Does GM deserve what happened to them because of what they did to the EV1?

I finally got around to watching Who Killed the Electric Car?

They chose to build and market the Hummer instead.

I really don't see how we can solve any of our problems with regressive parisitic corporations on our backs.

...via lack of leadership on promoting agressive CAFE standards brought us big fat SUVs and trucks.

Other countries jumped on board, too, but maintained a fleet of well made smaller cars and wagons.

And, since you saw the movie, others were to blame on keeping us from where we should have been going in car design.

:patriot:

through marketing what they wanted instead of figuring out what made sense for our people and the economy and providing it.

They used their business as a weapon to push people in a (stupid) direction and, yes, they had it coming.

“The movie ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ was terribly one-sided,” Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. “It was not balanced at all.”

We were talking in Charlotte, N.C., a couple of weeks ago. I was there to drive Toyota’s new 2007 Tundra pickup, and the change in topic was completely unexpected.

If it’s not surprising enough to hear Toyota defending GM, try this on for size: The film’s director pretty much agrees

We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program” to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday.

http://fyi.gmblogs.com/2006/12/mark_phelan_electric_car_kille.html

how Ford decided not to get involved in electric cars at all because they found out they'd sell maybe a hundred a year. He explained that they had all this fantastic interst when they talked about it, but the interst evaporated when they explained howe the thing would really work.

As bizarre as that movie was, they didn't slam GM nearly as hard as people around here do when they summed up why the EV-1 disappeared.

And we gave them our tax dollars to develop that technology. At least Toyota succeeded in bringing the highest MPG car to market.

The movie isn't called, "GM killed the electric car".

The GM defenders can scream all they like about how Toyotas are unpatriotic and unreliable but the fact is that GM lost the marketing battle. Their image is the Hummer and killing the EV-1 (thanks to W.K.T.E.C.). Fair or not, that's what they're stuck with and they don't seem to have done anything to change that. Other than promising but not delivering the Volt for the past few years (for $40,000!).

"Mr. Carbuyer, we have three cars here for you. One of them is a gascar. It gets 30mpg and costs $15,000. It has lots of room for your family and their things.

"The second is a hybrid car. It gets 50 to 70mpg, depending on how you drive it, and costs $25,000. Okay, it's a little cramped, but we've found that four people will fit in it pretty well, and you can get a decent day's shopping in the trunk.

"The third is an all-electric car. It costs $40,000, has two seats, its trunk is big enough to hold your wife's purse, and it'll go a hundred miles on a charge before you have to plug it in for five hours. Oh yeah...the power to charge this thing is going to cost you five dollars a night."

Unless you live in the city and close to work, all the EV-1 was, was a rich man's toy. There are better ones, like the Miata. And they're right--no one would buy a car like that. (Helpful hint: They make more Rolls-Royces in one year than GM ever made of the EV-1.)

The Volt, which is technically a hybrid, is what the EV-1 should have been--and WOULD have been if they hadn't been dealing with the Zero Emissions Vehicle crap.