The story of the GM EV1 - from a time when Tesla EVs didn't exist
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- With keyless entry and keyless start, an extremely light construction, and convenient home charging, this is the story of the General Motors EV 1.
An all-electric car that gobbled up as much as 500 million dollars in development costs, was made from the ground-up as a standalone EV, and meant to show the world what good old GM was capable of.
But in the end, it all came crumbling down, quite literally. So stick around until the end of this video to find out the story of the controversial GM EV1 - the first-ever vehicle to wear the ‘General Motors’ nameplate, and at the same time, a car that was supposed to kickstart passenger electric vehicles for the masses in the early 1990s.
Thanks for watching & don't forget to subscribe: bit.ly/Subscrib...
Sad to see this channel go, since it was one of my favorite channels. Those sorts of stories are right up my alley, sort of a car themed History Guy.
I think they judt ran off ideas/material
@@BrateTebra123ran out of content in 2023....… I doubt it
@@zebede4501 the comment is from 2022 pal
Great video, and the best of luck to the host on your future endeavors
Just found this channel. Great content and I hope it lives on. Good luck to you though and thanks putting out all these stories to live on
How different could the car market have been if there were more incentives to develop and sell electric cars? How much pollution would have been avoided? Good video!
Thanks for the video, best of luck on your feature endeavors. Hopefully the next host is just as great as you, if we get one
Those were around when I was a kid. I live near the big 3 companies. Iv seen all kinds of weird experimental cars. Ever seen a propane powered Pontiac Bonneville.
All the best in your next endeavors. The EV really was a vehicle worthy of continued development
The Electric Car was "worthy of continued development" but the EV was far too expensive to manufacture due to many new technologies and the need for it to be very lightweight...
GM could have been a leader. Too many MBA's!
I'm a Tesla owner but, the possibilities of the EV1 could've been the start of the EV revolution before Tesla. What a haunting mystery of thoughts what could've put GM on top in Technology today.
i believe some of the original ev1 engineers were involved in tesla's start.
Sadly, BIG OIL and GREED killed the EV1...😪
It would be nice if GM would "Recreate" the EV1 with a similar Body Shape but with seating for 4-5 Passengers!
Or it could come back looking mostly the same but be a 2 seater sports car.
No one killed the EV1. GM was not allowed to sell the EV1 to the public. The whole thing was a design & marketing study that made it possible for Electic Cars to pass US DOT. However, GM was not able to sell the cars after the design & marketing test period for use on public roads. Ironically, GM sells the best practical EV available in the US, the Chevy Bolt, which also has the best Electric-Braking-System and the best support for parts & service...
@@davidhollenshead4892 which was heavily subsidized by the federal government and they still could not make a profit on. GM knew there was no infrastructure to support electric and building that out was prohibitively expensive.
Kind of sad it took a second fuel crisis and an oil war to make us realize we need reduce fuel consumption and produce electric vehicles.
Damn I just subscribed and then at the end of the video he says this is the last video! Doh!!
Thank you very much for the past. Let us know if you open a new CZcams channel. It was always a pleasure listening to you!
Multumesc si la revedere, speram sa va vedem din nou in curand.
I got to work on an EV1 in 1996. I worked as a researcher for a collision equipment company, and got to put the car up in a rack, and start pulling parts off
So sad. GM had a terrific start and threw it all away. I had a Volt and we loved it! Now that is gone. If GM built an EV1 today I would buy it! The Bolt, not so much. Aerodynamics is key and the EV1 was the top of the list! I was lucky enough to get to see and sit in one at Penn State! Lifetime experience!!
It was simple. GM hated being told what to do ie. making the EV-1. So GM told the world that nobody wanted an electric car due to short range(140mi), limited storage (2 seater
small trunk) limited power (little over 100hp) etc. etc. but the 1000 customers wanted to buy the car.....😮
Bummed to lose this channel if we cant get a host. Excellent content and presentation. Best wishes, you will be missed.
No one killed the EV1. GM was not allowed to sell the EV1 to the public. The whole thing was a design & marketing study that made it possible for Electic Cars to pass US DOT. However, GM was not able to sell the cars after the design & marketing test period for use on public roads. They did use them for transportation on GM Factories and Research & Development sites for years after they took them off public roads...
Ironically, GM sells the best practical EV available in the US, the Chevy Bolt, which also has the best Electric-Braking-System and the best support for parts & service. This is no surprise since GM had been working on Hybrid & EV Technology since the late 1960s...
When they made the Chevy Volt, GM made the best Hybrid. But Hybrids are flawed since they have an ICE Emissions Control System, Drive Batteries & an Automatic Transmission to maintain. While EV's have a lower cost of maintenance lacking the ICE Emissions Control System and having only a simple Gear Reduction Box for a Transmission...
So GM made the Chevy Bolt, an economical EV Commuter Car as soon as Battery Technology made it possible to have a sufficient range without costing a fortune. The Bolt won't have the insane costs for insurance & service that Tesla has, and it isn't overweight like the Nissan Leaf is. If you own a garage that you can install a 220 VAC Charger Circut in then the Bolt is practical to own either as a second car for a family, or your only car, provided that you don't take long trips...
Thank you for this compehensive and well researched video!
*Imagine how far-forward we would be with EV's if the gas industry didn't kill this car*
Imagine how far ahead we’d be if we didn’t decide to go with gas in the first place.
