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A Rare GM EV1 Saved From The Crusher is Going to be Driveable Again

posted by janrinok on Sunday November 30, @12:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the Atari-2600-E.T.-Video-Game-Recycling dept.

spiraldancing writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday November 30, @01:59PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 30, @01:59PM (#1425398) Journal
    I would add GM's pathological response to electric vehicles - no need to invoke conspiracy theories. There's a reason that GM went bankrupt in 2009.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 01, @01:20AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 01, @01:20AM (#1425455)

    > 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

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 01, @07:05PM (#1425525) Journal
      Ford didn't run out. And the rest of the auto industry didn't go bankrupt.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 01, @09:19PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 01, @09:19PM (#1425540) Journal
      As an aside, once you've observed through a few boom/bust cycles you can see certain patterns and dysfunction happen over and over. One of these is using the bust part of the business cycle as a scapegoat for all the mistakes made since the last bust cycle. This can exaggerate the business cycle effect for a business when they save up the bad news for five or ten years and dump it all at once.