In 2006 Hollywood gave us the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car?, which tried to paint General Motors as misguided or evil for repossessing and destroying almost the whole fleet of EV1s that it had manufactured. As you might remember the EV1 was a short-lived experiment lasting from about the 1996 to the 1999 model years.
Actually, the electric vehicle, as a concept had many ups and downs before it was able to grab a tiny but stable market share in recent years. There are papers in the literature about EV deployment that concern me, because they assume rates of EV market penetration way beyond reason. I once did some estimation of EV market share while at General Motors. So maybe it is worthwhile reviewing why EVs have had so little success in the past so as to understand their future. But first…
I once killed an electric car!
Well, I did nothing so callous as to order the crushing of leased vehicles that were already in customers garages. However, in 1978 I wrote the internal GM report that terminated all serious EV development in that company for many years to come. If GM wasn’t interested in pursuing EV development, you can bet nobody else was either.
There was nothing evil or conspiratorial in my report. I showed that EVs were largely incompatible with travel choices, urban structure, and driver tastes. Some of those incompatibilities remain today, although much has changed due to lighter batteries.
In 1978 the only reliable battery technology was lead-acid. And if you have ever changed a battery in a car or boat yourself, you know that lead-acid batteries are heavy. The first electric vehicle prototype I ever saw, incidentally in the lobby of GM Research Labs, weighed about 4000 lbs, and literally half of this weight was battery pack. There was almost no cargo space and the passenger compartment was cramped. Engineers envisioned the maximum range for such a vehicle at 90 miles, pretty much the same as a standard EV1 20 years later.
I will spare you the details of the estimation, but I based a lot of the analysis on travel survey data and a proprietary GM survey of buyer choices when shopping for smaller cars. I did not use travel choice modeling, and I made hardly any assumptions. Bottom line: The whole US potential market consisted of 10,000 vehicles. I clearly remember to this day the reaction of Chevrolet’s marketing director, “Why heeel, I kin sell 10,000 elephaants on roller skates.” The room erupted in laughter, but the point had been made. EVs would be a marketing disaster.
Apparently GM had forgotten my report. The EV1 was doomed from the day it was conceived.
The availability of lithium-ion batteries has been a game changer for EVs. Market share for electric vehicles has now climbed to over 1%, about half of this being plug-in hybrids, but there are still problems. Costs are relatively high and government subsidies are phasing out. The still limited range, now at about 300 miles, coupled with slow charging rates inhibits intercity travel. The EVs are configured as smaller passenger cars, while the market for SUVs continues to grow. And while EVs have advantages in stemming greenhouse gases, low prices for fossil fuels are encouraging people to stick with the old, reliable internal combustion engine.
I need to elaborate about the plug-in hybrid, which is a different beast. The Prius Prime, for example, has an all-electric driving distance of 25 miles between recharges. While not at all impressive, this range is likely OK for a substantial number of drivers on most days, and the ICE is there for those longer trips and busier schedules. A plug-in hybrid is not dependent on remote charging stations, and the duration of charging is made reasonable by the smaller size of battery packs within these cars. Charging at the workplace would certainly be appreciated by drivers with longer commutes, though.
So it is not “who” but “what” killed the EV1. The EV1 was badly mismatched to driving needs and buyer preferences. Even now, the market size for EVs is severely limited without substantial help from government through subsidies or regulation. Any person doing research or planning that involves EVs must make sure that their market-size assumptions and scenarios make sense in terms of good travel behavior principles. There is never justification for politically-motivated or sloppy guesswork.
Your opinion is always welcome.
Alan Horowitz, Whitefish Bay, January 12, 2019, edited slightly January 18, 2019