7 ms·
The only GM EV1 ever publicly sold
see also https://electrek.co/2025/11/19/gm-ev1-saved-from-crusher-going-driveable-again/ https://electrek.co/2025/11/19/gm-ev1-saved-from-crusher-goi...
- robin_reala 11mo agoThe EV1 was the first mass-produced electric car to be offered to the public There were ~30,000 electric cars around at the start of the 20th century, so I’m not sure this holds up.
- xattt 11mo ago^ modern-day, post-war, computerized
- nocoiner 11mo agoWasn’t the Model T the first mass-produced automobile? Wouldn’t surprise me if the early 20th century electric cars were basically handbuilt by dozens or even hundreds of different manufacturers.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoThe Model T is the first assembly line produced automobile. Mass production significantly predates the Model T. Generally, the production of guns in France in 1765 using standardized parts is generally considered the first mass produced item.
- dboreham 11mo agoDang. I thought it was the British Navy pulley blocks.
- infecto 11mo agoWhich of those 30k was mass produced? The model t was seen as the first mass produced vehicle. I think when it obtained that classification it was producing around 200k annually.
- robin_reala 11mo agoEV1 had 1,117 units produced according to Wiki, so I guess any model of those 30k with more than that would count. Edit: apparently Columbia built 1,937 electric cars in 1904 alone according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(automobile_brand). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(automobile_brand).
- infecto 11mo agoThe answer is probably more in the middle in that mass produced places more emphasis on the standardization. I imagine those Columbia cars were not build on an assembly line.
- chiffre01 11mo agoPlus according to this the Detroit Electric Sold 13,000 units between 1907 to 1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
- potato3732842 11mo agoImpound/tow/lien -> title has always been the easy button for getting legit title to a vehicle that was never supposed to be sold (UPS vans, Uhaul trailers, etc), so long as it was never reported stolen. Absolutely hilarious that he managed to work the "doesn't work it if pops up as stolen" angle in the opposite direction to make the car impossible to really do anything with (i.e. no junkyard can take it whole, no subsequent changes of title can happen) and live in various sorts of limbo for 20yr.
- fragmede 11mo agoCould you do anything like that to trick the DMV into letting you register a BYD vehicle in California?
- throwup238 11mo agoNo, having a title of ownership is not the same as registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don’t meet DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal breaker, regardless of which state you’re in. Even if you could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.
- dmurray 11mo agoAre they actually unsafe or they just haven't gone through the certification? They're on sale in Europe where the car safety standards are slightly different to the US, but generally considered more rigorous.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoAnd Chinese cars rate higher on the European safety metrics than Western cars. https://insideevs.com/news/779537/euro-ncap-safety-rating-chinese/ https://insideevs.com/news/779537/euro-ncap-safety-rating-ch...
- SideburnsOfDoom 11mo agoFor whatever reason, the industry term for the certification is "Homologation" (1) But yes, the vehicles which aren't on sale typically haven't been homologated. Why invest the time and money in that when it's not needed? Actually deemed unsafe and not meeting the rules is much rarer, e.g. Tesla CyberTruck in Europe. (2) In either case, you may get away with owning it, but not driving it on public roads. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologation https://www.productipedia.com/kb/productipedia/compliance-resources/how-does-homologation-work https://www.productipedia.com/kb/productipedia/compliance-re... 2) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cybertruck-too-big-and-sharp-for-european-roads-say-campaigners https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cyb...
- adenta 11mo agoDo we all have that one friend who also secretly has an EV1, or is that just me?
- potato3732842 11mo agoI bet for every example there's a hundred more that are just not registered and or are registered as something else. It's like machine guns, you're not paying for the hardware. You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to shoot you for not getting permission. People don't want the permission. They want the hardware. So they just get the hardware and keep it on the down low. Also, everyone in automotive who isn't an OEM or in the emissions racket (i.e. the two groups benefitting) absolutely hates the government and this is exactly the kind of "interesting" vehicle junkyard people would save for their own personal golf cart use. Usually OEMs are super anal about making sure stuff actually gets crushed but they shat out too many EV1s into the world to do a good job of that like they do for prototypes, test mules and other stuff with low double digit production runs if that.
- pixl97 11mo ago>You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to shoot you for not getting permission Hmm, you could get a swatting 2.0 by taking real video and shoving in some LLm generated scenes of people showing off their machine gun (parts) pretty easy.
