- Posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Working Together to Keep Electric Technology Alive
By Dave Barthmuss
Manager, Public Policy, Environment & Energy
With all the excitement generated by the recent unveiling of the Chevy Volt, it seemed like a good time to check back in with everyone at FYI about GM and the electric car.
A lot has happened since my last post on FYI, where I discussed at length my thoughts concerning the film, “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” in which I appeared.
After watching the movie and talking to what seems to be thousands of people about its unique point of view, I have to say two things. First, as you might suspect, I believe the points I made about the film in my original post still ring true. Second, I am even more convinced of the depth of commitment people still have for electric cars, especially given the issues we face today both as a nation and as a global community.
Two other important things have happened recently, too. First, GM announced its commitment to build a plug-in version of the Saturn Vue at the last Los Angeles Auto Show, and it unveiled the GM E-Flex system and Chevy Volt at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. More importantly, though, GM and advocates of electric vehicle technology in all forms — many of whom have been critical of GM’s efforts — are actually finding common ground. And I very much hope that this kind of improved relationship will allow all of us to move toward solutions together.
One of the reasons for this change, I believe, is that we learned from our experiences with the EV1 and used them in creating the Chevy Volt.
Chris Paine, the director of, and driving force behind, “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” recognizes GM’s efforts, telling Autoblog Green this about the Volt:
- “From what I can see, GM is doing the right thing and I’m supporting them as long as they keep making good decisions and moving plug-in cars into production reality.”
And Paine told the Detroit Free Press of the Volt’s debut in Detroit that GM is “coming back to the table in a huge and impressive way,” and that, “it’s a very impressive engineering and design team at work on the project.”
What’s important here is not so much what Chris said, but the fact that GM has been able to have honest and open dialogue with people who are keenly interested in electric vehicles, even if they have criticized and disagreed with GM’s efforts on that front.
Clearly, we won’t always agree with our critics, but that should not stop us from talking, and recognizing the value different thoughts and opinions can bring to our work. When we find a way to put our differences aside and engage in open and honest dialogue, we can usually find collaborative solutions to the issues and challenges we all agree must ultimately be solved — even if at times we don’t agree on the best way to “build the watch.” I can only speak for GM here, but I sincerely hope we can continue the dialogue as we move forward with the E-Flex system and Chevy Volt.
And that includes the dialogue with you. So please stay tuned and keep the feedback coming.
16 Comments
Andre
I didn’t care for the documentary, but Paine did rightly embarrass GM for hyping such a noble enterprise, only to dump it. The EV1 was poorly marketed. I don’t agree with the bias in the “mockumentary”–it was not some sexy sports car. It was a strange-looking, limited-range street machine. But it was a clean vehicle and one GM should have done more with. Thanks to the Tesla Roadster and the Venturi Fetish, our view of the EV has changed. There is a future for electricity in cars, and GM should continue to pursue it.
joelado
It seems that every 10 years or so US automakers take a bunch of money from the Federal Government and sometimes state and local governments in developing one or two high mileage demonstration vehicles.
In 1969 GM introduced to the world through its Opel division the Stirlec1, an experimental prototype conversion of its most popular European vehicle. It was equipped with a Stirling engine and an electric drive train, what we now call a series hybrid. It was said to be able to get 84 miles to the gallon and produce minimal emissions. You don’t have to believe me you can see it for yourself. See http://econogics.com/ev/stirlec1.jpg
The Electrovette
The EV1, the 4 seater, parallel hybrid, series hybrid, and fuel cell versions.
The Precept vehicles. One a hybrid and the other a fuel cell vehicle. http://www.familycar.com/Future/gm_precept.htm
And now the Volt.
You don’t get the halo effect until you produce the vehicles for general purchase at all your dealers.
SteveParker
Dave-
Had fun chatting (debating?) with you during the LA AUTO SHOW MEDIA Days over KPCC-FM in Los Angeles! Got a lot of comments on my e-mail from that one! Anyway, they didn’t tell me beforehand that we’d be engaged in a little give-and-take, but really enjoyed it. Hope you did, too! Folks can listen-in to it on my blog at http://www.steveparker.com! Just go there and scroll down to the story …
L Lindholm
Letter to GM
I’m ready to purchase a new, primarily electric vehicle with internal combustion as a backup for
long distance trips. The question is who will deliver the product?
