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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: 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.