EVLN(just so much spin)-long
[The Internet Electric Vehicle List News. For Public EV
informational purposes. Contact publication for reprint rights.]
--- {EVangel}
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/04/woe_to_ev1/index.html
Steal this car!
General Motors wants to take its pioneering electric
automobiles off the road. But the geeks who drive them won't
let go of the steering wheel. By Katharine Mieszkowski
Sept. 4, 2002 | SAN FRANCISCO -- In stop-and-go traffic on
Highway 101 here, Ellen Spertus, the 2001 "Sexiest Geek
Alive," mock-apologizes for the ambient air pollution:
"Sorry about the smog. But it's not our fault. This car
doesn't even have a tailpipe."
Spertus' silver-blue, two-door sports car, which does zero
to 30 in fewer than three seconds, doesn't have a gas tank
or a key either. It's a 1999 EV1, an electric car that
Spertus, a computer science professor at Mills College in
Oakland, and her husband, Keith Golden, a rocket scientist
at NASA Ames Research Center in nearby Mountain View, charge
up every night at home in their garage in San Francisco.
For the computer scientist and the rocket scientist, the EV1
is a kind of geek Batmobile. Professor Spertus even uses her
EV1 in the lesson plans for her operating- systems course,
when her students study computer security. Instead of a key,
a numeric code unlocks the door and starts the engine. The
students' homework assignment: Break into the prof's car.
An MIT computer science Ph.D. whose geek cred includes
having been known to wear a slide rule strapped to her thigh
in a holster, Spertus is about to be stripped of her
favorite new technology, along with hundreds of other
engineers and environmentalists who drive these futuristic
zero-emission vehicles.
"They're the cleanest cars ever made, and they want to take
them off the road. It just baffles," says Greg Hanssen, an
EV1 driver who is co-chairman of the Production Electric
Vehicles Drivers Coalition, a group of electric-car drivers
lobbying to keep the cars on the road.
In February, General Motors sent a letter to its EV1
drivers, informing them that the car company had decided not
to renew the car's three-year leases when they expire,
mostly later this year. (In 1997, GM produced 660
first-generation EV1's, followed by 500 more in 1999,
according to Spertus, but many of the second generation went
to replace the first, which had been recalled because of a
safety issue.)
GM and other automakers have long argued that electric cars
are not economically feasible or marketable; they maintain
that no one, outside of a few technophiles and
environmentalists, wants to drive a battery-powered car that
needs to be charged about every 100 miles. Just last Friday,
Ford announced that it would discontinue its electric car,
Th!nk.
Testifying before the California Air Resources Board on
Sept. 7, 2000, Sam Leonard, director of the General Motors
Public Policy Center, said that the automaker had invested
almost a billion dollars in electric-car technology and
production, and had expected to manufacture 10 to 20 times
the cars that they ended up seeing demand for: "The
electric- vehicle market failed to materialize, not for lack
of effort but for lack of customers willing to sacrifice the
utility of today's gasoline-powered vehicles," he said.
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."
Electric car drivers charge that the automakers have spent
more money fighting against electric cars, by funding
industry lobbying groups such as the Alliance of Automobile
Manufacturers, which oppose emissions regulations, than they
have marketing electric cars to consumers.
Why would a company try to undermine its own product?
Because it didn't want to produce the product in the first
place, say electric car advocates.
California state regulators forced automakers to bring
electric cars to market. The cars came out in very limited
distribution in the late '90s, mostly available only by
lease, as a stratagem to win the carmakers credits toward
California's zero emission vehicles mandate. That regulation
currently requires that by 2003, 2 percent of all new
vehicles offered for sale in the state be zero-emission, and
another 2 percent be "advanced technology partial ZEVs,"
such as "hybrid" electric/gas vehicles.
The automakers and dealers currently have state and federal
lawsuits pending to prevent the California regulations from
going into effect in 2003, even though those requirements
represent a significant retreat from California's original
zero-emissions vehicle mandate of 1990, which would have
required that 2 percent of all vehicles offered for sale in
the state be zero-emission by 1998, 5 percent by 2000 and 10
percent in 2003.
"It's been watered down consistently over the years,
because the car companies have spent millions to fight it,"
says Jamie Knapp, a spokesperson for the California ZEV
Alliance, a lobbying coalition of environmental and
public-health groups. "It's a real shame, since the
automakers have already proven that the technology
exists, and there are already people who want the cars
and can't get them."
But now it looks like even the watered-down regulations
won't go into effect, at least not in 2003. "The Air Board
has said publicly that it's not going to enforce the 2003
mandate," says Richard Varenchik, deputy communications
director for the board.
That's because a federal judge in Fresno issued a
preliminary injunction against the mandate two months ago,
ordering the California Air Resources Board not to enforce
the regulation. The Production Electric Drivers Vehicle
Coalition has filed a motion to intervene in the federal
case, hoping to give electric-vehicle drivers a chance to
appear before the court and make the case that there are
drivers who want these cars. The hearing will be held in
Fresno on Oct. 30. But a state suit, brought by automakers
and dealers, also enjoins the Air Resources Board from
enforcing the regulations.
