If it was such a bad car, why were dozens of would-be buyers camped out in front of GM Burbank to offer $25,000 for the last 78 EV1? Why did GM have two would-be buyers arrested for blocking the sidewalk, trying to buy the EV1?
GM lies. That's a fact.
The EV1 was a great car; on the original DELCO batteries, the 1997 lead-acid battery-powered EV1 only had a range of 60-70 miles, but that's not a big problem. Most of our driving is done less than 40 miles from home, as even GM is forced to admit. Anyway, that was not the problem; many folks STILL wanted to purchase the 1997, but GM refused to sell, sending the checks back. If we had been able to buy, we would have replaced the batteries with better ones, or just lived with the range.
It was not the range, but the poor quality of the DELCO batteriies that drove GM mechanics nuts and baffled EV1 drivers; but when GM was forced to replace them by good Pansonic lead-acid batteries, the range immediately shot up to 110 miles, and they NEVER failed.
Honda and Toyota, proving GM a liar, came out with Nickel Metal Hydride ("NiMH") EV-plus and RAV4-EV in 1997, while GM was whining that it would be unable to use NiMH. Finally, GM was forced, in 2000, to release the first 200 of only 465 1999 EV1 with superior NiMH batteries, which had a range of 140 miles (EPA) and 160 miiles if driven with care.
That was all there were; GM ignored demand, they just dribbled them out, a few a month, no matter how many folks wanted to lease or (futilely) asked to buy them.
328 of the Toyota RAV4-EV were sold to the public, and, together with hundreds of fleet-lease RAV4-EV, are still in use today on their original NiMH battery packs.
GM, lying as usual, ignores NiMH for the VOLT, claiming that they need "research money" to develop Lithium!
Here we have a battery, NiMH, that works, every day, year after year, in visible all-electric EVs, and GM just ignores it. It's almost as if NiMH, and the Toyota RAV4-EV, did not even exist!
If GM were serious about selling the VOLT, they would release it right now with existing NiMH batteries. A 300 lb. NiMH battery pack -- about the weight of the transmission and clute it would displace -- would give the VOLT an all-electric range of 50 miles.
Even a 500 lb. battery pack of Panasonic lead-acid batteries would be enough for the VOLT, and that's a lot lighter than some of the dumb fuel cell scam cars.
The reality is that GM has no intention of the VOLT being anything more than a PR ploy, to defuse the PR disaster that they brought on themselves by crushing the EV1, and by the movie Who Killed the Electric car (GM and Chevron!).