I read a Reuters news article about GM unveiling a new “concept” car called the Volt. The article mentions the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” which I have viewed. The documentary along with other information supports the conclusion that GM played both fields. GM acted like it would provide zero emission cars to California and yet worked with vigor to kill all Government requirements for zero-emission cars. Then proceeded to remove all traces of the EV1 technology from the public view. History also speaks about GM, Firestone and Standard Oil.
The news article states, “We have a thoroughly studied concept, but further battery development will define the critical path to start of production,”. Already your words are cause for suspicion. The EV1 claimed a range of 100 miles using Nickel-metal-hydride. If GM was sincere, there would be many hand built Volt test/development cars out using current battery technology now. While those cars are being real world tested, plans would be executed to equip the factory for a test production run in 2008.
Even Toyota has plans to replace existing Nickel-metal-hydride batteries with Lithium. GM can’t release the Volt with Nickel-metal-hydride and then move to lithium?
GM understands what the consumer desires as the article states “For the average American driver who drives 40 miles a day, or 15,000 miles a year, the Volt will require no fuel and lead to an annual savings of 500 gallons of gasoline, GM said.”. This is the correct direction, will you deliver?
“ The Volt’s combustion engine is designed only as a supplement to keep its batteries charged, an innovation GM executives hope will help the automaker jump ahead of Toyota Motor Corp.” If the electric drive train is robust enough for long term use. It’s a good concept, do it now.
Today’s automakers reluctance to move quickly in the direction of electric primary, gas secondary
propulsion, makes the pluggable Hybrid most likely to be delivered. Toyota is in the best position to produce a pluggable vehicle. Toyota has also positioned itself with a reputation of delivering reliable advanced technology to the consumer, GM has not. Many thanks to Toyota for releasing the genie out of the bottle.
Whoever delivers an advanced well designed product will get my trade. I will not wait for you GM.
P.S. Ditch the Hydrogen/Fuel cell technology, it’s just part of the smoke screen. It also continues bondage to the petroleum industry since they will manufacture and distribute the hydrogen.
altfuels
Dear Mr. Barthmuss,
Unfortunately, as one of those who has been critical (in many forums) of GM’s handling of the EV1, I don’t see an “honest and open dialog” happening here. A “dialog” doesn’t just consist of two sides talking past each other, however respectfully–and, by the way, let me salute GM for opening its blogs to opposing views like mine, and the blog team for helping me get my comments past some technical issues to make sure that my opposing views _did_ get posted. Rather, a “dialog” implies that the two sides listen to each others’ points and respond not with restatements of our positions but rather with attempts to respond to and rebut the opposing view.
Specifically, many critics of GM’s treatment of the EV1 think that GM has consistently misrepresented their reasons for cancelling the program and taking the vehicles off the road, and have said so whenever the opportunity presented itself. (Can’t afford full-page newspaper ads, of course…) A good definition of “spin” might be “selection and presentation of facts without important background or context, so that they appear to imply something other than what they would imply when considered in context.” By that definition, your June blog post contained a lot of spin; we’ve criticized the spin, and a real “dialog” would have you presenting a rebuttal to our criticism, rather than continuing to repeat the same arguments (in our view, the same spin). You can comment on your own blog post here; this would be a good opportunity to “fire back.”
For my part, I tried to summarize the arguments in a rebuttal page ( http://www.altfuels.org/misc/onlygm.html ) on my website; to pick two off the top, first, you say that only 800 EV1s were leased (that is, to individual consumers in California and Arizona–another 300 or so were leased to utility fleets in the Southeast or kept by GM for its EV1 Specialists and researchers). Sounds like there was no market–obviously you don’t have a viable product if that’s all you can move over four years–but the missing context includes the fact that only 800 were ever _made_ _available_ for lease! That is, GM leased absolutely every new EV1 they had to lease; sure sounds like a success story rather than a failure, once you add that context. Many of us have pointed this out, but I have yet to hear an argument from GM as to why the missing context is not relevant; rather, you are repeating the same line unaltered, for example a couple of weeks ago in an interview ( http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/01/09/detroit-auto-show-autobloggreen-qanda-with-dave-barthmuss/ ), where you dismiss the EV1 as a car that couldn’t “appeal to more than 800 people.”