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoIt's just you and without some proof of it in a private garage it's really not even you.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Theodores 11mo agoWhat are the obstacles to making GM EV1 replicas, albeit with modern batteries? The design still has merit and would undoubtedly be long range with the lead acid batteries swapped out for something new. You can get businesses making replicas in small numbers, for example, I am sure you could get a Lancia Stratos, however, would GM have a big copyright ban on such a venture?
- nubinetwork 11mo agoI doubt insurance would allow you to register an old Saturn that was converted into an ev1.
- criddell 11mo agoThey probably would. If the Saturn is older than 25 years, it can be registered as a classic car. The fact that it's highly modified with new parts doesn't really matter. It's what people in the hot rod scene have been doing forever. For newer cars, you could probably register it as a self-built (kit car).
- bluGill 11mo agoWhy not? The only issue is if that Saturn was scrapped - once a car is scrapped there is no legal way to get it titled. (but you can still call it home built with parts from the scrapped car - it just needs a new VIN).
- kube-system 11mo agoThe states register vehicles, not insurance companies. And while a big box insurance company might not insure a heavily modified vehicle, there are niche insurance companies who will. Or you could even self insure in a state that allows it.
- toast0 11mo agoI imagine it's not hard to get liability/collision insurance on a modified vehicle, and that's all you really need; most insurance will cover damages you cause on "any vehicle" you drive, so it doesn't usually cost much to add an additional vehicle unless it's particularly risky; that this has a real VIN and a real manufacturer should make it pretty easy. If you really think you need comprehensive insurance, you'd need to get specialty insurance anyway, because normal insurance is going to give you a near zero value on a car like that.
- throw0101c 11mo agoSee perhaps 2006 movie: > Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal government of the United States, the California government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F And from the same director in 2011: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoThe only place for it is back on the road. If I was the owner I would spit into GM's face and put a million miles on the odometer. It should be a private Uber.
- nebula8804 11mo agoDrive it and park it in front of the GM's headquarters. Do a cannonball run. These guys are Youtubers so I expect lots of great content. However I fear some of the more exciting ideas may not come to bear because "Influencers"/Press are usually afraid of OEM cutting off access. Hopefully these guys aren't in that group.
- officeplant 11mo agoThe actual owner isn't a youtuber, but niche EV guys have their own communities and a handful of youtubers happen to be in there as well. The owner already has an electric S10 as well, and the RAV4 both which use the same charging system as the EV1 so I'm just glad its an enthusiast who will rebuild it and run it.
- api 11mo agoThe EV1 was way, way ahead of its time, and was more or less outright killed for various reasons including car makers having deep sunk cost in ICE engine tech. The battery tech back then was vastly inferior to today but it was still good enough for a shorter-range economy EV that could have replaced a gas for a lot of daily commuter drives, especially for two-car families. For reference: the first generation Nissan Leaf had similar range to the EV1. I still have one of these. It's our family's second car, and has run flawlessly for over 10 years with virtually zero maintenance. Range is still about 60 miles per charge. BTW... despite the antics of Musk, I think he was absolutely instrumental in advancing car electrification. Yes there were others making EVs, but Tesla was the first to make them cool and in so doing force the rest of the industry to move. Without Tesla dragging the industry kicking and screaming into EVs I think we'd still be stuck with almost 100% ICE cars. China might have done it, but that's because they don't have the same sunk cost in ICE engines we have.
- ZeroGravitas 11mo agoWhy did you name check Musk and not the actual founders of Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning, that took advantage of their experience with lithium batteries and the forward-thinking Californian regulatory regime to found their company there to build an electric sports car?
- leobg 11mo agoHow about “volume production” as a reason?
- ZeroGravitas 11mo agoStill Californian government providing orders of magnitude more cash for that to happen than Musk ever did. Is there some technical contribution by Musk I'm unaware of?
- api 11mo agoGood point, and they're worth name checking too, but the company didn't go anywhere big until Musk took over. Musk clearly has (or at least had) a great skill when it comes to scaling companies doing hard things. If he had one under his belt, like Tesla, I'd be willing to chalk it up to luck, but he has two: Tesla and SpaceX. Both have been spectacular successes doing things most people run away from screaming with their tail between their legs, namely volume production of innovative cars and aerospace. IMHO SpaceX is a lot more impressive. There's an old joke: how do you become a millionaire? A: start as a billionaire and found an aerospace company. I think without him Tesla would have been a boutique car company. They would have made expensive boutique cars for a subset of visionary EV early adopters, but would not have moved the industry. To move the industry you have to grow hard and fast enough to scare legacy car makers into trying to play catch-up, which is what Tesla did. The only other thing I can imagine moving big car makers like this would have been the government mandating an EV transition. Big bureaucratic things only move when kicked. People hate acknowledging this because Musk's politics have turned so many people off, but unfortunately there appears to be no correlation between skills in one domain and being a generally well adjusted human being. The world doesn't work this way. A person can be good at something and still be a lunatic or an asshole. I mean... if we dismissed all achievement of people who were assholes or lunatics, we'd basically have to throw out 2/3 of all music. If anything there might be a slight negative correlation between extreme skill in some domain and being well adjusted, for a variety of reasons including the weird way people treat "savants" in any field. I also suspect a big one is that people with messed up backgrounds (bad childhood, etc.) or psychological issues sometimes "over-compensate" by achieving hyper-skill in some area.
