General Motors EV1

The EV1 was the first modern-time mass-market electric car that was designed as an EV from the start. It was the only car ever to be introduced under the General Motors corporate name instead of any of its brands. The EV1 was not for sale, it could only be leased by residents of Los Angeles, California, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona at first. Later the leasing program extended to San Francisco and Sacramento, California, and a handful in the state of Georgia. There were waiting lists of hundreds of people interested in leasing an EV1, but General Motors kept supply limited to a few hundred units a year. Service and maintenance was to be performed by selected Saturn dealerships.

The EV1 was introduced to help General Motors comply with the California mandate that the 7 largest automakers had to market a zero-emissions vehicle in order to continue selling their cars in the state. Although the EV1 was very popular among the enthusiast customers, GM took back all the vehicles at the end of their leases and destroyed most of them, under heavy protests of EV1 fans, as documented in the documentary film “Who killed the electric car?”.

By the end of 2002, all vehicles were off the roads and only a few dozen EV1 cars survived, although they were disabled before being donated to museums or universities. After the EV1 was pulled from the market, it would take another decade before Nissan introduced the Leaf as the next mass-produced electric vehicle in North America and it wasn’t until late 2010 that GM introduced the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, indicating how far ahead of its time the EV1 really was, and how much of a technological advantage General Motors has given away.

Use the dropdown at the top right of this page to find sales figures for any other car model sold in the US since the early 2000’s.

 

Sources: Manufacturers, ANDC