Customer response has been slow, but the automaker says it's still positive about its electric car

Charlotte W. Craig, Automotive Writer
Detroit Free Press

January 15, 2000

Despite industry advances toward fuel-cell vehicles and cars with hybrid power trains, General Motors Corp. has not abandoned production of its EV1 battery-powered electric car.

Reports in other publications this week said GM is giving up on the EV1, which the company put on the market to great fanfare in November 1996. GM was the first major automaker to try mass marketing a battery-powered car.

The EV1 is available only as a lease vehicle and only in California and Phoenix. Customers pay about $450 to $500 a month to lease the current crop of EV1s, depending on equipment.

Assuredly, the little car has been a slow mover; 1,000 have been built and, of those, only 600 have been leased.

But GM can and will crank out another batch of EV1s if the market wants them, said Jeff Kuhlman, the automaker's director of energy and environmental communications.

If that sounds vague, it's because the EV1 is made differently from high-volume cars, Kuhlman explained.

GM makes the EV1 at its Lansing Craft Center in blocks of 500 vehicles. Producing fewer than 500 makes parts suppliers unhappy and wreaks havoc with plant efficiency and quality control. Making more than 500 means finished vehicles have to sit around too long before being shipped, again hurting quality, Kuhlman said.

Production of the high-tech EV1 is slow, partly because of the low volume; assemblers make only two or three a day. The first 500-unit block started production in 1996 and ended in 1997. The last vehicle from that initial block was leased to a customer in mid-1999.

Seeing that a second block would be needed, GM started making a second batch of 500 EV1s in late 1998 and continued into late 1999. About 100 of those have been leased, with 400 or so awaiting customers.

In just two production generations, the EV1 has improved markedly, as industry research and development of alternative vehicles race forward.

Kuhlman said second-generation EV1s have a range of about 150 miles with nickel-metal hydride batteries and about 90 miles with new, advanced lead acid batteries. That compares with a range of about 60 miles in first-generation EV1s.

Also, second-batch EV1s have improved electric drive controls (the brains of the outfit) that are half the weight, half the size and half the cost of first-generation controls.

The drive controls in GM's new Precept hybrid concept cars represent a third generation of controls that, again, are half the weight, size and cost of those in second-generation EV1s.

"So our controls now are 75 percent better in just four years," said Kuhlman.

That kind of thing, he said, illustrates why GM has stuck with EV1. "That's where we've been doing the bulk of our learning about electric drive. Even if you believe hybrid power trains or fuel cells are really the future, you still have to have electric drive controls," Kuhlman said.

Hybrids use a combination of internal-combustion engines and electric motors; fuel-cell cars run on electric power generated by chemical interaction.

With 400 EV1s waiting for homes, it's not likely GM will schedule another 500-unit production block soon. But the company has all the equipment and space in Lansing necessary to do it, Kuhlman said, and can set up the line on short notice.

"We'll just have to watch the market and see what develops," he said.