This week we are looking at electric cars and the most well known electric car was the GM EV1. The EV1 was the first electric car built by General Motors, it was made to address the requirement of Californian law at the time for automakers to start making zero emission cars. 800 were made from 1996, as the whole program was so expensive for GM all the cars were leased to customers instead of being sold. This proved handy for GM later on in 2003 when they recalled all the cars and crushed them thereby wiping out the expensive program. Many customers who leased the EV1 begged to purchase their cars but GM didn’t want to know about them claiming it would be too costly to keep the program going. The car also became the subject of the Doco “Who killed the electric car?” Many people believe there was a conspiracy by the fuel companies to get rid of the EV1 but in reality the car wasn’t that great, at the time it may of be seen as a car ahead of its time but looking at the advances of today’s Chevy Volt concept it perhaps was the right idea at the wrong time. Today the few remaining cars that weren’t crushed were donated and used in either museums or university labs, there are still a few used in GMs own test fleet as well.
