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GM Steps On Tesla’s EV Toes With EV1 Celebration

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GM Steps On Tesla’s EV Toes With EV1 Celebration

In a move that shocked and surprised nobody, last week Tesla CEO Elon Musk pulled the plug on his much-hyped Cybertruck. Production will end sometime next year. It may be small consolation, but at least the Cybertruck sold more units than another notorious flop in modern automotive history, General Motors’s ill-fated EV1 sedan. Was EV1 really a flop, though? In sales, yes, but GM wants everyone to know that the EV1 beat Tesla to the electrification punch in key technology milestones.

GM actually sold few, if any, EV1 units, preferring to lease the car with a focus on drivers in California. Production began in 1996 but that didn’t last long. In 2003 GM pulled the plug, recalled the vehicles, and sent them to the crusher, having produced barely more than 1,000 units overall.

Only a scant few escaped the junkyard. One of them was rescued by US filmmaker Alex Gibney, leading to his advisory role in the searing 2006 EV1 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (btw, Gibney ‘s newly released “Musk” documentary is available on streaming now).

This year marks the 30th anniversary of EV1 production, and GM is using the occasion to celebrate. Rather than shoveling all memory of the EV1 debacle into the memory hole, GM has embarked on sort of under-the-radar public relations campaign, seeking to position the car as a necessary, albeit short lived, step along the vehicle electrification journey.

In not so many words, GM also draws attention to the fact that its work on EV1 predates the launch of Tesla Motors, which came on the scene in 2003.


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