Protestor vigil as GM ends electric car production (Burbank)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-electric12mar12.story

Vigil an Outlet for EV1 Fans
Enthusiasts hope their 24-hour presence at a GM facility in Burbank will change the firm's decision to scrap the last of its electric cars.
By Patricia Ward Biederman
Times Staff Writer

March 12, 2005

The vigil in Burbank is now in its fourth week, a period made miserable at times by torrential rains. Twenty-four hours a day, day in and day out, a dedicated group of enthusiasts has been camped out in front of the General Motors' facility here.

The group includes actors, engineers, automotive consultants and just plain car nuts. To a person, they fret about what fossil fuels do to the environment. Now sleep deprived from pulling night shifts on the curb, the protesters are here to save not whales or some other endangered species but 71 of the last of GM's legendary electric car, the EV1.

The threatened vehicles sit in a parking lot behind the building, where a GM employee plugs them in from time to time to keep them road-ready.

General Motors made 1,000 of the revolutionary clean cars in the 1990s, leasing most of them. In August, the last lease was up, and GM took back the vehicles. Since then, the Burbank protesters say, the company has been crushing the cars in Mesa, Ariz.

"We estimate they've already destroyed 800 of them," said Chelsea Sexton, one of the organizers of the protest that began Feb. 16. Dozens of EV1 enthusiasts have offered to buy the remaining vehicles for about $25,000 each.

Dave Barthmuss, a spokesman for GM in Thousand Oaks, said he understood the affection the protesters have for the EV1 but that there wasn't a big enough market to support the car.<snip>

All six of the major auto companies that developed electric cars have abandoned the technology, he said.
<snip>

[gbwarming]

1. Bad headline. Production ended years ago.

Dave Barthmuss, a spokesman for GM in Thousand Oaks, said he understood the affection the protesters have for the EV1 but that there wasn't a big enough market to support the car.<snip>

Riiight, GM says Hybrids are just a fad too. This is such a misdirection. GM never leased the EV1 outside of California and Arizona and they made the lease requirements difficult yet the waiting list was long. They're perfectly happy to build very small numbers of Hummers and specialty Corvettes. No doubt the batteries in these cars were expensive - particularly when they moved to NiMH (which gave them and advanced battery technology ZEV credit). The production EV1 program was ALWAYS about banking ZEV credits and PR in my opinion - when that ended so did EV1.

http://ev1-club.power.net/archive.htm

[papau]

2. I did not get that point until well into the article! but you are correct

So why go to old factory to protest?

[gbwarming]

3. Found a Salon article from 2002 about this

I should have written a gentler title - I thought is was the LAT headline. It's a damn shame GM is ending this the way they are.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/04/woe_to_ev1/
...
But the EV1 drivers, many of whom sat on waiting lists for months to get an electric car, say that's just so much spin. They claim that the car company says there's no demand, because it wants to prove that it can't possibly meet California's strict emissions regulations. (New York and Massachusetts are also considering similar mandates; combined with California's, they could bring lower emissions requirements to one-fifth of the American auto market.)

At the same time as it is quietly killing off the EV1, General Motors has recently announced that in order to meet the California regulations, it will give away thousands of so-called "neighborhood electric vehicles." EV1 drivers say the neighborhood cars, which have more in common with golf carts than cars, and are only safe at speeds of about 25 mph, just serve to reinforce the public's misconception that electric cars are little more than glorified toys that will never replace gas guzzlers.

"I don't expect that we'll be able to save the EV1," says Spertus, who has helped organize EV1 drivers online who are rallying to keep their cars. "I just don't want the car companies to get away with claiming that electric cars are no good and nobody wants them."
...