Customer Reviews

The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle

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...Reading this book is all
the more interesting whe you realize how well the Gen II EV1
with improved batteries works. An impressive work by GM and Michael Schnayerson in covering it so well.

Unfortunately, the initial Delco/Delphi batteries in the first generation EV1 underdelivered and weren't very reliable.

The Gen II EV1 changed all that once they got decent batteries. The new High-capacity lead-acid battery pack is 55 to 95 miles per charge by GM specification. Some drivers achieve over 100 miles on these daramatically improved lead acid batteries. ...

Thanks for your time!
m.t.thompson@ieee.org

Michael Schnayerson's chronicle of the building of this car is more important in pre-war 2003 than ever before. The designers, engineers and builders are real heros,producing real solutions when we need them most. Their story should be told everywhere.
I've driven the EV1 for the past five years and I'm here to say that it worked. Michael, if you're out there, consider writing the sequel. The story continues with global consequences...

This book was one of the best informational books I've ever read. Usually, I'm interested in novels with tons of action, however, I had to do a thesis for school, which ended up being on New Methods of Non-Pollutant Transportation. I assumed that this book, like most informational books would be extremely boring. However, having read it, it seems so much like a novel, with a plot, protagonists, antagonists, etc. It's very much like a novel. I've never read anything like this before, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a great success story.

The book "The Car That Could" tells the story of GM's EV1 much better than the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?". The book tells the story of the EV1's birth. That is of course a more hopeful story than the EV1's death, which the film covers. And that fact alone makes a big difference in the impact of the story that is told.

But there is another difference. "The Car That Could" tells the inside story of how the EV1 came to be. People within GM make a huge effort to give birth to the car. This was no sham attempt to live up to the California Air Resources Board mandate to put electric cars on the road. GM clearly had its technical and marketing people do their best work. And they did build a great little car, a car that could.

As we know now, though, GM's EV1 did not live very long. The passion of those who put their money down to lease the cars could not make up for the fact that they were few in number. When the California Air Resources Board's mandate went away, that spelled doom for the EV1.

No new EV1s were made. Those that had been made were crushed. A sad end for the car that could.

But though the film "Who Killed the Electric Car" implies that GM killed the EV1, the reasons for its death were more complex than that. And the real story of its death has not, I think, been told. Certainly not as well, and with so much insight, as the story of its birth.

But the story of the electric car has not ended. And there may be some hope for a happy ending. Recently GM's CEO Rick Wagoner has said that he regrets the decision to kill the EV1. And GM promises to come out soon with a new series hybrid electric car. That may put GM back into competition with Toyota and Honda, and their parallel hybrid cars. If so, maybe we will see another, more successful version of a GM car that could.

Michael Shnayerson did a great job researching and writing about the birth of the EV1. Many of the insights written into the book will help those thinking about electric cars today.

So in my mind, "The Car That Could" should be required reading for anyone who wants to participate in the electric vehicle industry. Copies are hard to find now. But if you are interested in electric cars, find a copy and read it. "The Car That Could" makes the must-read list; "Who Killed the Electric Car?" does not.

The Car That Could is a good account of the people involved in the project and the difficulties that they overcame. At times is seemed that the project was doomed, thank goodness it suceeded! It is light on technical details and the author makes a number of gaffes concerning the units of electrical power and energy. As of August, 1989 only approximately 200 vehicles have been leased in Southern California, San Francisco and Arizonia. I shudder to think of the cost of these vehicles to GM.

There is no account of driving the EV1, perhaps the author never had the chance. It is a very exciting vehicle to drive, quiet, with adequate acceleration and top speed. But with typical driving (as if it were a conventional car) the available range with a full charge seems to be 35 to 40 miles. I suppose with experience, and a light foot, it would be possiible to acheive the rated EPA range of 80 miles, but the tempation to drive the car harder is well nigh irresistable. The ride is wonderfully smooth, particularly considering the 50 psi inflation of the tires. The handling is excellent, it feels like a sports car.

Overall, an good account of the project. I hope another more technical book is written in the future.

An excellent in depth and behind closed doors documentary and profile of the corporate and technical birth of the GM EV1. The technical hurdles solved in the development of this electric vehicle pale in comparison to the public and closed door negotioations surrounding this vehicle.

GM in a struggle with profitability maintains the commitment to take this vehicle from a one off prototype fueled by the inspirational GM SunRaycer solar vehicle to a production car.

Issues of manufacturability, customer comfort and corporate funding all have to come together to make a production car.

It's a roller coaster ride of corporate divisions, executives, stockholders, engineers and manufacturing personnel that breathe life into this vehicle.

The 1998 2% electric vehicle mandate in California, competitors at Ford and Chrysler underscore the importance electric vehicles and the quest for cleaner air to breathe.

The ultimate solution to breathable air is still in evolution. This book gives personal insight into the trials, sacrifices and triumphs of people making a first step into modern electric vehicles within an established large auto company.

A must read for Electric Vehicle enthusiast. An engaging story for anyone interested in breaking the mold and daring projects that re-invent the corporation. This is destined to be a "tail wags dog" story for GM!

This is a fascinating inside story about the development of electric cars in the early '90s.

GM unveiled a prototype electric car in 1990 and conveyed the message to California (and other states) that they could develop such a vehicle for consumer use. California shortly thereafter adopted standards requiring the top 7 car manufacturers to sell emission free vehicles totalling 2% of sales in 1998, increasing to 5% in 2001, then 10% in 2003.

