Chloe Mark
10/22/2014
CAT – Professor Berk
Assignment # 5 – What caused the demise of the electric car?

In the 1990s the electric car was never really alive
In 1987 when the Sunraycer won, Roger Smith saw the potential for a commercial electric vehicle (EV); only 3 years later, GM announced the Impact prototype. CARB, emboldened by the seeming viability of EVs, quickly passed ZEV mandate. It seemed the EV was making rapid in-roads. However, 13 years later ZEV mandate was reversed and nearly all electric cars produced were destroyed by their own manufacturers. This stark turn of events begs the question – Who is to blame? When we go back over the facts, it becomes clear that ultimately limited and cost-prohibitive technology were the primary cause of the EV’s demise. The EV was too expensive to produce and did not meet performance requirements at that price point to be viable for consumers. While not primary factors, CARB’s mandate and the oil environment created contextual conditions that likely hastened EVs’ end.
GM was excited about the EV1, but it was really expensive and had lower performance than traditional combustion cars
In development costs alone GM spent approximately ~$350,000/ EV1 produced. Even with the hope of mass production to spread out fixed costs, EV1’s marginal cost of production was ~18K. Bottom-line – with current technology even at magnificent scale the EV1 would remain very expensive to produce. To be a viable product (profitable) the EV1 would have to have been sold at ~$50-60K in 1992 an ultra-premium price point.
In conjunction, the EV1 lacked the performance of combustion cars. The original EV1 had a range of 80 mpd and took 15 hours to charge (later this was improved to 100 miles and 3 hours).
After release no evidence that consumers were WTP for the EV1 at a profitable price point for GM
To be competitive, GM in