EV1

General Motors president Mark Reuss penned a missive on CNN’s website titled, “Electric Cars Won’t Go Mainstream Until We Fix These Problems.” This title conveys three things:

1. Electric vehicles have big problems
2. They’re not suitable for the “mainstream,” aka most people, and
3. GM will fix (future tense) these problems, and normal people should just stand by until GM says so.

Below we deconstruct this corporate PR hit piece and take a look at who it’s coming from.

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This weekend was the 19th anniversary of the first deliveries of GM’s all-electric EV1. With GM planning to release the Chevy Bolt in “late-2016”, it would coincide with the 20th anniversary of the EV1 launch. Although it’s doubtful the company will try to associate both releases considering GM is trying distance the Bolt from the image of a compliance car, it is nonetheless an interesting coincidence.  Expand
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Before Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors in 2003, they were trying to figure out the best way to break America’s addiction to oil. 75% of the oil consumed in America is used in transportation, and of that, 50% is used for passenger vehicles. So it became clear that what was needed was an alternative way to power cars, but what exactly would that look like? They examined all kinds of interesting alternative drivetrains, from hydrogen fuel cells to ethanol, but they eventually decided that an electric car was the way to go. So they began to learn everything they could about electric cars; how they worked, past attempts to bring one to market, and the engineering challenges of building one. They learned many things which we will not get in to here, but one of the most interesting, and the one I will be focusing on today, was about the demographics of people who bought the LAST generation of electric vehicles. Expand
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