Second, you say that “a waiting list of 5000 only generated 50 people willing to follow through to a lease.” From this, it sounds like enthusiasm for the car was “a mile wide, but an inch deep.” Again, some critical context was omitted: these numbers don’t refer to new cars. (Or did GM cull a waiting list of 80,000 to get those 800 new-car lessees?) I was one of the 4950; we were sent a letter (copied at http://ev1-club.power.net/archive/020207/lease2.jpg ) in 2002, _after_ GM had stopped making EV1s, asking if we would be interested in assuming an unexpired lease if one became available. That is, would I be willing to spend thousands of dollars to install the special charger that GM required in order to use the EV1 for perhaps as little as a year before it would be taken back with no option to buy out or renew the lease? My loving wife would have let me spend the money to “live the dream,” if only for a year, but I didn’t feel I could spend that much of our family money for a year of fun. I would have been willing to spend the money in the early days, when I could hope to use the charger for many years with an EV1 on a renewed lease or maybe one day even be allowed to buy it out, and to use it with an EV2 and EV3 in the future. But as it was, I’m not surprised that GM got such a low response rate; I _am_ surprised that GM has implied that this low rate represented interest in new-car leases!
Of course, some people, even on “our side,” think that those like me who keep talking about the EV1 are living in the past, looking for personal vindication rather than working toward progress as represented by, say, the Volt. But the Volt is not on the showroom floor, and thus it represents a promise; and promises have to do with credibility. As long as GM continues to misrepresent its reasons for abandoning the EV1, those of us who would otherwise be the most enthusiastic boosters (and, if we get the chance, early adopters) of the Volt will instead be the ones most loudly questioning the sincerity of GM’s promises regarding it. For example, GM keeps saying that a breakthrough in lithium-chemistry batteries is needed to make the Volt practical; in light of our experience with the EV1, this looks a lot like the setup for another “we tried, but…” escape clause.
To close this over-long post, let me say that I’m not in the “I’ll never buy another GM vehicle” camp; between us my wife and I have owned two Chevies, three Saturns, and a Pontiac (and one Dodge), and I’d love to have a Chevrolet Volt plugged in in my garage. (I also bear you no personal ill will for our brief skirmish in 2004 at a California Hydrogen Highway meeting, I should mention.) But until I see the Volt for sale–not a concept car, not a limited-production “Project Driveway” test vehicle, not lease-only and three years from the crusher, but for outright sale–I cannot believe GM’s promises. Right now, I put much more credence in promises from Tesla that they’ll have an affordable third-generation vehicle available around the timeframe when you say the Volt may come out (2010-2012), and if that beats you to market I’m not going to wait for GM. I didn’t buy a conversion electric vehicle in the late 1990s because I waited to be allowed to buy an EV1, which never happened; fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
CM
Since the E-Flex platform will support a variety of body styles, GM should make an ultra-light very low drag version. Low weight would give impressive performance specs, and low drag would increase the electric drive range.
In homage to the late lamented EV1, you could call it the EV2 - “The Electric is Back”.
Leew
Mr.Barthmuss,
I have my cash in the bank and I am prepared to write a check to purchase Any well made American plug in hybrid.
Please help us get away from our dependance on foreign oil.
Would you also consider a small diesel to recharge the batteries instead of gasoline?
Thank you for your efforts and time.
Lee
Johan Amedeus Metesky
Mr. Barthmuss,
I live in the Detroit area, have worked for tier 1 suppliers and now publish a family of auto news web sites.
I think it’s telling that the critics of GM inspired by Who Killed The Electric Car have nothing but admiration for Toyota for selling hybrids (they sell hybrids because they are very weak in diesel tech), when Toyota did pretty much what GM did with the EV1 - take their electric vehicles back and crush them. What many people don’t realize is that car companies often make small fleets of test vehicles, make them available to municipalities and utility companies so real world data can be acquired, and then end the program and destroy the cars. So it doesn’t bother me that GM killed the EV1, since the venture was more of an experiment than anything else.
What I’m intrigued about is the fact that all of the plug in electric and series hybrid concepts currently (pun intended) seem to be based around a single electric motor. It seems to me that while using independent motors at each wheel might be more costly, it would open up tremendous opportunities for sophisticated stability and traction control. With a central powerplant, the various systems pretty much are reliant on the braking system to control individual wheel speed. Using independent motors at each wheel would allow the stability/traction control systems to modulate the power at each wheel. Also, such a vehicle could have a parking mode wherein the motors on one side of the car would run in reverse direction, allowing the car to be able to rotate on its own axis.