- Currybongos 11mo ago[flagged]
- madamelic 11mo agoI used to walk past one of these every day on my way to and from my dorm. My school apparently had no idea what it was for years and it just sat outside underneath the EE building and people would draw dicks in the dust on it. When they realized what it was, they immediately yonked it inside and made a student team to refurb it. It's super cool I got to see such a piece of history and rare car even if I didn't realize it for so long. Before: https://images.hgmsites.net/med/gm-ev1-electric-car-at-missouri-st-rolla-missouri-photo-jalopnik-joel-johnson_100436545_m.jpg https://images.hgmsites.net/med/gm-ev1-electric-car-at-misso... After: https://i.redd.it/8hqyo6iq7ixa1.jpg https://i.redd.it/8hqyo6iq7ixa1.jpg
- ashleyn 11mo agoBegs the question of how it escaped GM's clutches. All EV1s were leased with no buyout option, later recalled, and most crushed.
- bobmcnamara 11mo agoI remember that car! Slapped a dillo late one night after walking through that tunnel.
- actionfromafar 11mo agoIt can happen but you should generally refrain from it.
- rvba 11mo ago> Except the car wasn’t there when the police arrived. “GM knew about this, and they smuggled the car separately from all the other cars out of the state,” Sawyer claims. > Because the car left the State, Sawyer had little recourse. “The cop says, ‘Well, the car’s out of State, contact the FBI.’ And I tried to contact the FBI, but they weren’t interested,” he tells me. I dont understand this part of the story. So if somene steals a car and drives it out of state only FBI can search for it and they dont??? Doesnt this mean legalization of crime? If it works on the car, will it work on other things too, that they just look the other way?
- toast0 11mo agoIf you know where it ended up, you can probably get State resources activated over there too. But if you need law enforcement to investigate an interstate case, you pretty much need the FBI. The FBI does not investigate all reported crimes, and neither do state and local law enforcement, so yeah... if you do crime that nobody wants to investigate, you can get away with it; at least until those meddling kids show up.
- goodcanadian 11mo agoIn this case, it is more of a question of whether the FBI considered it a criminal matter. The lessor was in possession of the car. The lessee filed a lawsuit against the lessor to get it back. It sounds more like a contract dispute: a civil matter. Of course, this is simply my speculation.
- hank808 11mo ago"Southern states like California and Arizona..." LOL.
- cogman10 11mo agoThese things had around 25kWh battery packs with 140 miles of range. I think 200 miles is on the low end of what they could achieve with LFP chemistry. I really wish a car manufacturer would bring back the EV1 form factor with modern EV batteries.
- lawlessone 11mo agoI can see why that wasn't sufficient for the US with your commute distances but that probably would have sold well outside the US if they tried.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dangus 11mo agoGood luck convincing anyone to purchase a two-door vehicle with a below-average sedan-style trunk. It's difficult enough for automakers to sell standard sedans these days, never mind an electric one ($$$) designed around efficiency above all else. The average gas price today in Texas is $2.60. It is not really economically rational for someone to pay a premium for an efficiency-focused EV without some other benefit. I think the closest to what you're asking for is the Model 3, or Ioniq 6: appliance sedans built around efficiency. They don't sell as well as their SUV cousins.
- dylan604 11mo ago[dead]
- pnw 11mo agoWhy? Almost all two seater vehicles sold in the US are sports cars and trucks for a reason. The demand for two seat subcompacts is very low and previous attempts to sell them have been unsuccessful. The Smart car was available in both ICE and EV models and still failed despite trying for over a decade, and that had the advantage of a smaller parking footprint than the EV1. The Scion IQ was similarly unsuccessful. Despite being a two seater the EV1 is not that small, it's a fraction longer than the Chevy Bolt. I can't see any reason the EV1 form factor would sell today.
- throw0101c 11mo agoSee perhaps the 2006 movie: > Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal government of the United States, the California government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F And from the same director in 2011: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car
- dylan604 11mo ago[flagged]