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WP: Fans of GM Electric Car Fight the Crusher



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 10th 05, 08:28 AM
sufaud
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Default WP: Fans of GM Electric Car Fight the Crusher

Fans of GM Electric Car Fight the Crusher
Activists, Auto Buffs Stage Vigil to Save EV1

By Greg Schneider and Kimberly Edds
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 10, 2005; Page A01

The morning is too chilly for her flirty purple skirt and pink top, so
former "Baywatch" actress Alexandra Paul wraps her bare legs in a fleece
blanket and settles down for a long sidewalk vigil in Burbank, Calif.
Passersby on scooters toot their horns, and a security guard smiles and
waves as he walks by. Both he and the actress are there for the same reason:
to keep an eye on a parking lot full of colorful, two-door cars behind a
nondescript suburban office building.

Those cars are rarities, the last surviving batch of rechargeable electric
coupes built by General Motors Corp. in the late 1990s. Paul and a band of
homemakers, people with desk jobs, engineers, Hollywood activists and car
enthusiasts are 23 days into a round-the-clock vigil aimed at keeping GM
from destroying the cars.

What's at stake, they say, is no less than the future of automotive
technology, a practical solution for driving fast and fun with no direct
pollution whatsoever. GM agrees that the car in question, called the EV1,
was a rousing feat of engineering that could go from zero to 60 miles per
hour in under eight seconds with no harmful emissions. The market just
wasn't big enough, the company says, for a car that traveled 140 miles or
less on a charge before you had to plug it in like a toaster.

Some 800 drivers once leased EV1s, mostly in California. After the last
lease ran out in August, GM reclaimed every one of the cars, donating a few
to universities and car museums but crushing many of the rest.

Enthusiasts discovered a stash of about 77 surviving EV1s behind a GM
training center in Burbank and last month decided to take a stand. Mobilized
through Internet sites and word of mouth, nearly 100 people pledged $24,000
each for a chance to buy the cars from GM. On Feb. 16 the group set up a
street-side outpost of folding chairs that they have staffed ever since in
rotating shifts, through long nights and torrential rains, trying to draw
attention to their cause.

GM refuses to budge, but several factors give those at the vigil hope. The
auto industry underestimated the appeal of gas-electric hybrid vehicles, and
now the Toyota Prius, Honda Accord Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid are selling
faster than factories can build them. Gas prices are headed higher this
spring than last year, when they broke the $2-a-gallon barrier, and sales of
Detroit's biggest SUVs have softened so much that makers are cutting back
production.

Earlier this year, two men who leased discontinued electric pickup trucks
from Ford Motor Co. staged a week-long sit-in at a Sacramento dealership
after refusing to surrender the trucks at the end of their leases. Ford
reversed an earlier decision and agreed to sell them the vehicles, and now
it is setting up a program so other lessees can buy their trucks.

"If Ford can do it, why can't GM?" asked Chelsea Sexton, a former GM
employee who helped organize the Burbank vigil.

The company says that it cannot sell the cars because it would have a legal
obligation to service them and that it can't provide service because many
suppliers quit making the 2,000 unique parts that went into the design.

Most automakers experimented with electric power during the 1990s when
California threatened to require them to sell zero-emissions vehicles. The
state eventually backed off the requirement, and one by one the car
companies dropped their electric vehicle programs.

The EV1 was widely considered the best of the crop because of its
performance and innovative engineering, using a teardrop shape for slick
aerodynamics. GM says it gave the EV1 every chance to succeed, spending more
than $1 billion on development and dedicating an entire Michigan plant to
producing it. But the world's biggest automaker said the car never had
appeal beyond a core group of technology enthusiasts and environmentalists.

"There is an extremely passionate, enthusiastic and loyal following for this
particular vehicle," GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss said. "There simply weren't
enough of them at any given time to make a viable business proposition for
GM to pursue long-term." Instead, GM is developing hydrogen-powered fuel
cells, a technology it hopes to market within the decade.

Even Toyota Motor Corp., which kicked off the alternative-power craze with
its Prius, has concluded that U.S. consumers simply have an aversion to the
idea of plugging in an electric car for a recharge. The latest ad campaign
for the Prius emphasizes that "you don't have to plug it in," after focus
groups and Internet surveys convinced the company that some consumers
worried about that, Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight said.