Plug in electrics make a lot of energy sense. Right now we already have enough unused nighttime generating capacity (energy that it otherwise wasted) on the grid to power almost all of our cars and light trucks.
altfuels
There are a couple of red herrings in the comment by Mr. Metesky. First, while some feel that “Who Killed the Electric Car?” went too easy on Toyota, that doesn’t mean that electric-vehicle (EV) activists have “nothing but admiration” for them. Take a look at the ads and flyers at http://www.pluginamerica.com/dontcrush.shtml that were put out by dontcrush.com, one of the groups that grew into Plug In America. The difference is that Toyota actually _sold_ a few hundred RAV4-EVs, and that we were actually able to shame them into sparing some of the leased ones from the crusher and allowing them to be purchased as well. Neither statement is true of GM and the EV1.
Moreover, many EV advocates have a bone to pick with Toyota (and other hybrid makers, but especially Toyota) over their implication that non-plug-in, gasoline-only hybrids are “good enough” that we don’t need those icky, inconvenient alternative fuels like electricity or natural gas. See http://www.altfuels.org/misc/onlygm.html#fcvhybrid for some examples of how hybrid makers have misrepresented the cleanliness of their vehicles, and where they actually stand in relation to EVs (even accounting for pollution at the powerplant).
Second, there is the perception that the EV1 program “was more of an experiment than anything else,” intended to gather real-world data on test vehicles that were never intended to be left on the roads, so it’s not surprising that they were crushed. The problem here is that GM made promises, starting in 1990 with the Impact show car, that they would make electric vehicles available to the public as a real product, and they represented the EV1 program as a good-faith effort to kickstart the electric-vehicle market. They then _misrepresented_ the results as proof that there was no viable market for such vehicles; as I argued in my earlier comment (above), the results proved no such thing.
Worse, not only did GM (and the other automakers) use this “proof” to end their own EV programs, they also convinced a compliant California Air Resources Board to back off from the clean-air regulations that would have required them to build EVs. Instead, they persuaded the Board to let them instead build a few dozen fuel-cell prototypes each, with the promise that numbers would eventually increase. In other words, they substituted promises (about which there is a lot of skepticism among those of us who watch developments in alternative fuels) for actual vehicles.
And in his AutoblogGreen interview that I referenced in my earlier post, Mr. Barthmuss baldly states that “we know that lead acid and nickel metal hydride aren’t going to work inside a vehicle”; the collective efforts of GM and other automakers to “prove” that there was no market for EVs with such batteries has poisoned the well for anybody who wants to start up an EV company, since “everybody knows” that you need expensive lithium-chemistry batteries to make a viable EV. It would be hard for any company to drum up interest in a freeway-capable EV with less exotic batteries.
But GM apparently thinks there might be a market among people who could use the Volt, with 40-mile all-electric range, without ever needing to burn gasoline; they’ve specifically called out this possibility in some interviews and comments on the vehicle. Of course, those customers would have the security blanket of a gasoline engine in the Volt; but mightn’t there be a subset of those people who would rather have, say, twice the all-electric range as insurance instead, and get rid of the internal combustion engine with its attendant cost, complexity, and smog checks? I’ve just described the last EV1 I ever drove (see http://www.altfuels.org/events/testdriv/farewell.html ), a 1997 model with high-capacity lead-acid batteries! And there are plenty of RAV4-EVs out there with 50,000 or 100,000 miles on their NiMH battery packs, which get even greater range per charge.
GM’s problem here is that, the more you know about the way the EV1 program was handled, the worse GM looks. That means that the people who were the most interested in the EV1, those who actually drove it (including me, though I was only ever able to rent one for a day or two at a time), and who should be GM’s biggest asset in promoting the E-Flex idea, are instead the loudest voices of doubt about GM’s sincerity in promising to follow through to market with the Volt and the E-Flex concept. We know GM’s engineers and designers can build a Volt that will inspire every bit as much “intense passion” (Mr. Barthmuss’ words) as the EV1; but as long as GM management continues to misrepresent the viability of the EV1, we will be unable to believe that that same management will allow the Volt to succeed. As I noted in my previous comment, I’ll believe that when I see the Volt actually sold (not just leased) to customers; and if Tesla beats you to market with an affordable descendant of their roadster (or Miles, Phoenix, AC Propulsion, …), I’m not going to wait for GM this time.
dh
Do something to persuade me that the Volt hasn’t already reached its zenith.
You roll it out at the auto show to ooohs and aaahs and it turns out that you can’t build it - have no intention of building it - because you don’t have the battery.
The Volt joins the Precept in a long list of “concept cars” with no relationship to the real universe.
Heck, the Precept had an aerodynamic drag coefficient far lower than any other vehicle around. Why not roll that out? Why not apply the lessons learned to your sport-ute fleet?
Every time I hear, “our country, our truck,” I get irritated. What are you doing for our country?