@@chidorirasenganz lol. This literally makes no sense.
@@gpatty6538 EVs and gas cars were in development at the same time. In fact the only reason that gas cars took off is advancements in lead acid battery technology caused by EVs. Prior to that an EV beat an ICE car in a race by 10 minutes.
surprised there was no mention of the chevy s10 ev. i believe it used the same powertrain as the ev1.
Thank you for all of the videos. Great historical automotive content!
Well done.
Who killed the electric car?
No one. GM was not allowed to sell the EV1 to the public. The whole thing was a design & marketing study that made it possible for Electic Cars to pass US DOT. However, GM was not able to sell the cars after the design & marketing test period for use on public roads. Ironically, GM sells the best practical EV available in the US, the Chevy Bolt, which also has the best Electric-Braking-System and the best support for parts & service...
@@davidhollenshead4892 You missed my point. It was a reference to the doco on the EV1, but cheers anyway
@@motardktm640 SMH, people love to hear themselves talk. To be fair I thought it was reference to the Simpsons Stone Cutters song.
@@davidhollenshead4892 I think the model 3 is a bit more practical as the dc fast charging is a bit slow
I think there was a slippery slope (oil) to climb behind the real reason GM stopped the EV progression, they had it down very early and we all would be driving electric by now breathing clean air and no dependence on foreign oil or having oil tycoons running our country.
Corporation: planet saving tech that loses us money? No way the public could want that 🙃
Mother Nature: Guess I'll just die then 🤷♀️
Watch the documentary, Who killed the EV
I was a little kid in early 2000s when I first heard of this and thought "why'd they change their mind and destroy them if it was good and the owners wanted to keep them" it just seemed odd how it all ended
Car is supposed to be a PART of the system (roads, gas stations/chargers, service, and so on). Not a stand alone thing.
Its cool to test a novelty, but buying it (service, repower, and so on) is a whole different story.
Sorry to see you go.
One of the biggest screwup GM did was killing it before it became something!!😩😢💔
0:35 exept 10 years earlier none other than NASA build 2 electric cars (Artur Chmielewski with a team- today Project Manager
Jet Propulsion Laboratory). They were told yo scrap it before they could present it @ auto show. Probably same forces ended EV1 existence.
The petrodollar that's the real reason. That car could be made right now and be sold by the thousands.
The Chevy Bolt is the best practical EV available in the US. So why resurrect the outdated EV1 when the Bolt is much better and much cheaper to make???
GM cars of the 80ties sucked.
I think GM is the worst Enemy for GM?, The bad Management and Marketing have destroyed GM brands one after another
GM is a dinosaur 🦕. It’s too big for its environment to sustain.
Simple as that: We had this Topic in Professional School for Car Mechatronics. GM was not allowed to Produce any more Ev1's. Oilcompanys dont only Produce Oil and Fuel. They also brings the Oil for Plastic and Rubber - thousand things around Carmanufacturing.. (Think about it how much Plastic/Rubber~Oil is in a Car if every Plastic thing is out of Oil) Oilcompanys refuse all together to all Carmanufactures the HUGE rebates in ProductionOil for the Plastics/Rubber if they dont stop with the EV Game. That will hit every produced Cars, and not onla the EV's. Car Manufacturer gets these Days huge discounts on Oil for Production -> if the finished Product is burning "Gasoline or Diesel". It is like the Printer thing.. Buy the Printer Cheap to have the need on theyre expensive Refills) And it starts for EV's Production Oil Companys should STILL give huge discounts for a Product which on End works against them ?! Shurely not.
Electronic cars is not 0 emmisions.
To drive they are. Both ICE and electric cars are dirty to manufacture. True the Battery tech is behind in being a cleaner option for EVs. And that will change, Because those companies that do it first has a licence to print money all day long.
Saying that. The stories of how bad EV are in regards to Cobalt, paints an image that isnt a true representation of the truth in comparing ICE motors. We'll ignore the tech here is over 100yrs out of date. Yet its genetics has not change regardless.
The journalism, YT channels bashing on EV tech compared to ICE cars is Bias. What they don't tell you is the Oil wasted in regular service maintenance? Double if its a Diesel. And Diesels require more oil then a similar sized ICE motor also. More then Half of this Oil wast is NOT recycled.
Oil filters, air cleaners/ elements, spark plugs, Leads, Coolant is also wasted.
And while we mine for Cobalt. Lets not forget where Fossil fuel derives from? How its mined, how its transported. Refined, transported again. Stored in dated service stations.
Lastly to be used to burn which the ICE motor uses its HEAT (force) that, only about 35% of that energy is usable.
I think some of your dates are off. You are about a decade off.
GM had shut the EV1 program down in the late 1980s.
No, that's not true.
Although, I think there was another GM-built electric vehicle concept in the 1970s or '80s that included some weird design that lacked a steering wheel, and maybe that's what you're thinking of? If I recall correctly, there was a canopy like that of a fighter jet and the driver sat in a cockpit where he was flanked by two joysticks (one for each hand), and that was the steering input.
Of course, it's possible I'm confusing things as well; but the EV1 was not an '80s-era car.
Why saturn idk, might have sold even more if it was a chevy, amazing here we go again gm is going full evs again... work at the new ultium plant its really cool!