General Motors and Electric Vehicles

The first mass-produced modern electric car was the EV-1, made by General Motors beginning in 1996. Over a thousand EV-1's were leased -- not sold -- to customers primarily in California. Then in 2002 and 2003, all of the EV-1 leases were ended by GM, who collected all of the vehicles and destroyed them. 

 

Then, in 2006, GM began development of the electric Chevy Volt, which went on sale late in 2010, and from then until the present day, General Motors has been selling electric vehicles -- with less than complete enthusiasm, although so far, after the EV-1, they have not gone so far again as to destroy any of their own cars.

Last Sunday, GM ran a Super Bowl ad in which Will Ferrell hears the news that Norway bought more EV's than ICE (Internal-Combustion Engine) vehicles in 2020, and goes on a rampage, vowing that the US will outdo Norway in this. Also on Sunday, commentaries appeared saying that, although the commercial is wonderful, GM itself is a big part of the reason why currently EV's account for only about 3% of new car and truck sales in the US, compared to 54% in Norway, pointing out that GM lobbies heavily against fuel-economy regulations, which a company set on pivoting to EV's would not do. And recently, GM has announced its intention to produce only zero-emissions vehicle by 2035. 

Many people, in the light of all of this, have described GM's attitude toward EV's as schizophrenic. But "schizophrenic" implies one mind which is in conflict with itself, whereas GM consists of hundreds of thousands of employees who have routinely held sharply conflicting opinions about all sorts of things, EV's being just one example. GM is a very different company than Tesla, which is basically a cult built to do the Will of Elon. Was the EV-1 designed and built by very enthusiastic GM employees? Yes indeed. Was it at the same time viewed with horror by other GM employees, further to the Right politically, who saw it as a hippy monstrosity? Without a doubt. I also have no doubt that many at GM are very happy that their company has committed to zero emissions by 2035, and that many others believe that global warming is a hoax, perhaps Chinese in origin.

Like the rest of the world generally, GM is moving toward a more enlightened stance on the environment, while being hindered by many individuals dragging their feet, some out of conviction and others out of greed. The situation is complicated, and some parts of GM are fighting other parts.

Speaking of complication: that same Norway which is doing such a fine job of switching over to clean energy usage domestically, is also one of the world's biggest exporters of oil.

Electric Vehicles From General Motors

I would like to think that information and education can be very important, that they can change people's minds and that changed minds can lead to changed behavior.

Stop me if you've heard this one: In the 1990's, California, dominated by Democratic legislators at the time, passed some laws, and one result of those laws was that if General Motors wanted to continue to do business in California they had to manufacture a certain number of plug-in electric cars. GM made their first electric car, the EV-1, launched in 1996, leased every one they made and had a waiting list of customers years long. That's right, they leased them, they refused to actually sell any of them.

Then in 1999 Republicans took control of the California legislature and repealed the legal requirement that these electric cars be made. Rather than continue to manufacture this wildly-popular vehicle, GM recalled and destroyed every single one of them. This was much easier to do since the cars had been leased instead of sold, and so legally remained the property of GM the entire time. When the recall was announced, many drivers offered to buy their EV1's. All of these offers to buy were turned down. It was more important to GM to make it completely clear that they weren't going to be pushed around by California liberals, than to make lots of money continuing to do what the liberals had forced them to start doing. (And presumably the environment was much further down the list of things which were important to GM.)

In 2010, GM started selling its 2nd electric car, the Volt. The Volt has only recently passed the 100,000 mark in worldwide sales. The Volt seems not to be well-liked by GM execs. Bob Lutz has been the most prominent supporter of the Volt within GM. Lutz is one of the most well-known "car guys" in the history of Detroit. (A "car guy" is an executive at an automotive company who also is an engineer and actually takes part in designing and manufacturing the cars. Opposed to the "car guys" are the "bean counters," specialists in finance.) The fact that Lutz has supported the Volt project seems to have hurt his image in some circles of the auto-exec world. It has also made him popular among environmentalists -- or at least it did, until he actually spoke with some environmentalists, and made it plain that he regards global warming to be a myth, and that his enthusiasm for electric vehicles is purely financial, stoked by fears of a future where gasoline costs $30 a gallon.

Toyota began selling the Prius around the time that the EV-1 was, literally, scrapped, and has sold 1.7 million of them in the US and over 5 million worldwide. It seems that different companies have different business models.