CaptainDan
“Who killed the electric car?”
So GM (like any business) would have to look back and determine whether they should waste further millions on a product that had been proven “unwanted”. They can always try again when the market (and technolgy) improves
The people who misled GM by telling them how much they wanted it, how great it was, and then not following through. They’re also the biggest complainers now. No automaker (or any other business) is going to shut down production of a money making product (you know, one that has paying customers). But if there is no sign of profit…no product.
GM built them in 500 unit runs. It took YEARS to find takers for that first 500. Then GM brought out the next generation EV1, with several improvements, updates. It took even longer, but in the end they couldn’t get rid of the last couple hundred at all. The people have spoken.
So now, those same people who “loved” the EV1, but never opened their wallets, are the cynical ones who complain when a concept car is built which COULD show how a new generation of such vehicles might work.
Such “concept cars” have been built and shown by automakers constantly, every year, for the entire history of the automobile. If there is a good reaction, and the car turns out to be buildable (at a profit) you WILL see that vehicle sold.
altfuels
CaptainDan–
I’d really like to know where you got the idea that “it took YEARS to find takers for that first 500 EV1s” and “they couldn’t get rid of the last couple hundred at all.” I presume you’re referring to Mr. Barthmuss’ assertions that “only 800 vehicles were leased during a four-year period,” coupled with the fact that about 1100 EV1s were built. I’d invite you to take a look at http://www.altfuels.org/misc/onlygm.html , where I dissect this and other spin from his June 2006 post; in fact, the first set of 500 EV1s went very quickly, followed by a drought of available cars because the second batch of EV1s wasn’t released until the end of 1999, a year after every other 1999-model-year vehicle! And the difference between Mr. Barthmuss’ quoted 800 EV1s leased and 1100 built doesn’t mean that 300 sat on lots unwanted–rather, the 800 EV1s went to individual lessees in California and Arizona, while the 300 went to fleet leases in the Southeast or were kept in-house for research or for the EV1 specialists to use. The fact is, GM leased absolutely every EV1 that they made available for lease, leaving many disappointed would-be customers out in the cold! That doesn’t even include people like me who would gladly have _bought_ an EV1, but for the fact that they were only offered for lease with no buyout option. “The people have spoken” (those of us who actually knew about the EV1s when they were available, which was a very small number of people), but they said the exact opposite of what you assert.
Mr. Barthmuss–
Comments like the one to which I’m replying show the extent to which anti-EV spin from GM (and other automakers) has poisoned the atmosphere in the marketplace. If you are at all serious about building the Volt, please come clean and stop disseminating such spin!
Bruce
I would like to see an electric commuter vehicle that uses a manually removable (heavy?) power supply. My dream would be to see “wind islands” set up as as a supply augment for “service stations”, where the removable power supply could be exchanged. No waiting for multi-hour recharge. The wind stations could back up the electric industry during peak times, and the stations could draw from the grid system during off peak times when too much generation is a problem, and of course when needed during calm off peak periods. Smoothing out the grid load profile will ultimately enhance the net efficiencies of the power generation systems, while simultaneously offsetting portions of current transportations fuels dependancy. Pipe dream? Maybe. But if I see a thriving LNG market in place in a few years after starting with little infrastructure, I will still have hope.
tim
On the Volt I’d like to see a timer which could be set to automatically pre-heat/cool the car from plug-in off the grid power prior to the start of my morning commute. The system should have a setup option to sense whether it’s plugged in and allow it to pre-heat/cool only off the grid or not. Thanks, Tim
Stephen
The real story here is that Japanese auto makers are now 10 years ahead of us in technology we pioneered. The Clinton administration funded hybrid technology and what did GM do with it ? They did tech demos while their Japanese counterparts went ahead and built production cars. I think GM’s reluctance to move forward on electric technology will haunt American car manufactures down the road. The Volt is a great idea and it’s a car I might even consider buying. I just have the feeling it might be too little too late. The past has shown us that once behind on any technology catching up can be notoriously difficult. One day the only way to see a car made by GM might just be at the Smithsonian. If that comes true, be sure to stop by and see the EV1 as it was a harbinger for things to come.
Peter
I live in Bermuda, and yes it is beautiful, except that we now have more vehicles on the road than there are residents. Gas is over $8 a gallon. Speed limit is 35-50kph - rural style driving. We need a small electric car that will do 50km per day, top speed 60kph, seeting and size equivalent of the Chevy Aveo.
Who can I talk to in GM in order to get a protoype programme going?
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