GM proceeded to lose enormous sums of money in the early 1990s. But they still worked to develop the electric car for two reasons. One was to be able to meet the California standards. The other was hoping they would be ahead of the curve and make money on the new technology.

But many technical issues needed to be resolved to bring the car to market, the biggest being batteries. Developing batteries capable of providing adequate storage capacity for a reasonable amount of driving was (and remains) a monumental problem.

At the same time GM was developing a marketable electric car, they (along with Ford, Chrysler, and Big Oil) lobbied hard to eliminate the emission free mandates, claiming the technology and consumer demand wasn't there. What did GM want to happen? It seems that they didn't really know, in part because they were bleeding money.

California blinked in the 4th quarter of 1995 and eliminated the mandate. Then, in January 1996 GM unveiled the EV1, a 2 seat electric sports car.

For a follow-up on the "success" of the EV1 and other EVs, I recommend the movie "Who killed the Electric Car?". Disturbing.

"The Car That Could" does a wonderful job of detailing the history and development of the GM EV1. The story, however, has moved on since its publication. GM and all the large automakers eviscerated the ZEV mandate, reclaimed their vehicles, and concentrated on combustion engine business as usual. Then Toyota introduced the combined battery electric/gasoline Prius, and automotive history took a turn back towards electrics. Shnayerson would be wise to write an updated version on the subject. In the absence of his work, one can turn to Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will Recharge America by Sherry Boschert. This territory is ripe for more material it would appear.

See the GM EV1 website at:
http://www.gmev.com/
Email the Electric Auto Association at:
m.t.thompson@ieee.org

Shnayerson tells the story up to when the GM Impact was introduced. The film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" got me interested in electric cars. The GM Impact (EV1) was the most successful modern electric car, but it disappeared into the crushers shortly after its introduction.

His story is that of a dedicated crew inside GM working against budget cuts and management changes to make the car. It is a good read.

A shortcoming is that there are so many major characters-- A new one on each page in some chapters. One is Ken Baker, who runs through the whole narrative, as do Roger Smith (yes, that Roger) and Robert Stempel, one a former GM Chairman.

Another major character doesn't appear until chapter 20: Stan Ovshinsky. The 12 pages describe his career and the Ovonic 12-volt NiMH battery, and the test on the track at Mesa, Arizona, where his batteries powered the test Impact EV 201 miles on a single charge.

All of these 100+ GM execs and engineers were heart-and-soul dedicated to making the EV succeed. One cannot read this book and feel that GM was against the electric car. Shnayerson is an outsider, and was in no way a mouthpiece for GM or an industry apologist. When he tells of GM execs moving their families to Lansing or to Troy so they can work more on the Impact, you get a strong feeling that GM wanted this car to happen. GM sunk a few billion dollars in it.

I could have done with fewer pages of office drama and a new character on every other page, all of whom "exuded midwestern charm," and less about whether so-and-so was "on the fast track to a senior vice-presidency."

I would have preferred line drawings of new assemblies, for example, regenerative brakes-- a first by GM. I wanted more technical details! Cut a couple dozen pages of drama and give us line drawings! For example, in one of the few technical discussions; Setting a standard for EV chargers, page 223, after 3 years and $10 million, GM accepted Hughes's inductive 220 volt charger. Ford stayed with the basic prong-and-socket conductive charger. I wanted a line drawing of each, a photo of each, a short description of each.

Shnayerson gives an objective account of politics, noting the reelection of California Governor Pete Wilson in 1994, and Republicans unseating Democrat governors, and Republicans making huge gains in Congress in Nov 1994-- as a factor in reducing the auto industry's motivation to push the EV. That political revolution is missing in explaining the death of the EV in California in "Who Killed the Electric Car?" where the government villians are made out to be Bush, Cheney, and Rice. Shnayerson suggests that a Republican sweep in 1994 may have been the bigger factor, with a repudiation of 25 years of environmental legislation.

We humans may be incapable of analyzing economic factors, but we always emphasize political factors. This mental shortcoming has to do with the Availability Bias, from cognitive psychology: We overestimate factors easy to imagine or remember (like political figures we don't like) and ignore factors difficult to imagine or remember (like anything to do with economics). So when GM cuts funding in 1992 for the Impact, everyone, like director Chris Paine of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" screams out that there is a giant conspiracy by bad guys in Oil, but few recognize that when a company has a loss of a billion dollars, they need to cut back somewhere.

Shnayerson spends only a few pages on Japanese electric cars: All four major Japanese carmakers had cars to show at the Anaheim California December 1994-- EV Symposium 12. Mazda had an EV Miata. In France, residents were paying for the privilege of test driving 50 Peugeot-Citroen ZX and 105 model prototypes. If Big Oil, Autos, and the U.S. Gov killed the GM EV, who killed the French and Japanese EVs? Which brings up the Big Red Cars in Southern California.

Did Standard Oil and GM and B. F. Goodrich destroy Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric, the world's best electric car system, with its more than 1000 miles of standard gauge track? Or rather than a giant conspiracy, is the fault in the hands of my mother and father and thousands like them who destroyed the Pacific Electric-- they purchased a shiny new 1949 Nash, instead of spending that money on tickets to ride the Red Cars. We blame the "greedy" oil companies, but we don't think about tens of thousands of Southern Californians ready to buy that status symbol, their own auto, after years of rationing during and after World War II.