from the Atari-2600-E.T.-Video-Game-Recycling dept.
https://electrek.co/2025/11/19/gm-ev1-saved-from-crusher-going-driveable-again/
GM only leased the EV1, never sold any, and prevented almost anyone from keeping them when it killed the vehicle program.
The automaker ended up crushing the vast majority of them. While a few empty shells exist in museums, they are strictly prohibited from ever driving again. But a new project has surfaced involving what appears to be the only legally owned EV1 in private hands...
A handful were deactivated by removing critical parts and donated to universities and museums, but GM required the institutions to sign contracts ensuring the cars would never be reactivated.
Now, a couple of engineers and tinkerers on YouTube managed to get their hands on what could be a very unique EV1.
This specific EV1 (VIN #278) was donated to a university that eventually forgot about it. It was towed as an abandoned vehicle, impounded, and eventually sold at auction under a court order. That legal chain of events reportedly broke GM's restrictive ownership contract, making this possibly the only "unrestricted" EV1 in the wild, though I am hearing that there might be a handful of other, lower-profile ones out there.
It recently sold at auction for roughly $104,000.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, @03:58AM (1 child)
Nice to see one of these running again.
However, it's a 30 year old car and tiny by modern standards--I hope the new owners don't get run over by one of the giant pickups or SUVs out there now--the EV1 is so low a distracted pickup truck driver might look right over it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday December 01, @03:01PM
I was bored enough to look it up because for laughs I think I prefer the EV1 specs to any "modern" EV specs. The NiMH battery has a 100 mile range which is still too far for me, wasted money. Maybe a tiny lithium replacement would be "just right" for me.
Anyway compared to a 12th generation Corolla its about ten inches shorter, almost the same width (quarter inch to half an inch narrower depending on Corolla model), and about 4 inches shorter. From more than 10 feet away, parked next to each other, you'd have to pay close attention to perspective and parallax to tell which is larger. It weighs almost the same as a Corolla.
There are huge problems with the EV1 I'd prefer to avoid. All aluminum frame essentially it'll be a pile of corrosion in about 5 years where I live. The tires are some weird custom motorcycle-like things no longer available as I understand it.
I think a redesigned EV1 with smaller lighter lithium battery, "normal" car parts instead of weird parts, and a resulting lower range around 50 miles would be just about right for me as a daily driver / second car. Nodody wants to sell anything like that, so what they are offering for EVs isn't selling. Oh well. China will take over the market in 2030s just like Japan cars took over in the 70s. If they refuse to sell what people want, they should go out of business.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Sunday November 30, @12:51PM (5 children)
"Some forces are clearly at play to suppress electric cars."
Yep. That would be those nefarious laws of physics.
"More specifically, gasoline is around 76x more energy dense by mass compared to modern EV battery packs."
https://activematerial.tommivalkonen.com/batteries-are-76x-less-energy-dense-than-gasoline-so-how-come-they-dont-weigh-more-than-the-entire-car/ [tommivalkonen.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday November 30, @01:59PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 01, @01:20AM (2 children)
> There's a reason that GM went bankrupt in 2009.
I thought it was due to the crash of the real estate bubble and collapse of new car sales once the "great recession" set in. You have another reason for all three big USA automakers running out of operating cash at the same time?
[note, from memory, Ford had luckily taken out some big loans at good terms just before the 2008 crash, so they didn't need a gov't bailout to save 10's of thousands of jobs.]
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday December 01, @07:05PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 01, @09:19PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Monday December 01, @04:35AM
Also the laws (or rules) of commerce. The EV1 only ever existed to make GM compliant with the ZEV mandate. Someone who worked on EVs at the time told me how much GM lost on each EV1, can't remember the figure but it was pretty stupendous. So if you're losing (say) $1m on each car you make it doesn't require any conspiracy to make them go away again as soon as it's feasible.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 01, @02:50PM (1 child)
Some of the more conspiratorial mythology about this is weird.
Under Magnuson-Moss, if it has a warranty, and you stop making spare parts (or literally can't acquire parts) then while its under warranty the mfgr has to buy it back after a reasonable delay. Whats the value of a collectible car 5 years after they stop selling them? Can GM sell an EV without a warranty as a company policy? Can you buy a car in the USA without at least an implied minimal warranty? For almost any other model of car GM can install the stereotypical shared "GM standard alternator" or worst case do a short production run on EGR values every couple years. But an EV is a bridge too far. Its a HUGE financial liability to GM of an unknown financial value. Less risky to crush em.
If GM has a parking lot of EVs the accountants want that gone. Depreciate to zero and crush to make the parking lot usable again and make some money off the scrap. Some crazy individual wants to buy precisely 1 as a collector item vs a SEC investigation or shareholder lawsuit about falsified accounting reports about canceled model depreciation. If they're not selling them, they have to do "something" with the scrap metal.
I'm not really sure what GM could do. They could do stuff that opens the company to enormous financial liability "just to be nice to collectors" but that'll get them fired or named in a shareholder lawsuit. They have a rather fine line to walk in a hyper-regulated market. They did their best, even if they didn't do what some rando thought would be nice.
Fundamentally its a weird communist thing. It's their unsold cars, randos in the general public don't own them and shouldn't be able to tell GM what they can do with a pile of scrap metal.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 01, @03:16PM
Ohhh If you do want a conspiracy theory based on science and mechanics I have one:
They only made a couple and only ran them for a couple years while new, so AFAIK this never killed anyone IRL, HOWEVER they made it out of aluminum as light as humanly possible, and a couple more midwestern winters and they knew when designging it that in theory it could kill people on the highway when the frame cracks after a pothole or the suspension snaps off the frame in a turn etc. My totally made up theory is they intentionally built if to fall apart in X years to save weight and they do NOT need the legal liability of them going out and killing people ten years later and having to do a recall etc. Its just cheaper to crush them.
Alternately, they used NiMH batteries with known lifespan issues... Potassium hydroxide electrolyte plus aluminum frame is not going to end well and all batteries "eventually" leak. Ironically plain old steel plus KOH is sorta-stable-ish at least a lot more stable than KOH plus aluminum. KOH plus aluminum makes plenty of hydrogen, what could possibly go wrong with an electric vehicle streaming hydrogen as it corrodes itself LOL.
Essentially they did not want a sequel to "unsafe at any speed" to be written about them. Engineer them to fall apart at X years of use, its more responsible to crush them before X years than to make collectors happy.