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Update, 1/04

Nice car! Never needs gasoline!

My EV-1 was one of the silver ones. Maybe you can see it in the parking lot on the right.

GM claims they spent in the area of $1 million for each one of these cars, if you factor in the R&D. (Of course, R&D on other vehicles costs plenty, too, but in those instances they actually build more than 1000 of the vehicles). We shouldn't forget that lots of public money went into this project via subsidies and the like. Shouldn't we have gotten to keep a few of the cars as a memento?

My EV-1 was built in 1996. When I gave it back in August 2003 -- after begging to renew the lease or even buy the EV-1 -- it was still in basically the same condition I received it. Of course, as you can see from the photo on the right, its condition has seemingly deteriorated subsequent to the moment I returned it to GM.

If you are enterprising, you can still find operable electrical vehicles of circa 1902 or so. But car buffs will not be finding antique EV-1s in the future, will they? I wonder why GM lacked any pride in this vehicle and felt it had to be destroyed. Do you suppose they would be willing to license the patents? Isn't that what patents are for -- to encourage the advancement of technology?

Shell just reduced its calculation of oil reserves by 20%. Wall Street has expressed concern that other oil producers will follow suit. The US is occupying Iraq for (among other reasons) access to Iraq's oil. So why is the solution to the problem sitting in a pyramid of squished vehicles? (While at the same time, you can get a nice government subsidy on a 6000 lb+ GM Hummer or H2.)

Inquiring minds want to know.

I now drive a 2004 Prius -- Motor Trend's 2004 CAR OF THE YEAR. Not that Toyota is telling anyone ...

Original Story

GM made a nice electric car called the EV-1. The public invested lots of money with GM to put this car on the road, because it is a "zero emissions vehicle."

People who leased EV-1s like them very much. But GM will not make any more of them, claiming that "no one" wants them. This is not true.

It accelerated faster than my turbo RX-7. It was quiet. You could leave the air conditioning running while you went shopping. It had a nice stereo and lots of other great features for a two-seater sports car.

GM made a design error in the charging port of the first edition of the EV-1. GM fixed the problem in the second edition of the EV-1 and didn't mention the problem until there were a couple of fires that may or may not have been caused by the charging port.

So, GM recalled the vehicles. Now, GMAC had purchased the vehicles and leased them to the drivers. Under federal law GM had the right to reimburse GMAC for the vehicles and take them back. Unfortunately, this meant that GMAC would be breaching its leases with all of the EV-1 drivers.

GM could have built more of the second edition EV-1s to replace the first edition EV-1s. GM also could have accelerated the repair program of the EV-1s. Or, GMAC could have (heaven forbid) purchased electric vehicles from another manufacturer in order to meet its obligations under the leases.

Instead, GMAC claims to have "terminated" the leases. It is questionable whether GMAC had the legal right to terminate the leases, but if it did, GMAC was obligated to refund the unearned portion of the "capital reduction" that was paid at the beginning of the leases. In my case, there was about $4,000 unearned capital reduction that had been paid from public sources. GMAC disregarded its obligation to refund this money and kept it. If the average amount of unearned capital reduction was $4,000 and it was not repaid to 400 drivers, then GMAC has wrongly kept about $1.6 million, much of it public funds.

Also, although GMAC claims to have "terminated" the leases, it filed "non-operation" certificates with the California Department of Motor Vehicles that continue to show the drivers as the lessees of the vehicles.

If GM were committed to the EV-1 program, I would not be concerned about the manner in which GM and GMAC have handled this alleged "recall". However, the reality is that GM does not want to build anymore electric cars and does not want the public to understand how good these cars really are. Instead, it wants the California Air Resources Board to roll back the requirement for vehicle manufacturers to put zero emission vehicles on the road.

The California Air Resources Board has studied the impact of vehicles on water quality and air quality in California. Quite simply, vehicles are slowly killing us by poisoning our air and water. CARB has also studied the options available to stop this process.

Vehicles have less emissions than they used to. On the other hand, there are a lot more vehicles. Another problem is that emission control systems do not continue to work as designed over the life of the car. "Smog Certificate" programs do not do a very good job of keeping polluting vehicles off the road.

CARB has identified electric vehicles as the only technology that will significantly improve air quality (and reduce the damage to water) in California. The reason is that electric vehicles do not have any emissions, but also that electric vehicles do not require the transportation of petroleum products that leak into the environment every step of the way from the well to the exhaust pipe.

Of course, some power plants produce emissions. However, California's electric supply includes such things as wind power and in general produces considerably less emissions to power vehicles than the same vehicles would produce with internal combustion engines.

But more important, electric power plants do not require leaking oil wells and pipelines. They do not require leaking ships and spills at dockside. They do not require refineries, with further spills and emissions. They do not require tanker trucks and trains and they do not require service stations with tanks in the ground, emitting solvents into the air and leaking toxins into the groundwater.

Electric vehicles have proven reliable and effective. For instance, depending on the batteries used, the EV-1 will go somewhere between 65 and 130 miles per charge. Most of us drive less than 40 miles per day.