Varenchik from the Air Resources Board says the litigation
means the board will likely reconvene to review the whole
zero emission vehicle mandate next year.
But what will become of GM's existing EV1s, even if
California doesn't find a way to enforce the regulation that
they were put on the road to meet?
"The majority of cars are going to get crushed," says
Hanssen. "GM wants the program over. They want the cars off
the road. They want it out of their hair. They don't want us
out there driving these cars, talking about how great they
are." GM did not return calls for comment.
"It's a terrible shame, because it's the best zero emissions
vehicle out there, and they were first to market with the
technology," says Knapp from the California ZEV Alliance.
While electric cars are being snuffed out, automakers are
trotting out hybrid vehicles as the answer for
fuel-economy-conscious consumers. Nationally, Honda has sold
more than 8,000 of its Honda Insight hybrids. The company is
projecting sales of 2,000 a month in the first year for its
2003 Honda Civic hybrid. Toyota, claiming 90 percent of the
hybrid market worldwide, says it has sold over 100,000 of
its various hybrid models. American car companies say
they'll follow suit with their own hybrid models.
Unlike electric cars, hybrids do not have to be charged,
since they run partially on gasoline. But electric car
drivers are reluctant to go back to the fuel pump at all. "I
have no intention of going back to gasoline if I can
possibly avoid it," says Bob Seldon, a patent attorney in
Santa Monica who has been driving an EV1 for five years. "In
my electric car, I start with a full 'tank' every morning.
I've got the range I need. It has great performance with
zero maintenance, and electricity costs me about half as
much per mile as gasoline."
General Motors is by no means the only car company that has
pulled back from electric vehicles. But the company has
displayed a particularly ham-fisted approach all its own.
When Honda yanked its EV Plus electric car, drivers
persuaded the automaker to keep the existing cars on the
road by modifying the lease to a month-to-month lease
without warranty.
The EV1 drivers asked GM to do the same. Early this summer,
58 EV1 drivers sent checks to GM as proof that they wanted
their leases to continue, petitioning the company to keep
the EV1s on the road.
The checks, totaling more than $22,000, came back, uncashed,
by registered mail in late June. "We're upset about them
taking these working cars away even though we're willing to
pay to keep using them," says Spertus. "My husband and I
would like to buy ours, since in all likelihood GM is going
to destroy these cars although they work great and don't
pollute." GM has pledged to contribute some of the cars to
museums, but the EV1 drivers are skeptical, since just how
many museums out there really want an electric car?
"I can understand GM not wanting to make more EV1s since
it's expensive, but why do they have to take away the EV1s
that already exist?" says Spertus. She and some of the other
EV1 drivers who had their checks sent back by GM are now
donating the money to help fund the Production Electric
Drivers Vehicle Coalition's legal action in the federal suit
in California.
The EV1 drivers find themselves in the odd predicament of
defending a vehicle that they don't own from a manufacturer
who wants to kill it off. Seldon says of the recall: "It's a
tragedy. Everyone I know who has leased it has been totally
unwilling to let go of it. I'm convinced that GM didn't want
the car to succeed." The EV1 driver points out that electric
cars do not require the same kind of routine maintenance
that combustion-engine cars and even hybrids do, like
replacing mufflers, oil changes and smog checks.
Yet, even as General Motors and other car companies are
turning away from the electric zero-emissions vehicles that
they've put on the road, they're crowing about their new
whiz-bang advances in fuel-cell technology, another
zero-emission source that's still off in the misty future.
"These fuel cells that they're so happy about, they're
probably only so happy about because they're perpetually 10
years way," says Hanssen, who as of March 2003 will convert
from his EV1 to Toyota's Rav4 EV, a small electric SUV
that's still available and can actually be purchased, not
just leased.
As for Spertus, she's contemplating committing an act of
"civil disobedience" to keep her tailpipe-free car cruising
the Bay Area freeways. When her lease expires at the end of
December this year, she's thinking about just not giving the
car back.
But even the Sexiest Geek Alive is reluctant to risk going
to jail for auto theft to save her electric car.
salon.com
About the writer
Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon Technology.
Sound Off
Send us a Letter to the Editor
http://www.salon.com/about/letters/index.html
Related stories
http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/06/17feature.html
Batteries included
Are electric cars like GM's EV1 high- tech toys -- or
saviors of the planet? By Janelle Brown 06/17/98
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/04/14/greencars/index.html
Electric cars vs. suburban assault vehicles
Can Henry Ford's great-grandson win over the environmental
movement? By Jim Motavalli 04/14/99
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/04/30/electric_car/index.html
Honda's electric car putt-putts its last Automaker ends
experiment with alternative-fuel vehicles. Who's to blame?
-- Janelle Brown 04/30/99
-
=====
' ____
~/__|o\__
'@----- @'---(=
. http://geocities.com/brucedp
. EV List Editor & RE newswires
. http://egroups.com/group/evangel
=====
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com
