Legendary car flops
 

Legendary Car Flops- Yahoo! Autos Article Page

EV1 was unreliable?

I'd have to guess an experimental car would have it's share of problems. I have to kind of laugh at "low sales" since it was a leased car.

...I'm surprised they didn't mention the "...Unsafe At Any Speed..." Corvair (ha,ha).

...Edsel will forever be an automotive Albatross around Ford's neck, just as the Corvair is for Chevrolet.

Frank -

Low "sales" means flop in any book. I am guessing unreliable in terms of "range anxiety". I am reading "The Car that Could" and I haven't gotten to the point where the car was being "sold" and in the public's hands. Maybe I'll have some more reliability info at that point.

CarloSW2

Frank -

Wouldn't it be cool if a GM CEO said something like "We were wrong" and recreated an EV2.0? Whoops, I was in another dimension for a second. Won't happen again.

CarloSW2

How would they know? they only built 1,100 of them.

Oh? Then Porsche, Lotus, and Ferrari are all flops?

Besides, if I'm remembering correctly, the GM EV1 didn't have ANY sales. Weren't they leased to test drivers, and taken back at the end of the lease period, often over the vehement protests of the drivers?

jamesqf -

Yes, I was being subtle. I was intimating to texanidiot25's earlier post that EV1's were leased. That's why I used quotation marks when I typed "sales". Part of my post was nuanced in the sense that other people that are unlike us would judge the success of a car based on it's "bottom line" profit/loss to the company that produced it. As you and I have discussed in the past, this is a POV question with regards to the first Gen Honda Insight.

I don't think exoticars are good analogies in this discussion because EV1s were never sold at or above what they cost to make. And yes, EV1s were never "sold", period.

Question: Does anyone know the cost of EV1's when they were produced? Maybe I'll find out later in the book. How much did first Gen Insights cost to make?

CarloSW2

Yeah, I laughed at the "sales" comment too. :rolleyes:

What got my attention was the "unreliable" comment. I haven't really researched EV1s, but as noted above, I recall that the leasees were despondent when their cars were called back. :(

"EV2"- wouldn't that be nice? GM must have concluded it's a dead end... at least for these times...

P.S. Corvairs are awesome! :thumbup:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say 40k-50k, I recall it being a high number. Mainly due to the technology and the very limited production run. These were probably hand assembled instead of assembly-lined like mainstream models.

Exotic cars do not count in "low sales" because they are all limited production cars. They're point is low sales. ;)

Volt isn't EV2?

And, despite what the article asserts, the Cadillac Cimmaron did not "pave the way" for the CTS. That accolade goes to the (still unsuccessful) Catera.

To me, it's so different, Volt goes in another category.

texanidiot25 -

You took the letters right out of my fingers! In the book there was a big debate as to whether to do a 4-passenger EV up-front or a 2-passenger EV *followed* by a 4-passenger EV. All the profit was supposed to happen maybe 10+ years later when the 4-passenger EV was introduced.

I do know that some of the EV1 folks are working on the Volt, so I am sure they are calling it EV2 on the inside.

CarloSW2

Aztek. Good idea, just bad marketing. And lackluster performance. If I wanted a minivan chassis, I'd buy a minivan.

I could have bought a Mercedes but instead I bought 17 Yugos - 1 to drive and 16 for parts. :)

Well it isn't EV1.1.3 :D I think the biggest flaws for the EV1 in the real world were it's seating capacity, and it's range (and what had to be done when you ran out). The Volt is the continuation of this idea of an electric car, but much more practical and reliable in the event of the batts being discharged. As far as I know, the EV1 was little more than a glorified golf-cart basically, nothing too ground breaking outside of being available (for a short time) to a consumer.

It's the spiritual successor to the EV1

Don't quote me on this. I remember hearing some GM exec say in a radio interview years ago that the EV1 cost them close to $80,000 to produce. This figure may have been massaged to reduce the public outcry when the cars were recalled.

I remember when I first read about the EV1, that it seemed like they were throwing more at it than necessary. I honestly think they may have hedged their bets on that car's development by throwing in expensive elements that weren't really necessary. Were they trying to muddy the water regarding the technology required for an EV?

...EV1 predates the Volt.

...and, the EV1 was merely a "loss-leader" for GM to feel "eco" about and to be able to gain "brownie points" with the EPA in Wash, DC.

...ie, "buying" green brownie points.

That's what I mean when I say the Volt is the spiritual successor to the EV1. While not directly based on the EV1, it carries the intentions and ideas on. And yeah, I've always seen the EV1 as a glorified golf-cart.

I can't even read the aticle. One blogger, one selfish mind, and I bet too dainty to use vise grips. Gotta keep those midget keyboard hands good.

:mad:

all cars are legendary. fix the darn problems. It is then a real legend emerges determining losers from winners..

I see that the EV1 made Road & Track's list of the 100 best cars up to Y2K.

"The 1997 GM EV1 transformed our opinion of electric power from golf-cart status to a car of enthusiast's interest. Certainly a 0-60 time of 7.9 seconds got our attention. Now if technology would only combine this with a 300-mile driving range."

It came about because GM had hired Aerovironment to build them a solar car for the 1st race across Australia. It was a good car, and had the luck to make a good start, staying ahead of the cloud that slowed the rest of the field. Thus, it won by a huge margin, trouncing, among others, Ford.
This lead to a contract to develop a prototype that became the EV1. GM was not a total dinosaur - Peter Drucker called it the first company using modern management - and that contract specifically required that Aerovironment share what they learned from mistakes along the way. But I digress. When it came time to finalize the production version, Alec Brooks and the Aeroviroment team really had to butt heads with GM to keep them from crippling it with wider tires and worse aero. Those same butt-heads may still be around, getting their revenge with the Volt.
After the car came out, it was "unreliable" in that the leases got cancelled, but it really was a research project, like the Chrysler turbine car, not a clear path to production. Being of great bulk, and more than two minds, GM decided to tell Congress et al that there wasn't much point to electrics, while buying up the rights to a better battery and not installing it, etc. They even told Ovshinsky, the inventor, to stop bragging that he'd made a sale to them. See "Who Killed the Electric Car."

I think that in fact the exotic cars prove the point. If you're an automaker, success isn't determined by how many of a model you sell, but by how much profit you make on your sales. So since Porsche, Ferrari, &c are able to make profits despite (or because of) low volumes, it's hard to call them flops. And contrariwise, if GM sells lots of Hummers & Suburbans, but goes bankrupt in the process because all the "dealer incentives" means they're being sold at a loss, can you really call those models successful?

jamesqf -

That's fair. The phrase "in any book" was too strong a statement on my part.

CarloSW2