Performance is excellent. Electric motors operator over a wide range of "torque" and develop lots of torque at "zero" rpm. And, because the systems are all electric, the air conditioners and accessories can be operated by timers and over short periods of time when the vehicle is not being driven. There is no "engine" that must be idling to supply power.

Refueling is extremely convenient. You park in your garage, take 10 secs. to put the charging paddle into the port and in the morning the vehicle is ready to go.

Cost of operation is about the same as an internal combustion engine. Electricity is extremely cheap. If you considered only electricity, the car would operate for far less than a comparable gasoline powered vehicle. However, just like the batteries that start gasoline engines, the batteries in the electric car get old and must be replaced. The cost of batteries over time, combined with the cost of electricity, is very similar to the cost of burning gasoline.

At the same time, costs for other types of maintenance are very low. Electric motors are very reliable as are the electronics that run them.

CARB has calculated that the cost of an electric vehicle is less than the cost of a gasoline powered vehicle if you do not consider the cost of the batteries. However, electric vehicles are sold with a set of batteries. This is the equivalent of buying a two year supply of gasoline as part of the cost of a gasoline powered vehicle. It makes the electric vehicle seem considerably more expensive.

This approach is unnecessary and there is a very good solution. Also, although range is not a problem for these vehicles, people worry that the car will not go far enough for their purposes. And of course, if one wants to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, this is true. The solution is to provide "battery exchange."

Electric race cars swap batteries in about 20 secs. For this reason, electric vehicles can compete very well with internal combustion vehicles. It is possible today to build cars designed to swap batteries in about five minutes at a service station.

The batteries would belong to the battery company, which would charge them at their service facilities. Drivers would rent the batteries and a charge would cost about the same amount of money as an equivalent tank of gasoline.

With battery swap technology, the electric car would be cheaper than your gasoline powered vehicle. Range would not be a problem, since you could easily swap batteries, much as you purchase gasoline to complete you trips today.

There are a lot of companies that do not want electric cars to succeed. The reasons are economic. What would electric cars do to gasoline retailers such as Texaco and Exxon, for instance? Another issue is the question of patents on gasoline engine technology. Honda, for instance, holds many patents on "clean" gasoline engines. For this reason, Honda chose to scrap its very nice EV+ electric car. If electric cars should take over the market, all of those gasoline engine patents suddenly become considerably less valuable.

But, you may ask, what about the little companies that build electric cars and what about the people that "convert" cars to electric? If electric cars are so good, why haven't they been very successful?

There are a number of reasons. Because batteries and battery chargers must be sold with the car, the cars are quite expensive. Few people can afford to buy them. Financing is not readily available. And, for those people who have the money, it seems very risky to purchase a type of car that most people do not drive.

The cost is also high because of the small volume of electric vehicles that are produced. For instance, the "controller" that provides battery power to the engine, requires complicated software and when the development cost is spread over just a small number of vehicles, the cost is quite prohibitive.. But to show some of the "economies of scale", a high performance drive system is available from a company called "AC Propulsion" for about $34,000.00. In quantities of only 10 or more, the price falls to $17,000.00.

I don't wish to be misleading. There is a bit of a premium cost to electric vehicles in today's market. For instance, the City of Santa Barbara operates some electric buses and also some diesel ones. According to their web pages that describe their experiences with these vehicles, they have found that the overall operating cost for the electric fleet is a bit higher than the cost of operating the diesel fleet. But "dollars/mile" is only part of the equation. We really do have to think about "poison/mile" as well.

When we are driving in internal combustion cars, we do not think about the fact that we are spewing out poison from the exhaust pipe second by second. However, if you were to drive an electric vehicle, while you are sitting behind exhaust pipe cars at stop lights, you would find yourself thinking, "Oh, my god! Second hand smoke!"

Before electric starters were invented for cars, a lot of people preferred electric vehicles to gasoline ones. The electrics were cleaner and easier to operate. But, with reliability for gasoline engines came smog and pollution.

There was a time when we did not think about second hand smoke from cigarettes. Today, we know that (along with being obnoxious) it is also bad for our health. The same is true about the smoke coming from our cars, but we choose not to think about it. We don't think about it because the option is walking and we could not do our jobs and lead our lives if we had to walk everywhere.

By adding about $2,500 to the cost of a vehicle, 10% of the vehicles on the road can be easily subsidized. Once there is a significant fleet of electric vehicles, a subsidy will not be necessary, but we have to get the ball rolling. Air bags, seat belts, turn signals, pollution control devices and other mandatory equipment all add to the cost of vehicles but we have chosen to pay those costs. This is also a cost that we should accept. China has imposed a 20% requirement for electrics. Isn't America wealthy enough to have as strong an environmental commitment as China?

If GM and Honda do not wish to build electric cars, that is just fine. They can buy electric cars from Solectria or another producer to meet their "quotas". Of course, this may mean GM and Honda (and any other company that does not wish to participate) will end up like old time "buggy makers", but that is their choice. I suspect if we insist on electrics, the big manufacturers will have no choice but to join in. They will not wish to become "little manufacturers" overnight.