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The thing that is so amazing about the EV1 is that it had so many good qualities -- it was the FIRST time that GM had designed an electric car! Imagine how good it could have been if they had been refining it, and learning as they went?
I think it was this potential that scared the rest of GM and the oil companies. In a way it was analogous with a small branch of Intel building the first Athlon (instead of AMD) -- it blew by the Pentium II in clockspeed and performance!
The issue about the weight etc. (the EV1 was 2,900 pounds including the 1,100 pound battery), still apply today -- to the Volt! At ~3,500 pounds it will not be a very good electric car. I think that GM is still unable to make up it's mind about "letting" another technology succeed. So, I think they are consciously (or unconsciously?) ham-stringing the Volt so they can make claims on both sides of the argument.
If it succeeds, then they can say "See what we did!" and if it fails, then they can say "See, we told you so!" I think the EV1 was an overall big success (despite the flaws), so they had to kill it to save the rest of their company.
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