Nonetheless, Toyota is aware of a growing fad among do-it-yourselfers who
put a new battery in their Prius so it can be plugged in at home and then
travel about 20 miles on electric power alone, she said.

Sexton, the former GM employee, said people who had daily exposure to the
EV1 learned to love the plug-in feature of the car. She started working for
the company's Saturn division in 1993, then volunteered for the EV1 program
in 1996 and quickly became a zealot. "I even met and married an EV1
technician," she said.

Her son, 6, spent his earliest days around the cars and now has written
messages to GM in chalk on the sidewalk outside the Burbank building. "This
is something we're all committed to as a family because we've all lived and
breathed this project," said Sexton, who has filed Internet reports from the
vigil site by hooking her computer to a solar panel the group also uses for
making tea.

For three weeks, she and a rotating group of colleagues have staffed their
site in four-hour shifts around the clock. Their cardboard signs -- "GM make
a U turn" and "Sell the EV1 for scrap. $24,000 each" -- are now curled from
the heavy rains that drenched Los Angeles last month. Yesterday morning,
Paul staffed the site alone, but by afternoon nearly a half-dozen people
were there. Every weekend the vigil stages a rally that draws anywhere from
two dozen to 100 people, Sexton said. Other celebrities have dropped by,
including Ed Begley Jr., and Woody Harrelson has posted updates about the
vigil on his Web site.

Last week, a big truck rolled up to the GM parking lot and took on about
seven of the EV1s. Vigil participants briefly blocked the truck from leaving
but stood aside when asked. Two of them followed the truck 140 miles toward
Palm Springs, Calif., far enough to reinforce their speculation that it was
headed to a GM facility in Mesa, Ariz., that enthusiasts have long thought
was the crushing ground for discarded EV1s. GM had assured them that large
numbers of the cars remained in use by researchers, but former EV1 driver
Kenneth Adelman obtained aerial photos of the Arizona site to confirm that
the cars were meeting their demise there.

Barthmuss, the GM spokesman, acknowledged that the cars are being recycled.
"That does include flattening the vehicle so it can go through the various
mechanics of recycling," he said, adding that he did not know what
percentage of the fleet had been destroyed. He said that the cars stored at
Burbank will eventually be hauled away for various purposes but that he
knows of no set schedule.

What to do when the next truck comes has become a heated issue within the
group -- to stand by passively as the cars are loaded and taken away, or to
interfere. "Our policy is if anybody as an individual wants to take active
resistance that's up to the individual. But as a group we're taking a
passive stance," said Ted Flittner, a vigil participant and Costa Mesa
industrial engineer who never owned an EV1 but used to enjoy riding in a
friend's.

He accepts that the situation doesn't look promising but said the plight of
the EV1 has helped bring attention to an innovative environmental project.
"It's just so wasteful," he said. "They have such a brilliant solution
they've developed. They've put it on the market and proved it works. People
still want it and they're taking it away and destroying it."

Edds reported from California.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...005Mar9_2.html

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  #2  
Old March 10th 05, 11:38 PM
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
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Default

sufaud wrote:
>

[snip]

> Barthmuss, the GM spokesman, acknowledged that the cars are being recycled.
> "That does include flattening the vehicle so it can go through the various
> mechanics of recycling," he said, adding that he did not know what
> percentage of the fleet had been destroyed. He said that the cars stored at
> Burbank will eventually be hauled away for various purposes but that he
> knows of no set schedule.


Make a deal with the auto recycler to purchase the vehicles with a
salvage title 'as is'.

--
Paul Hovnanian
------------------------------------------------------------------
  #3  
Old March 16th 05, 04:56 PM
Nexus7
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Default

Great example of enthusiastic, concerned, and misguided citizens.
Electric cars solve nothing, actually have a negative environmental
impact. And it isn't like GM realized this either, they just moved on
to another misdirected initiative, hydrogen cars, because that where
taxpayer $$$ are being thrown at now.

The simple equation is that there isn't a more overall efficient
powerplant for personal transportation than the diesel IC engine. Even
hybrid vehicles sell into the hype rather than actually solve anything.

 




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