod in, it's no surprise that was the only sound apparent. Absolutely eerie compared to our old GMC Suburban and any car at the time, luxury of otherwise.
The dashboard was another trick feature. It was a thin digital panel that wrapped around the plastic just below the windshield. Range and battery meters, obviously, standard equipment. I could never get enough of it, I wish they'd put something similar in a traditional car.
Range on our EV1 blew. It was quick, definitely.. 0-60 in the 8s, which was nice, but regular driving wouldn't push us far beyond 45 miles. Max range would have been 75 miles or so, if we'd driven like a grandmother and were actually willing to run it to empty.. but you don't do that when there's no good way to charge away from the house. Given how badly lead-acid batteries respond to a full discharge, it wouldn't have been in the interests of the car to try it anyway.
Surprisingly however, there were a number of places with driving distance of our place that had EV1 charging stations. I question if they still exist. Doubtful.
Anyway, the EV1 was as much an engineering project for GM as anything else. In that, it was a success. When a key component of the business plan was 'incorporate awesome yet-to-be-invented technology', they couldn't have been seriously banking on it as a mass-produced alternative.
-u15