Two-week vigil to keep GM from crushing electric cars

[Book Lover]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/02/25/state/n144557S11.DTL

Electric car buffs, shocked that General Motors has ordered leasers to return their pioneering EV1s, have been standing vigil for nearly two weeks to keep the electric cars from being put through the crusher.

<snip>

Reeves and dozens of other EV1 fans have been standing vigil since Feb. 14 in an effort to save the last of the EV1 fleet — 77 in California — from the crusher. GM built more than 1,000 EV1s, leasing 800 for between $300 and $600 a month before finally pulling the plug on its electric car program in 2003.

<snip>

GM said there wasn't enough support from the motoring public to make the EV1 program work, saying the automotive future lies in electric-gasoline hybrids and in fuel-cell cars powered from hydrogen.

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I never understood what GM's motive in recalling and destroying these vehicles was...

[trogdor]

1. GM hybrids are in the "why bother" category.

Put an electric motor in a big-ass pickup truck or SUV so that it gets 16 MPG instead of 13. Big deal.

Toyota, OTOH, seems to have put some thought into it. I can see the day when cars run mainly on electricity, and there's a teeny little gas motor that is there mainly to charge the batteries, and you go get maybe three or four gallons of gas once a month.

[LTR]

2. The original electric vehicles were a real pain in the ass

They required long periods of charging to run for a short amount of time. It was more of a headache than it was worth.

Toyota, Honda and Ford are progressing nicely with hybrid programs. Toyota's Prius has been a big hit so far. Honda has done well with it's Prius and is rolling out an Accord hybrid that gets about 40 MPG. And Ford is trying it out with their Escape compact SUV.

Pure electric was a good experiment, and it led to bigger and better things. But today's hybrids are much more practical, and have far greater potential for the time being. Pure electric is just not very practical at this time.