Bye Bye GM, If You Had Only Perfected the EV1 Instead

Oh GM, if you’d only perfected your electric car.

In 1990, in response to California Air Resouces Board passing the ZEV mandate, GM developed a zero-emission car called the EV1. The ZEV mandate was a requirement for an increasing percent of Zero-Emission Vehicles (“ZEV”) to be sold in California.

Major oil companies were against this, and pushed lawsuits against California to kill the ZEV mandate. Along with the oil companies came George W. Bush administration, who also supported measures to kill the ZEV mandate. Several of the administration’s chief influences were executives or board members for oil and auto companies: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card.

Even GM jumped into the fray against their own product. With no internal combustion, the EV1 saw a noticable decline in necessary repairs, which would be detrimental to GM’s service market. Being afraid to ruffle their cheif economic allies – oil companies – when the EV1 went to the show rooms, the car was cloistered. It couldn’t even be bought. It was leased, and very sparingly. Under a thousand were ever put on the road.

When Toyota’s Prius became the new disruptive technology, American car companies stayed true to their love affair of large vehicles. The Prius had already been out for years, but GM continued to move forward with their truck devision, arguing Our research shows that Americans want trucks. In defense of GM’s SUVs, Ken Stewart, GM’s marketing director in 2004 said, “We want to start big, because that is the largest benefit to society.” As sales of the Hummer division grew, GM put off hybrid technology to a to-be-determined date. They managed to finally fit it into their budge three years later, but not in time to save the company from the gas crisis.

By June of 2008, GM’s Hummer sales had been so atrocious, that they closed their Hummer factories, and tried to sell off the brand; of course nobody was interested in buying the Hummer brand when the gasoline cost nearly $5 a gallon.

By November, GM sales had dropped nearly 90% from the year before. They’ve asked for a $25 billion dollar bailout loan from the government, which was denied.

Meanwhile, today’s car companies are scrambling to develope more fuel efficient cars. The companies that have been quicker divorce themselves with trucks have done the best: Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are all doing better than their SUV-heavy counterparts: Ford, Chevrolet, and GM.

Today, investment analysts downgraded GM’s stock to a projected value of zero. Stock prices plumeted 30%, suprising everyone, since at $4, the stock is near junk anyway. GM, it’s sad that you didn’t develop the EV1; you could have been the supreme car company of the universe.

Though they say hindsight is 50/50, I’d like to point out that “treehugging hippies” have been asking for this for decades.

In closing, for my own personal amusement, I’d like to show a quote from Josh Pompton Lakes of New Jersey, who made a bitingly ironic comment on CNN’s webpage.

Reading these blog entrees made me come to a few conclusions, not the least of them being there are A LOT of self hating Americans out there. Most people seem to be more then happy to hand over the American economy, and manufacturing base to asian companies.

That being said a lot of press has been given to Toyota for saying that they are on track to over take GM as the number one car company globally in 2007.. My question is where is this jump coming from?…
Despite what the tree huggers say AMERICANS WANT TRUCKS.. End of story, if GM and Toyota was not selling them, then guess what they would not make them. This is simple economics, Toyota is coming out with its new Tundra.. Its goal is to sell about 400-450,000 of them its 1st year.. Total Prius sales, for last year.. About 120,000 units, or [half] what Toyota plans on selling of there new trucks. Ohh yah tha’s a green company.. For the most part EVERY INCH of sales gain Toyota has made in the last 5 years has been with TRUCKS, NOT CARS!!!…

Bottom line neither of these two companies are the same companies they were 10 or even 5 years ago. ALL of the old ‘MYTHS’ about the US car companies that have been around since the 1970s are largely false today. Toyota is no longer producing just small fuel efficient cars. Today a GM is as reliable as a Toyota.. Today a similar GM will get similar or BETTER MPGs then a Toyota, and a Similar GM will cost less then a similar Toyota.

One last thing, for all of those people out there who say ‘I owned a GM XYZ in 1980-1990, and it was crap’.. Maybe you are right I can not argue the fact that GM had its problems back then, but today I can say that those problems are gone and GM is making quality cars and trucks. Give them another shot, and I guarantee you will be surprised.