This was a great book detailing the creation of the EV1 - if you're interested in the vehicle and want to know about its creation, this book takes you there through to initial production.
Lots of details and nuggets of things you won't find anywhere else, I'll give a small example here. The book was published in 1996 before the drama of the electric vehicles in CA occurred (for the most part) - so it doesn't deal with any of that. You can see the seeds of future GM executive decisions regarding the EV1 mentioned in the book though. By the time the EV1 was getting close to production, former CEO Roger Smith, who made the vehicle happen (it appeared no other high level GM executives wanted the car to happen) was gone and the executive support for the very public vehicle (with the big investment) was gone - i.e. it would be wound down quietly. When it came time to fund the production line tooling GM execs decided to only fund development type tooling, which is made of resin (not steel), and only lasts a short amount of time - before the first EV1 rolled off the line it was already doomed to a very small production run.
A stunning vehicle though, one can only ponder what would have happened had the GM execs at the time viewed it as mid to long term investment in the future, had made real production line tooling, actually made and sold alot of the cars (to get their costs down) and continued their (and the NiMH battery) development - a different future indeed.
To know what happens after the development of the EV1 you can watch the fantastic movie Who Killed the Electric Car?. One of the benefits of that movie is that you can watch and hear the EV1 driving (the EV1's had a great sound that was the result, I've been told, of its inverter) - since GM destroyed the EV1's later its one of the only ways you'll ever be able to do this.
GM of course never sold the EV1's, they only leased them and then when the legal requirement in CA for zero emissions vehicles was dropped GM destroyed them as they came off lease. GM execs then sold the patents to the battery technology (NiMH) to an oil company (Texaco which was bought by Chevron) for a ridiculously small amount of money (a little over $1 million dollars - way, way less than market value) - ensuring no future EV's using that battery technology NiMH would be made (licensed production of large format NiMH batts (needed for EV's) require the approval of Chevron's board - you can't make this stuff up). Those patents expire in 2014 and 2015 for the most part and NiMH batteries are still significantly cheaper per kWH than the Li batteries that are being used today (and the NiMH can be much more durable than Li if used properly) - such a tragic story.
The apparently schizophrenic behavior of GM leadership with the EV1 program (going all out for the vehicle, investing huge amounts of money and making it happen, then just before the first one rolls down the line going the other way, lobbying to eliminate the requirement for their existence in CA and eventually destroying the EV1's as they came off lease (with people publicly begging GM to buy them) - is actually easier to understand when viewed from a perspective of feifdoms at the executive level with CEO as ultimate King. GM, unlike most other auto makers, sometimes pushes radical ideas forward through to fruition and that's because their CEO's do this occasionally. But when that CEO leaves, the support of that program is gone and the remaining executives often saw whatever the program was as a threat to their budgets or a waste and the program would die of neglect or worse (as in the case of the EV1). This happened with the EV1, Saturn and other programs in GM's history.
Currently GM created a great technology for the Chevy Volt plug-in technology (pushed forward by the CEO, Rick Wagoner, who presided over the destruction of the EV1 - which he said was his greatest mistake - but Wagoner has been gone from GM for a while and the follow on vehicles using the Volt technology have been canceled and delayed...fortunately Wagoner was around long enough to see the Volt into production and the existing CEO wants to sell as many as possible to reduce the costs, but what happens from here on out at GM is hazy with rumblings of GM's past behavior in the shadows (i.e. dropping support for new programs after the CEO that made them happen is gone).
The EV1 story is a tragic story of epic proportions and this book lays out the fantastic development of the vehicle (during which it had full support from the company which later changed) in great detail that you won't find anywhere else. An excellent read, highly recommended.
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Great book, but the story ends prematurely
This is a great book. The author follows the tangled story of how GM developed the first production electric car... but he went to press just a year or two before GM sent it to the crusher. See the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? for the sad end to this story.For contrast, google for the on-line copy of "The Prius That Shook the World". While Schnayerson was following GM he was totally unaware of the development of the Toyota Prius. Like Shnayerson's book, the Prius book takes the development of a new car from a clean sheet of paper to production. From reading both, Toyota seems to have much longer term plans and much less in-fighting. GM changed it's mind with every new CEO.By coincidence, neither book has a single photo in it (aside from the cover) and lots of personalities. But from 2007 looking back the Prius story has a much happier ending.
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