Leaf and EV1 Comparison

john dingdong again?!?!?!

 

he's as bad as bob klutz!

 

Yes, and there was a tremendous amount of work done to resurect that beast.... It still doesn't have the orignal brakes, and they promised GM that it would be converted to a "hyrid" (yeah, right). I guess it was an excerise, but since there are only 40 or so left, I'm not sure what the point is/was.

This just shows GM's folly, and will just further embarass them, and it shows all of us what could have been....

 

There is also a working EV1 at Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison - they replaced the drivetrain with their own design:

 

If they've replaced the drive train, what makes it different from any other conversion EV? Folks all over are replacing the drive trains of conventional cars to make them into EVs.

 

They essentially tried to replicate the original EV1 drivetrain as much as possible. If you watch the video, they discuss how the paddle charger does not work because GM ripped out the controller, but they do have a working EV.

I think that they mainly are using it as a teaching tool, so that the future engineers get some hands on training. Hopefully there will be somewhere they can put it into practice. Maybe some former GM employees could split off and form a new EV company.

 

All of this could have been done with a Honda Civic. Then they'd have developed procedures and blueprints that every high-school shop class in the country could follow to build an EV. Instead they have chosen a car that may be available to two or three groups at most, so very little of what they have done can be applied to a car other folks have access to.

 

Another EV-1 Alive in DC

Endless-sphere.com • View topic - EV-1 Conversion

 

Peak Oil.

Both Lutz & Ghosn have pointed directly/indirectly to peak oil. Peak oil makes EVs not only profitable, but also absolutely essential for corporate survival.

 

Sorry to bring up this zombie thread, but it hit in google, and since I went to UW for undergrad, I thought I would read up on the answers.

This was about students learning about hybrids, and was extracuricular, which means not part of a scheduled class. Key here was to understand how the things worked, and do it as cheaply and well as possible.
Wisconsin Hybrid » General Motors EV1

cool free chasis ready to be electrified dontated from gm that was gathering dust. This was much easier than getting honda to give them a civic and somehow building it out.

cool free batteries from ford, although they needed to get some more from a ford donation to west virginia.

Then a probably better than ev1 power train donated by ballard. Great stuff to learn on. The challenge X gives some more advanced students a chance to show off what they have learned.

 

IMHO with 2020 hindsight gm got the volt more right than nissan got the leaf. The leaf program cost $4B-$5B. They have sold approximately 80,000 world wide from introduction through september (some areas only have reported for the first half of 2013). Nissan and Renault's vehicle sales may indeed take off in the next generation, but the vehicles need improvement. The volt/ampera is estimated to have cost gm about $1.2B (most of it written off at bankrupcy) and they have sold about 61,000 world wide from introduction through april.

The shame of crushing the ev1 is not that gm would have a profitable electric car by now, they might, but its doubtful. Its that the volt would have cost much less, and been much more profitable by now, and its technology may have gone to many other vehicles.

The precept was the expensive diesel from PNGV, that could not even pass epa tests. GM did have a 4 seat ev1 and an erev ev1, put them together and you have a volt.

I don't think people would buy the body molds now, but there is the bmw i3, which is cfrp. Other than looks it outdoes everything ev1, has 4 seats and a range extender, and costs less than the ev1 adjusted for inflation.